The EPA's welcome crackdown delays a permit in Virginia.The Obama administration continues to show real signs that the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining will not continue to get a free pass.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency objected to three more permits the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was preparing to issue authorizing mountaintop removal operations, two in West Virginia and one in Virginia.
The EPA said the mines will need individual permits under the Clean Water Act, not the streamlined "nationwide" permits that should be allowed only for projects with minimal environmental impact. Individual permits require extensive environmental impact studies.
One look at a mountaintop removal site is enough to realize that no one could seriously argue that mountaintop removal mines fit in the nationwide category.
It's amazing that a coal company ever had the gall to make the case that a nationwide permit would be appropriate. Who could say with a straight face that this process -- involving stripping a mountain of all vegetation, blowing it apart, extracting the coal and dumping the leftover dirt and rock into nearby valleys, burying hundreds of miles of streams -- has only a "minimal" environmental impact.
That government regulators would go along with such a charade demonstrates how much the industry mindset pervaded agencies that are supposed to act as watchdogs.
The EPA's action is welcome, but the real test of President Obama's position on mountaintop removal mining may come in a couple of weeks. His Justice Department will have to respond to a request by environmental groups to have the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rehear a case. The appeals court had struck down a federal judge's ruling requiring the individual permits for all mountaintop removal mines. That response will show just how serious the new president is.
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