Permit switch, secrecy ended mine challenge

[acmavm]

May 27, 2007

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

Two weeks ago, environmental activists Cindy Rank and Vivian Stockman took a drive through the Logan County hills with Paul Vining, the president of Magnum Coal.

From the top of a ridge, Rank and Stockman looked down through the trees, mountain laurel and flame azalea.

The stream that runs through Fitzwater Hollow was already buried, they saw. Workers from Magnum subsidiary Apogee Coal Co. had dumped a six-foot-thick layer of rocks into the valley. The damage was done.


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Business and labor groups wrote a newspaper piece attacking the “all-out assault on the economic and fiscal well-being of our state.” Apogee bought full-page newspaper ads to publicize a petition from its employees.

Miners and local politicians staged a rally, where Gov. Joe Manchin fanned the flames. The permit appeal “was the tip of the iceberg,” the governor said. Environmentalists are on a crusade that threatens “the security of this nation,” he said.

<snip>

Behind the ruckus is another story. Environmental groups want to more strictly regulate mountaintop removal. Some of them want to stop the practice altogether.

Their legal efforts are being thwarted by a federal agency’s secrecy, and — in this case — by a coal company’s strategy of shifting its permit requests to evade judicial review, according to court testimony and government records.

-LOTS MORE-

This is a drag. On one side it pits the people who make their living working for rich mine owners against people who are trying to preserve the environment in that area.

edit: http://www.wvgazette.com/section/News/2007052610