In a private gathering adjacent the governor’s mansion in Charleston, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D), Rep. Nick Rahall (D), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) and Gov. Joe Manchin (D) met with industry leaders regarding the mixed signals coming from the Environmental Protection Agency on mountaintop removal, a method of mining in which the tops of mountains are blasted away and the debris pushed into nearby streams.

And here’s a hint: the lawmakers are none too happy with the EPA’s actions so far. From the Gazette:

Rockefeller said the White House meeting doesn’t have to involve President Obama, but must be with someone who can provide “good, hard information” about exactly what new environmental constraints EPA wants to place on mountaintop removal.

Rahall said coal executives at Tuesday’s meeting expressed frustration with EPA permit reviews, delays in permit decisions and general confusion about what — if any — new standards EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is imposing on Clean Water Act permits for strip mines.

“We need to know what the rules of the game are,” Rahall said. “We need clarity. We need EPA to get its act together.”

The meeting was originally scheduled to be public, Ward reports, but was moved to a private tent at the last minute. Organizers might have feared the arrival of anti-mountaintop removal activists, though no protesters showed up, Ward notes.

Both sides have reason to feel anxious. Earlier this year, the EPA approved dozens of new mountaintop mining permits, causing some alarm among environmentalists that the Obama administration was poised to follow in the footsteps of the hands-off Bush White House on the issue. More recently, however, the EPA announced that it was withholding 79 pending applications for new mountaintop removal projects in order to assess their impact on local waterways. Then last month the agency took an even bolder step, threatening to revoke the permit for the Spruce No. 1 Mine, the largest mountaintop mine in West Virginia, unless the owner changed the design to protect local streams. It marked the first time since the 1972 passage of the Clean Water Act that the EPA had invoked its CWA authority to halt an existing coal mining permit.

Calls to Capitol Hill today weren’t returned. (Today, after all, is Veterans Day, and many offices are vacant.) But the EPA said last month that other existing mountaintop operations can breathe easy — the agency isn’t likely to target them as it did the Spruce project.

EPA does not expect to review additional mining projects in circumstances where the [Army] Corps has already issued a permit. Spruce is a very large mine, with correspondingly significant environmental and water quality impacts.

EPA’s letter today confirms that all 79 permits initially identified on September 11 must undergo additional evaluation by EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers. EPA’s final list was transmitted in a letter to the Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works) Jo-Ellen Darcy.  The 79 permits represent all of the backlogged surface coal mining projects under review by the Army Corps of Engineers. After a careful evaluation of these surface coal mining projects, EPA determined that each of them, as currently proposed, is likely to result in significant harm to water quality and the environment and are therefore not consistent with requirements of the [Clean Water Act].

As Ward points out, this doesn’t mean that the 79 projects will be rejected. But they could be altered if the EPA — which has been a more aggressive environmental watchdog under this administration than under the last — determines that they do indeed violate the Clean Water Act.

Environmental groups were quick to applaud the decision. Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign, issued a statement saying the further review “will surely prove that this most destructive form of coal mining is incompatible with clean water.”

Murkowski’s proposed amendment (PDF) would allow the EPA to continue work on regulating emissions from automobiles, but would block them from using funds from “this or any other Act” to create rules governing stationary sources until after Sept. 30, 2010.

She hopes to attach it to the $32.1 billion spending bill that the Senate took up debate on yesterday, which covers the appropriations for the EPA as well as the Department of Interior and the U.S. Forest Service.

This comes as the EPA continues work on regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, in response to the 2007 Supreme Court Decision directing them to do so.

A Murkowski spokesperson told ClimateWire that the senator wants to respect the court’s decision, but that a one-year timeout is needed to give Congress enough time to come up with a legislative solution.

Update: Murkowski’s office informed TWI that this is not the most recent version of the proposed amendment. Her spokesperson said the senator is seeking bipartisan support for the amendment and does not yet have a final version ready to be introduced.

Update: Murkowski’s office just sent the text of the latest version of the amendment, which states:

Effective during the 1-year period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, none of the funds made available for the Environmental Protection Agency under this Act may be expended to regulate or control carbon dioxide from any sources other than a mobile source as described in section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act or to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act except for purposes of section 10 202(a) of that Act.

Update: Here is the latest version of the amendment. Murkowski’s office said the senator is seeking bipartisan support for the amendment, and the language may still change. The spokesman said the senator has not made a final decision as to whether she will introduce the amendment, but will decide by mid-week.

The spokesperson also said that Murkowski does not want to thwart action on climate change entirely — just put if off for a bit longer. “Sen. Murkowski is not seeking to derail or delay congressional action on climate change,” said the spokesman. “She simply wants adequate time for the legislative process to work in order to avoid enacting a law that could have devastating unintended consequences on the economy.”

Congress is best suited to determine how a national greenhouse gas emissions reduction program should work. Therefore, any bill should explicitly preempt the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Translation: They want Congress to empower Congress to do the EPA’s job.

This is an odd argument, considering that the EPA scientists would know vastly more about emissions science than any lawmaker on the Hill. So what does the Roundtable have in mind? Well, for one thing, the group appears to recognize that elected lawmakers are influenced much more easily by public outrage than unelected EPA officials. It also seems to be well aware of lawmakers’ tendency to protect regional industries, even when that protection runs counter to national interests. Having Congress monitor  compliance with new emission guidelines would almost guarantee that the rules wouldn’t be enforced as strictly, to the polluters’ benefit. Indeed, it’s groups like the Roundtable that are spending millions of dollars to ensure that leniency.

Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) are reportedly considering (sub. req’d) offering amendments to force the Environmental Protection Agency to raise the blend level above the current 10 percent maximum as an amendment to the EPA appropriation bill. The corn-state senators would like to see blend limits raised to 15 percent, and E&E reports that it looks likely that the potential amendments would block funding for the EPA if they don’t move forward on raising the blend limit.

The EPA is currently considering a petition from more than 50 pro-ethanol groups, and is expected to come to a decision on it by Dec. 1. But that’s not soon enough for Nelson. “I have been waiting for EPA to deal with this,” he said. “It is something I must admit I am concerned about because they don’t seem to ever come to a conclusion.”

But the EPA faces opposition to increasing ethanol levels in gasoline from environmentalists, livestock producers, refiners, and other groups. Concerns have been raised about whether most engines can handle higher blends, and recent studies indicate that the use of ethanol may increase global warming. The general impression among opponents of the higher blend is that it doesn’t really benefit anyone other than the corn lobby.

“This action will give our auto companies some long-overdue clarity, stability and predictability,” Obama said Tuesday in a speech at a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

The new rules unify the Environmental Protection Agency’s goals to reduce the emissions from automobiles and the Department of Transportation’s rules on fuel economy. The proposed program will cover model years 2012 through 2016, increasing fleet-wide fuel economy by 5 percent per year. This means by 2016, the fleet-wide average would hit 35.5 miles per gallon, and would need to meet a new limit on emissions per gallon. The new rules will need to go through the traditional approval process before they are finalized, which needs to happen by March 2010. But the administration estimates that they will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons.

More importantly, it will be the Obama administration’s first action toward meeting its stated goals of reducing emissions and complying with the Supreme Court’s directive to the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The real question is whether the administration will follow through with its threat to move onto setting limits for stationary sources of carbon dioxide emissions, like power plants, refineries, and manufacturers. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson declined to offer much information about their progress on that front at a press conference on Tuesday.

“EPA will continue to do it’s job, which is to respond to the now 2-plus-year old ruling about the Clean Air Act,” said Jackson. “I think it is fair to say that today’ announcement is path-breaking … It is the beginning of regulation. We should expect the EPA to continue to do its job.”

But she also made it clear that the administration would still prefer not to write the regulations. “I hope that doesn’t come to pass,” she said. “I believe that legislation is the preferable route.”

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“The administration pledged earlier this year to improve review of mining projects that risked harming water quality. Release of this preliminary list is the first step in a process to assure that the environmental concerns raised by the 79 permit applications are addressed and that permits issued are protective of water quality and affected ecosystems,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “We look forward to working closely with the Army Corps of Engineers, with the involvement of the mining companies, to achieve a resolution of EPA’s concerns that avoids harmful environmental impacts and meets our energy and economic needs.”

The EPA is also planning to review a longer list of proposed projects over the next 15 days. There will be a 60-day review process for each permit.

Activists organizing against surface mining projects like mountain-top removal, a method that blasts mountains to extract coal reserves, were pleased by the development. “By recommending these permits not be approved, the EPA and the Army Corps has demonstrated their intention to fulfill a promise to provide science-based oversight which will limit the devastating environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining,” said Willa Mays, executive director for Appalachian Voices, in a statement.

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Approved in 2007, the 2,278-acre Spruce Fork mine is designed to fill six Appalachian valleys with mining debris, burying more than 8.3 miles of mountain streams in the process. The EPA, citing “new information and circumstances,” says there’s a “likelihood” that the operation will pollute those streams in violation of state and federal law.

“We are concerned data were available and was not evaluated as part of the review for the 2007 permit which is directly relevant to the Corps determination of whether or not the project would comply with the requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA),” the EPA wrote.

Reading a bit between the lines, the letter seems to say that the “new information” is actually old information that both the Army Corps and the EPA chose to ignore during the Bush-era approval process. If that’s the case — that is, if these agencies ignored the law to benefit the coal industry at the expense of public safety — then more should happen than just a suspension of the Spruce Fork mine. Heads should roll, too.

This Administration has shown it is determined to improve mining practices and we will do so within the context of the court’s ruling which we are reviewing.

Not only does this say nothing, but administration officials will have a tough time convincing folks that they’re really serious about improving mining practices in the wake of their recent decision to approve an enormous new West Virginia mountaintop removal mine — an operation designed to fill eight Appalachian valleys. That is, unless they’re going by the Bush administration definition of improvement.

The ruling is a victory for Appalachian mountaintop removal operations, where the peaks of mountains are literally lopped off with dynamite and the rock and soil pushed into adjacent valleys, many of which contain small streams that represent the headwaters of larger bodies of water below.

A 1983 law prevents mining — or disposing of mine debris — within 100 feet of streams if the activity is shown to harm water quality. But in December, the Bush White House finalized an industry-friendly rule that effectively scrapped the so-called “stream buffer zone rule.”

Calling the move “legally defective,” the Obama White House in April asked a federal judge to overturn the Bush rule change. But today, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, Jr., declined to do so, arguing that a change in regulation requires public input.

The Interior Department says it’s working on a statement about its next step.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club has already issued one of its own, calling on the White House to take even bolder steps to curb mountaintop removal.

With the administration currently considering more than 80 permit applications for new mountaintop removal coal mining, it will take policy changes at the Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency, along with tough enforcement, to end the destruction completely and protect Appalachian communities.

There’s good reason for the environmentalists’ concerns. Despite vows to protect Appalachia’s waterways, the Environmental Protection Agency recently approved yet another mountaintop removal operation in southwest West Virginia — a project that will fill eight valleys with mining waste. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave its final approval for CONSOL Energy Inc.’s Peg Fork Surface Mine on Friday. The move comes just a few months after the EPA approved 42 pending surface-mine permits in the Appalachian states.

Despite promises to install more transparency into its permit approval process, the EPA did not announce its decision to OK the Peg Fork mine.