Republicans and big-bizmos are blowing their tops, now that they’ve been denied permission to do the same to West Virginia. “Agency Revokes Permit for Major Coal Mining Project.”

The boldness of the E.P.A.’s action was striking at a time when the agency faces an increasingly hostile Congress and well-financed business lobbies seeking to limit its regulatory reach. Agency officials said that the coal company was welcome to resubmit a less damaging mining plan, but that law and science demanded the veto of the existing plan.

Environmentalists welcomed Thursday’s decision. But the mining company and politicians in West Virginia expressed fury, saying the action was an unprecedented federal intrusion, an economic catastrophe for the state and a dangerous precedent for all regulated industries.

The project would have involved dynamiting the tops off mountains over an area of 2,278 acres to get at the rich coal deposits beneath. The resulting rubble, known as spoil, would be dumped into nearby valleys, as well as the Pigeonroost Branch, the Oldhouse Branch and their tributaries, killing fish, salamanders and other wildlife. The agency said that disposal of the mining material would also pollute the streams and endanger human health and the environment downstream.

We hope that Jonathan Franzen will issue a statement. (In the form of a New Yorker essay.)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 10:30 am.