At a West Virginia hearing yesterday on the EPA’s controversial proposal to veto the permit for the largest mountaintop removal mine in the state’s history, hundreds of industry supporters — including Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) — blasted the agency for threatening jobs in the region. They’re claiming that the proposal to veto Arch Coal’s Spruce Mine puts politics above science — an ironic argument considering that there are clear signs that evidence-based decision-making is returning to the EPA after eight years in the wilderness of the Bush administration.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reports:

Supporters of the permit complained that EPA was wrong to step in after a mining permit was already issued, and that such an unusual step means no permit ever issued is safe from being later rescinded.

“EPA wants to take the permit away for what seem like political reasons, not scientific reasons,” said John McDaniel, a top Arch Coal engineer who worked on the Spruce Mine permit for more than a decade.

Rahall weighed in at the gathering as well. “Pursuing this course will have a chilling effect on the coal industry in West Virginia and the Appalachian region,” Rahall said, according to Ward.

“It sends a message to investors that no permit is ever assured and that money they might be willing to put into similar coal mining operations and coal jobs is nothing more than a high-risk bet,” Rahall said.

Spike Maynard, a former state Supreme Court Justice (and close friend of the industry) who’s challenging Rahall in November, was also on hand to rip the EPA’s veto proposal.

“The EPA has changed the rules mid-stream on our miners, and I don’t see how anyone could think that is fair.”

Funny that there were no similar complaints from industry supporters when the Bush White House changed the rules mid-stream on coal miners (see here and here).

Of course, those changes made it easier to blow up the mountains.

In other words, the lawmakers are blasting the Environmental Protection Agency for trying to protect the environment.

“While the EPA conducts an unnecessary re-examination of the mining permitting process under the guise of environmental stewardship, the troubling reality is that the EPA’s unsolicited policy changes are aimed solely at the coal industry and more specifically, Appalachian coal,” Reps. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) wrote Monday in an op-ed in Roll Call.

Unilaterally implementing some of the most sweeping regulatory changes in recent history, the EPA is supplanting well-established, Congressionally justified water quality programs in six Appalachian states and running roughshod over commonly agreed upon principles and practices.

It’s tough to know how the lawmakers would define “recent history” here, but evidently they don’t wish to go back too far. Not to 2002, for example, when the Bush administration unilaterally reclassified mining “waste” as mining “fill,” thereby allowing companies to fill streams more easily. And not to 2008, when the Bush White House gutted a 25-year-old rule prohibiting the disposal of mining debris within 100 feet of streams.

Here’s how The Washington Post described the 2002 change:

The “fill rule,” as the May 2002 rule change is now known, is a case study of how the Bush administration has attempted to reshape environmental policy in the face of fierce opposition from environmentalists, citizens groups and political opponents. Rather than proposing broad changes or drafting new legislation, administration officials often have taken existing regulations and made subtle tweaks that carry large consequences.

And last year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar pointed out the reasoning behind the 2008 “stream-buffer-zone” change when he noted that it “allows coal mine operators to dump mountaintop fill into streambeds if it’s found to be the cheapest and most convenient disposal option.”

But company expense and convenience, Salazar said in proposing to abandon Bush’s rule, shouldn’t be the only considerations when issuing permits.

We must responsibly develop our coal supplies to help us achieve energy independence, but we cannot do so without appropriately assessing the impact such development might have on local communities and natural habitat and the species it supports.

Whether they can succeed in the face of industry opposition — opposition evidenced by today’s Rogers-Capitol op-ed — is another question.

Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Chad Barker says 18-year-old EmmaKate Martin and 23-year-old Ben Bryant were charged with trespassing, conspiracy, obstruction and littering.

He says they left garbage near their platform over the road in Julian.

The irony of the last charge certainly won’t be lost on Appalachian environmentalists and community groups, who’ve been screaming for decades about the polluting effects of mountaintop removal, mostly to deaf ears.

Conveniently, Alexander has a bill that would do just that. The legislation, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), would redefine mining waste as a pollutant, thus barring companies from dumping debris into valleys below their mountaintop projects. The idea is that if it becomes too expensive to truck the debris off-site, then companies will stop blowing up mountains altogether.

“The new EPA guidelines are useful in stopping some inappropriate coal mining in Appalachia but Congress still needs to pass the Cardin-Alexander legislation that would effectively end mountaintop removal mining,” Alexander said in a statement issued Thursday. “By mountaintop removal, we mean blowing the tops off of mountains and dumping the waste in streams.”

Such statements put Alexander at odds with a number of Appalachian lawmakers, who view any new environmental protections in coal country as a threat to jobs in the region. But there’s good reason why Alexander has adopted his position. Tennessee is home to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, by far the most visited national park in the country. Last year, nearly 9.5 million people visited the Great Smoky, compared to 4.3 million visitors to the Grand Canyon, which ranks second.

Considering those tourism numbers, Tennessee’s lawmakers have no interest in wrecking the same mountains that are drawing those people in. Indeed, they’ve discovered a way to create sustainable local jobs without poisoning their waters and communities.

“Coal is an essential part of our energy future,” Alexander said, ”but it is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal to meet our needs.”

The Spruce No. 1 Mine — a 2,300-acre behemoth in southern West Virginia — was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007. But environmentalists quickly filed suit to block the project, which would fill six Appalachian valleys with 110 cubic yards of mining waste, burying seven miles of headwater streams in the process.

Under an agreement with the environmentalist plaintiffs, mining in one section of Spruce No. 1 was allowed to proceed despite the suit. That section — in the Seng Camp Creek drainage area — involves filling one valley.

EPA’s decision today doesn’t affect that agreement or block current mining around Seng Camp Creek, an agency spokesperson said today.

EPA will publish its proposed restrictions in the Federal Register April 2. The public will then have 60 days to comment on the changes.

A mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia (Rick Eglinton/Toronto Star/ZUMA Press)

In a show that the Obama administration is serious about putting the teeth back into the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency today jump-started a process that could kill one of the largest mountaintop coal mining operations ever allowed in Appalachia. The decision — which is already being attacked by powerful coal-country Democrats — marks the first time in the EPA’s history that it has invoked its CWA authority to question the legitimacy of a permitted project.

[Environment1]Mountaintop removal refers to the process of blowing the tops off of mountains to uncover the seams of coal inside. The soil, rock, trees and other debris are then pushed into adjacent valleys, often burying tiny streams representing the headwaters of larger rivers below.

West Virginia’s Spruce No. 1 Mine, approved under the Bush administration, would devour 2,278 acres of wooded mountains in southern Logan County. The operation would fill six Appalachian valleys with 110 million cubic yards of debris, burying more than seven miles of headwater streams over the next 15 years.

Most of the project has been stalled in recent years by a series of lawsuits filed by community activists. But the EPA under the Obama administration has also taken a great interest in the project. Today they took that interest a step further, issuing a “proposed determination” that could lead to restrictions on the extent of the mining — or a veto of the permit altogether.

Among the EPA’s concerns surrounding Spruce No. 1, officials said the mine “will cause adverse impacts to drinking water, native aquatic and water-dependent communities in the Spruce Fork watershed.” Runoff from the project is likely to include selenium and other pollutants, which will “adversely affect the naturally occurring aquatic communities.” All told, the mine will result in “the cumulative loss of water quality, aquatic systems, and forest resources.”

That the EPA has the authority to stop such a project is not in question. The Clean Water Act empowers the agency to restrict or prevent dumping when the debris “will have an unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas (including spawning and breeding areas), wildlife, or recreational areas.” But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and EPA officials under the Bush administration spent eight years looking the other way as permit after permit was approved for mountaintop removal mines.

The reason is clear. The coal industry is a juggernaut of influence on Capitol Hill. And its defenders were quick on Friday to blast the EPA’s intervention as a threat to jobs in one of the most destitute nooks of the country. The National Mining Association, for example, argued that the EPA’s decision “adds further uncertainty for jobs and economic security throughout Appalachia.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) weighed in as well, calling it “wrong and unfair for the EPA to change the rules for a permit that is already active.”

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee who represents Logan County, agreed, calling the EPA’s move “an unprecedented, unjustified and undeserved decision.”

“The owners of the Spruce Mine worked in good faith over the course of many years with State and Federal permitting agencies, including the EPA, and the permit was issued after the conclusion of a full environmental impact statement,” Rahall said. “To come back now and pull the rug out from under this mining operation is unconscionable.”

He’s right about one thing; the move is unprecedented. Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers makes most permit decisions, but the EPA can step in to delay pending permits — or veto existing ones — if the agency has reason to believe the disposal sites will harm water supplies or ecosystems. EPA has used its CWA veto authority just 12 times since 1972, the agency claims, and never before has it done so for a project that was already permitted.

EPA officials defended their decision Friday, arguing that the agency is simply fulfilling its obligations under the CWA. “We must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution — and the damage from this project would be irreversible,” Shawn Garvin , EPA regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said in a statement. “EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

Environmentalists were quick to throw their support behind the move as well. Ed Hopkins, director of environmental quality at the Sierra Club, said the news is indication that evidence-based decision-making is returning to the EPA after eight years in the wilderness under the Bush administration. “The best available science tells us that proposed mines like the massive Spruce Mine would pollute waterways, destroy mountains and devastate communities,” Hopkins said in a statement.

The EPA’s proposed determination will be published in the Federal Register on April 2, with a 60-day public comment period to follow.

“We hope that the agency follows through on this recommendation,” Hopkins said.

Via Twitter, Jackson acknowledged the protesters:

“People are here today expressing views on MTM, a critical issue to our country,” she said. “Theyre concerned abt human health & water quality & so am I.”

In the eyes of community activist Jeff Biggers, that ain’t enough. “Not one — count ‘em — of Jackson’s top officials in DC or herself have made any effort to actually visit a mountaintop removal site before making life-threatening decisions,” Biggers wrote today at the Huffington Post.

Considering what’s at stake, it’s difficult to argue that he doesn’t have a point.

The Federal Government is standing between the American people and their use of their natural resources. It is time to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency [and] return those responsibilities to the states.

In Kentucky, of course, the environmental debate doesn’t exist outside the context of coal. And for the record, Johnson wants it to be known that he supports “all forms” of coal extraction, including mountaintop removal, where companies blast the peaks off of the Appalachians and push the debris into nearby streams. That process is popular among coal companies because it reduces labor and hauling costs. But for those living nearby, the deterioration of air and water quality is another thing altogether. Many locals are pushing back against the centuries-old trend of Big Coal decimating Appalachian communities.

Not Johnson. The self-described Reagan Republican argues that “any” further restrictions on coal companies “would decimate jobs in Kentucky and drive up energy costs for nearly every person.”

It’s an odd argument from conservatives that the best way to prosperity is to allow the wholesale rape of the land by companies that (1) are constantly searching for ways to shed laborers, and (2) are fighting to extend the nation’s reliance on the same fossil fuels contributing most to climate change. Though in the case of Johnson, the argument hardly comes as a surprise.

“The earth,” he says, “is actually in a cooling cycle.”

A mountaintop mine in West Virginia (Rick Eglinton/Toronto Star/ZUMA Press)

Most of us take it for granted that when we flip the switch, the lights will go on. Sure, we write the electric company a monthly check, but otherwise lend no thought to the source of the power — like urban kids clueless that chicken originates someplace other than the freezer aisle of chain groceries.

But this month, an energetic author from the rugged, coal-laden hills of southern Illinois hopes to relay the message — utterly apropos in a country where coal generates nearly half the electricity — that a consequence of that national dependence is the outright decimation of the communities surrounding the mines.

[Environment1]Jeff Biggers, a civil rights activist and cultural historian, watched helplessly a dozen years ago as the hollows of Eagle Creek, Illinois — a corner of the Shawnee National Forest and his family’s home for roughly 200 years — were blasted away, the forested hills bulldozed under by companies intent on harvesting the lucrative coal seams beneath — a scene from Avatar playing out in real time.

“They’ve strip-mined your heritage,” Biggers’ uncle told him at the time.

The tragic episode launched Biggers on a decade-long examination of the history of the coal industry’s impact on local communities — not only the environmental imprint, but the effects on culture, health and family history as well. The result is “Reckoning at Eagle Creek — The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland,” released last week, in which Biggers describes the industry’s utter disregard for everything standing between it and the coal it wants out of the ground. It’s an apt study as the Obama administration advances its “clean coal” agenda.

“The old pond, the four plum trees, the sorghum and cornfields, the garden, the barn, and the one-hundred-fifty-year-old log cabin were buried in a crater formed before the Paleozoic era,” Biggers writes of his family’s experience with strip mining. “But it wasn’t just our family history. It also included a thousand years of bones of the first natives in the region, the modern Shawnee encampments and farms, the pioneering squatters and homesteaders in our family, and the slave and coal miners in one of the first settlements in the nation’s heartland — all of which had been churned into dust in the race to strip-mine the area.”

All told, the miners hauled an estimated 960,000 tons of coal from his family’s property and the adjacent plots — “enough electricity to supply American demands for approximately four and a half hours,” Biggers writes. “That was the choice we made.”

The book isn’t all. Biggers has also adapted the story for the stage, taking the two-man show — “The Saudi Arabia of Coal” — on a 22-city tour that arrives this week at Busboys and Poets in Washington.** The story — about a strip miner and his wife faced with losing their home to the very project providing their income — features Biggers and Stephanie Pistello, a community organizer with Appalachian Voices, a North Carolina-based environmental group. Both are products of Appalachia; both are grandchildren of coal miners. The driving force behind the play, Biggers said in a phone interview last week, was simple: “How do we bring strip mining to people who have never seen it?”

It’s a timely story. For all the scientific warnings about the warming effects of coal combustion, the White House continues to view the fossil fuel as central to the nation’s energy future. Indeed, President Obama last week announced the creation of a new “carbon capture” task force charged with developing new “clean coal” technologies. The administration hopes to have between five and 10 new commercial facilities featuring these advancements up and running by 2016.

“Even if you disagree on the threat posed by climate change,” Obama said, “investing in clean energy jobs and businesses is still the right thing to do for our economy.”

Obama was referring to coal processing, not extraction. But the first, of course, depends on the second. And in the eyes of a growing number of environmentalists and human rights advocates, the administration’s alacrity to embrace coal — combined with the mixed signals from the Environmental Protection Agency on mining permits — likely means that coal communities will remain vulnerable to the ravages of strip mining for many years to come.

“We see this as a criminal activity,” Biggers said. “And if you recognize there’s criminal activity taking place, how can you minimize it [instead of banning it]? It’s their mentality that they can regulate this crime.”

Human rights activists are hoping that Congress will step in to eliminate the most destructive forms of strip mining, a method featuring the removal of all materials (rock, soil, trees, etc.) resting on top of the coal. (That contrasts with underground mining, in which tunneling allows the overlying land to remain intact.) Of particular concern in Appalachia is one type of strip mining, known as mountaintop removal, in which the peaks of mountains are blasted away and the debris pushed into adjacent valleys, many of which contain tiny streams representing the headwaters of much larger rivers below. Bipartisan bills introduced in both the Senate and the House would end mountaintop removal by prohibiting such dumping into active streams. There appears, however, to be little congressional appetite to challenge the powerful mining industry in a tough election year when unemployment remains near double digits.

“My miners and the folks who are working and those who are unemployed are very concerned about some of your policies,” West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) told Obama last month, referring in part to the EPA’s denial of some mountaintop permits. “In our minds, these are job-killing policies.”

At a much-watched debate on mountaintop mining in Charleston, W.Va., last month, Don Blankenship, president of Virginia-based Massey Energy, echoed Capito’s concerns. “The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country,” Blankenship said. “This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

The adverse health effects associated with coal mining have, of course, been known for decades. Biggers’ grandfather was among the tens of thousands of miners to die of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease. Though the cases of black lung are down considerably relative to historic highs, more than 10,000 American miners died of the disease in the last decade alone.

But health problems are only one part of coal’s dubious legacy, critics argue. Coal communities also suffer from poisoned streams, the noise pollution associated with blasting and the barrage of heavy machinery constantly lumbering along local streets. In short, they just aren’t great places to live.

“Over 1,200 miles of waterways had been sullied and jammed with mining fill,” Biggers writes of mountaintop mining’s effect on Appalachia. “Blasting and coal dust had made life unbearable for anyone in the strip-mined areas. Wells had been busted and polluted with toxic waste. … The history was clear: Coal was not cheap, and coal was not clean.”

Backing that argument, Forbes magazine last November deemed West Virginia — the second largest coal-producing state and a hot-bed of mountaintop removal sites — the worst state in the country to live, ranking it 50th in “well being,” “life evaluation,” and physical and emotional health. That’s no coincidence, says Biggers, contending that the tactics employed by the coal industry all but ensure that coal communities will be one-industry towns.

“As long as they keep those communities poor, they can continue to plunder Appalachia,” he said.

For all the wealth that Appalachia’s coal beds have brought to coal executives and corporate shareholders, the money isn’t exactly trickling down to local communities. Indeed, West Virginia ranks 49th in the country in per capita wages, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, with a median household income of $37,989 — well below the national median of $52,029. Only Mississippi families fare worse.

Coal critics say that the message is beginning to sink in among residents of coal towns. Although recent protests have featured the arrests of such prominent figures as actress Daryl Hannah and climate scientist James Hansen, Biggers says the backlash against strip mining is being led by locals fed up with seeing their communities decimated. “We’re all children and grandchildren of coal miners,” he said. “The only people defending coal companies are on their payroll.”

This charge could extend to Capitol Hill, where coal-country lawmakers — backed by considerable donations from the giants of the coal industry — have built careers defending those companies, usually in the name of creating jobs for their constituents.

It’s an argument, critics maintain, designed simply to insulate the industry from stricter regulations on tactics like mountaintop removal, which actually rely more on dynamite and heavy machinery than they do manual labor. Indeed, while U.S. coal production is at an all-time high, the number of mining jobs has dropped off considerably in recent decades. Just 25 years ago, coal mining employed more than 169,000 workers, according to the Energy Information Administration. In 2006, the figure had fallen below 83,000.

“If mountaintop removal disappeared tomorrow we would start creating jobs,” Biggers said, advocating for more sustainable projects. Community groups, for example, are hoping to thwart Massey’s plans to level West Virginia’s Coal River Mountain, pushing instead for a wind farm they say will sustain more jobs and bring in more tax revenue for the state — all without destroying one of the oldest mountains in the country.

Yet Biggers is also aware that numbers and statistics, whatever secrets they might reveal, can never be as persuasive as real stories of human suffering in the face of privation. His play, he hopes, will bring that tale — his tale — to audiences sitting hundreds, even thousands of miles from coal country.

“We all relate to the human story,” Biggers said. “We all relate to a sense of loss. Hopefully, this can change more minds than all the statistics I could rattle off.”

At the very least, he’s provided something to think about the next time we flip on the lights.

“The Saudi Arabia of Coal” will be at Busboys and Poets in Washington on Wednesday, Feb. 10, starting at 9 p.m. Afterward, the show will move to Pittsburgh (Feb. 11) and New York City (Feb. 27) before moving on to the West coast.

**Update: Both Wednesday’s performance in Washington and Thursday’s show in Pittsburgh have been canceled due to the snowstorm currently ravaging D.C. Check here for other cities and dates.

“The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country,” Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. “This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.”

He has a point: Coal is cheap, and more than 50 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated from it. But the critics aren’t arguing against the importance of coal, they’re arguing against the destructive method by which the industry is harvesting it in Appalachia. And those are two different things.

The Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. has been following this topic for years, and has the debate rundown here and here. (And for real devotees, West Virginia Public Broadcasting has the full audio here.)

For those unfamiliar with mountaintop removal, the gist of the issue is this: Coal companies have learned that they can save time and money by blowing the tops off of the Appalachian Mountains — the oldest range in the country and among the oldest in the world — in order to reach the seams of coal contained inside. The heavy machinery used in the process means that the companies need fewer laborers; and lax enforcement of environmental laws, both federal and state, has allowed companies to dump the waste into adjacent stream valleys, which saves the cost of trucking it to more distant dumping sites. That the process violates the Clean Water Act has been no problem in the eyes of West Virginia’s powerful Democrats.

The industry argues that this process creates much needed jobs in a downtrodden part of the country — ignoring the inconvenient fact that harvesting the coal by other methods would create even more jobs. Environmentalists, for their part, say that mountaintop removal comes at the too-high cost of poisoning waterways, contaminating air, killing off wildlife and flooding nearby homes.

“This is the worst environmental crime that has ever happened in our history,” Kennedy said. “These companies are liquidating this state for cash with these gigantic machines.”

The 90-minute debate wasn’t going to change any minds among the hundreds of miners and environmentalists in attendance. But as ABC News accurately noted, “the real audience extends far beyond West Virginia and central Appalachia; it’s the millions of Americans who don’t know a strip mine from a slurry impoundment, but whose anger or acceptance of mountaintop mining could tip the political balance one way or the other.”

Indeed, the more exposure this issue gets, the tougher it will be for Washington lawmakers to accept the decimation of the country’s oldest mountain range.