By Mannix Porterfield
The Environmental Protection Agency is simply doing its job by holding up surface mining permits and the industry was well aware a year ago the review was coming, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., said Thursday.
Rahall took exception to Gov. Joe Manchin’s charge that the EPA was out to ban surface mining through regulation since it cannot be done via legislation.
“They can’t do it either way,” Rahall said in an interview from his Capitol office.
“And I think that is being fair to coalfield residents and to the industry. By the time it all shakes out, I hope that there will be certainty and a clear path forward through which industry can make continued permit applications, providing jobs in our coal industry, which is so vital. I recognize that as much as the next person.”
In an announcement a day earlier, the EPA said it was holding 79 permits in abeyance for study, among them 23 in West Virginia. Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said, “They want to call it an enhanced review, but it is truly an enhanced moratorium ... It’s a continuation of them pursuing their personal opinions through public policy at the EPA level.”
Manchin, speaking to West Virginia MetroNews on Thursday from Berlin, said, “Right now, my belief is that they’re trying to kill off surface mining through regulation what they cannot get done through legislation.”
The governor said the EPA doesn’t like mining, especially surface mining.
“I didn’t believe that before,” he added. “I was hoping they were looking for a better way and a better use that we could all agree upon. But that’s not their actions and that’s not what I see.”
Manchin said the state’s congressional delegation needs to speak out loud and clear.
But Rahall says he’s “still confident that the EPA — as a matter of fact, I know they will, they have told me they will — will work with our industry to make the necessary corrections or revisions or tweaking or whatever is necessary, where the operator wishes to pursue such permits.”
Rahall said the EPA delay didn’t take the industry by surprise, but simply is a review operators knew more than a year ago was going to be done, “the new administration notwithstanding, did not matter.”
“It’s not too pleasant to see while it’s being done,” Rahall said of both surfacing mining in general and mountaintop removal in particular.
“But it can be restored and years later you will never notice the difference,” he said.
“I have seen them. It has been done in West Virginia. We have been a leader.”
Rahall pointed to an array of post-mining accomplishments in southern counties — a federal prison and high school in McDowell County, industrial parks, churches, golf courses and an airport now under construction in Mingo County.
The congressman said the EPA is merely following the law under the Clean Water Act, last amended in 1994.
In his first year in office, Rahall drafted a federal surface mining law that allowed the practice to continue when environmental groups sought to outlaw it.
Under the statute, an operator must provide proof of improved post-mining land uses, and afterward, the Clean Water Act was added to the books and through that law has arisen the current review of mining permits, he pointed out.
Rahall is following up on the matter with a meeting next Tuesday with the assistant secretary of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the EPA.
“I’m trying my darndest to ensure that no West Virginia jobs are lost,” Rahall said.
Some mining jobs have evaporated of late, along with the closings of some installations, “but that’s all market conditions,” he said.
“That’s not based on these permit situations,” he added.
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
