W.Va. mining fight tests EPA’s regulatory resolve

On Inauguration Day, the EPA began a crackdown on “mountaintop’’ coal mines. The agency has scrutinized about 175 proposed mines, where peaks would be blasted off and valleys filled in with the rubble. It has signed off on only 48.

EPA officials said they’re just following the law. That, they said, means keeping pollutants out of the watershed.

But to many people in Appalachia, the orders coming out of Washington have appeared contradictory and mysterious. Environmentalists are unhappy because they fear federal officials are losing their nerve to take on the powerful coal industry. And the coal industry is unhappy because it thinks the administration is on the brink of giving in to the green crowd.

The EPA finds itself in the middle of the most bitter fight in America today, facing an early test of its resolve and political skills. The agency appears certain to bear much of the weight of carrying out Obama’s historic environmental agenda.

The latest sign of that fear came recently in an auditorium at the University of Charleston. A debate between a coal company chief executive and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which attracted more than 1,000 people split between the two sides, had tight security.

“The current EPA, which won’t give a permit for anything for any reason . . . they’re the ones that’s going to cost people their jobs and weaken homeland security,’’ said Don Blankenship, chairman and chief executive of Richmond, Va.-based Massey Energy, a major player in mountaintop mining. In the audience, coal miners cheered.

Mountaintop mining, also called “mountaintop removal,’’ is an exclusively Appalachian practice that has gained momentum in the past 20 years. To get at coal seams that are too thin or too close to the surface to reach by tunneling, miners use explosives and huge machinery to remove the peak above the coal.

In most cases, the law requires companies to rebuild the mountain to its original shape. But leftover rubble is usually left in nearby valleys. There, scientists say, rainwater seeps over rocks that had previously been far underground. That can release trace amounts of salt and toxic metals.

EPA officials said they are not out to stamp out mountaintop mining altogether - recently they approved a West Virginia mine permit after the company promised changes to reduce its effect on streams by nearly 50 percent. But to many environmentalists and coal-industry leaders, the EPA’s actions have seemed erratic.