New Court Decision Spells the Disaster for Appalachia and the Region's Drinking Water

By Bruce Nilles, Sierra Club. Posted February 17, 2009.

A panel of federal judges ruled in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a controversial mountaintop removal mining case. This could open the floodgates on up to 90 new mountaintop removal coal mining operations that had been stalled until now in the permitting process, and which threaten to destroy huge swaths of the Appalachian Mountains. The ruling will permit mining companies to conduct devastating mountaintop removal coal mining operations without acting to minimize stream destruction or conducting adequate environmental reviews. 

These mining discharges will reach downstream water sources and poison everyone’s water – not just those residents near the mines.

Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment filed this lawsuit challenging several West Virginia mountaintop removal permits in September 2005, on behalf of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in March 2007 found those permits violated the Clean Water Act. This ruling overturns that prior victory for Appalachia’s mountains and communities.

One thing is clear in the wake of today’s decision – we must redouble our efforts to protect Appalachia.

Please join us in contacting the Obama Administration at this critical time, to make sure this decision does not unleash a wave of devastation on Appalachia’s communities. President Obama’s EPA has the power to restore mountaintop removal regulations that were gutted by the Bush Administration, essential if we hope to sustain the rivers, mountains, and communities of Appalachia.

One of the mountains threatened by this decision is Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, where Massey Energy has proposed a 6,000-acre mountaintop removal mine, one of the biggest mountains ever slated for mountaintop removal.

The Coal River Wind Project, Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) and many other organizations have been fighting Massey over the project -- saying that the beautiful Appalachian mountain would offer much more for energy, the local economy, and the environment if it instead was used as a site for wind turbines.

Massey's plan is to blow up the top of the mountain to get at the coal, ruining the site for any future wind power use, not to mention nearby communities, clean water, and wildlife.

On Tuesday, the West Virginia Surface Mining Board held another hearing on the site's blasting permit,
and our coalition turned out strong, providing great witnesses on the permitting process and the better benefits of wind power on that site.

See more stories tagged with: water, coal, wind, coal mining, mtr, water pollution, coal river

Bruce Nilles is the director of the Sierra Club's Move Beyond Coal campaign.

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