Supreme Court asked to weigh in on EPA's power to veto wetlands fill permits

A coal mining company fighting a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to effectively veto a permit allowing disposal of mining waste in the streams of Appalachia has asked the Supreme Court to review the case.

The petition for certiorari in Mingo Logan Coal Co. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency was filed Nov. 13.

"Granting EPA this unprecedented power will chill private investment in critical sectors of the economy, where some $220 billion each year is contingent upon section 404 permits," the petition argues.

The issue is of high importance to advocates working to prevent mountaintop removal mining.

Scientific studies show that the practice, which involves extensive deforestation in a region that contains a high degree of terrestrial biodiversity, also causes damage to aquatic ecosystems that is practically irreparable.

Human health impacts, including increased risk of cancer and heart, lung, and kidney disease, have been documented in areas where mountaintop removal mining occurs. A relatively higher frequency of birth defects in areas impacted by the practice has also been confirmed.

In 2007 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued Mingo a permit to fill waterways with overburden from its Spruce Mine No. 1 in Logan County, W. Va.

In 2011 EPA demanded changes to the permit that were extensive enough to amount to an outright rejection of it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in an opinion written by Judge Karen L. Henderson - an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush - unanimously upheld EPA's action. The other two judges that signed on to the panel's opinion were Thomas B. Griffith and Brett Kavanagh, both appointed by George W. Bush.

The focus of the legal dispute is section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act. That provision of the CWA appears to give EPA authority to revoke a permit to fill a stream with mining debris (or any wetland with any other sort of fill material), even if the polluting activity has already commenced:

The Administrator is authorized to prohibit the specification (including the withdrawal of specification) of any defined area as a disposal site, and he is authorized to deny or restrict the use of any defined area for specification (including the withdrawal of specification) as a disposal site, whenever he determines, after notice and opportunity for public hearings, that the discharge of such materials into such area will have an unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas (including spawning and breeding areas), wildlife, or recreational areas.

Referring to this section of the CWA, upon which EPA relied in forcing changes to the Mingo permit, the D.C. Circuit wrote:

Section 404 imposes no temporal limit on the Administrator's authority to withdraw the Corps' specification but instead expressly empowers him to prohibit, restrict, or withdraw the specification 'whenever' he makes a determination that the statutory 'unacceptable adverse effect' will result. . . [T]he Congress made plain its intent to grant the the Administrator authority to  prohibit/deny/restrict/withdraw a specification at any time.

Mingo Logan Coal Co. is represented by former  U.S. solicitor general Paul D. Clement in its effort to obtain Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit decision.

Environmental groups seek intervention in case challenging mountaintop mining rules

A group of environmental organizations based in Appalachia has asked a federal judge to permit them to intervene in a lawsuit that challenges new Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at strengthening oversight of mountaintop removal mining.

Mountaintop removal mining involves the use of explosives to remove huge quantities of rock that bury coal seams. The procedure results in the literal destruction of mountains and the filling of streams and river valleys with rock, sediment, and toxic chemicals.

The Obama administration, in a change from the approach of its predecessor, has given EPA a veto power over so-called section 404 permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and strengthen cooperation between the two agencies and the Department of Interior.

Section 404 refers to the provision of the federal Clean Water Act that established protection of wetlands from filling. Rivers and streams are included within the coverage of that statutory section.

The administration of former President George W. Bush, in a decision made eight days before his presidency ended, issued a regulation that gave the coal industry wide latitude to blast off the tops of mountains and fill Appalachian streams and hollows with the resulting debris.

The new rules have slowed down permit decisions and, in some cases, caused some permit applications to be denied. They have particularly impacted planned mining operations that would result in "valley fills," which is a nickname for operations that result in the deposit of debris in the watersheds of the region's rivers.

The mining industry opposes the new regulations and, in July, filed a lawsuit attacking them in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit claims that the new regulations will effectively ban mountaintop removal mining in the major coal states of the east, including Kentucky and West Virginia, and that EPA did not follow the procedures established by federal statute when it imposed the new regulations.

The environmental advocacy organizations, which include the Sierra Club and six local organizations, argue in their motion that a ruling in favor of the mining industry would cause serious harm to their members and the environment because the government might them grant permits of "dubious legality."

Two other lawsuits contesting EPA's new mountaintop mining regulations have also been filed. One was launched by the state of West Virginia earlier this month, while the second is being pursued by a group of Kentucky coal companies.

Bush Seeks to Legalize Mountaintop Stripping

The Bush Adminisration's Environmental Protection Agency has approved a proposed rule that would allow the practice of stripping off mountain tops to find coal, and then dumping the debris into streams, to resume, according to a report in the McClatchy Newspapers.

A 1983 regulation prohibits the dumping of such mining debris, which often results from a common mining practice in the coal regions of Appalachia. The government in recent years has declined to enforce this rule.

Government figures show that about 535 miles of streams were buried or diverted between 2001 and 2005, about half of them in Appalachia.

The Department of Interior intends to finalize the rule this month, according to a report in the McLatchy Newspapers, and it will go into effect before President-elect Barack Obama takes office.

The Obama-Biden transition office has not commented on its plans for seeking the reversal of this and other recent changes to federal regulations.