The message below is from the WV Highlands Conservancy. Consider sending a letter, and checking out the link to an alternative energy blog at the end of the message. -Linda
West Virginia Highlands Conservancy www.wvhighlands.org
In 1997 Jimmy Weekly walked into Joe Lovett’’s law office and asked
for help to fight a 3,000 acre (~5 square miles) mountaintop removal coal mine planned for the hollow where his family had lived for decades. Spruce #1 was to be a continuation of the nearly 9,000 acre Dal-Tex mine that had already destroyed the community of Blair on the other side of Rt 17 in Logan County.
The mountains surrounding the Weekly home would be blasted apart
and Pigeonroost Branch would be filled from its beginning high in the hills for over a mile on down to within spitting distance of Jim and Sibbey Weekly’’s home.
WV Highlands Conservancy joined the Weeklys and
five other families whose homes were threatened by other similar mining proposals in the lawsuit titled Bragg v Robertson. Ruling on part of that litigation in 1998, Judge Charles Haden found that the 3,000 acre mine in Pigeonroost hollow would cause significant irreversible damage and that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) would be necessary before the large fills of the Spruce #1 mine
could be allowed.
The final EIS has been released and comments are due by
November 22, 2006. Talking points are below. Send your comments to Mrs. Teresa Spagna, Regulatory Project Manager, U.S.Army Corps of Engineers, 502 8th St., Huntington, WV 25701 or email to Teresa.D.Spagna@lrh01.usace.army.mil
Mingo Logan Spruce No. 1 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS):
Talking Points
The Mine: Mingo Logan, Spruce No 1 Mine, six valley fills with permanent discharge of fill material into approximately 36,814 linear feet of intermittent and ephemeral jurisdictional streams (i.e. approx. 7 miles) and .12 acres of wetlands. The project will also have terrestrial impacts of 2,278 acres or 3.55 square miles. The proposed project is located in the Spruce Fork watershed of the
Little Coal River near Blair in Logan County, West Virginia.
Talking points:
· The Corps has issued a final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on this mine. Under NEPA, the Corps’’ EIS must consider all past, present and future direct and indirect environmental harms of a proposed action. Under the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Corps cannot issue a 404 permit if it would cause significant degradation of the environment.
· The Corps’’ entire rationale for finding no significant environmental degradation hinges on its claim that, even though Spruce Mine No. 1 would bury seven miles of streams, those losses are offset by environmental gains due to compensatory mitigation.
· That rationale is both dishonest and unscientific.
· The company’’s mitigation plan is based on a phony stream assessment method that the company made up and that, according to the Corps’’ own regulatory chief, is “not scientifically defensible.”
· Contrary to CWA requirements, the Corps has no other approved method for assessing and mitigating the biological, chemical and physical functions of buried streams.
· Despite the absence of any functional assessment method, the Corps claims that the mitigation plan has a “high” chance of success.
· That claim of mitigation success is unfounded, since the Corps itself admits that functioning headwater streams have never been created successfully anywhere in the country.
· The mitigation plan would also trade minor enhancements of a different stream (e.g. bank stabilization) for total destruction of headwater streams, even though there is no scientific evidence that this enhancement will compensate fully for the functions of the lost streams.
· The Corps requires no meaningful long-term monitoring to ensure that mitigation will actually work as planned.
· Cumulatively, past and planned mines and valley fills in the Spruce Fork watershed cover 35.5% of total stream length and an alarming 44% of first order stream length. In the entire Coal River watershed (of which Spruce Fork is a part), past and planned mines
and > valley fills conservatively cover 11.5% of total streams and 14.9% of first order streams. Although the Corps claims that this cumulative
devastation is insignificant, expert stream biologists believe that
it is very significant and alarming.
· The Corps has ignored the information it collected in preparing the October 2005 Mountaintop Removal Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). That information also demonstrates that the cumulative impacts of past and present mining are significant.
· The Corps fails to evaluate adequately the harmful effects of selenium contamination on streams and aquatic life, even though the Mountaintop Removal PEIS identified the Spruce mine area as a selenium hot spot.
· The Corps does not independently evaluate the risk of flooding and ignores information in the Mountaintop EIS that says flooding risk is increased at mining sites.
· The Corps erroneously claims that reforestation at mining sites has been successful despite the fact that experts say restoration of forests to former productivity under current generally used planting protocols does not occur at all and that even less desirable forests will take more than a hundred years to develop if they develop at all.
· The Corps fails to consider significant and irreparable impacts on the citizens living in the area including flooding, danger from coal trucks, traffic, dust, decline of property values, noise, blasting impacts, aesthetic loss and community disruption.
Conclusion
The Corps’’ FEIS for the Mingo Logan Spruce No. 1 Mine does not
comply > with the NEPA or the CWA. Over and over again the Corps has made unsubstantiated claims minimizing the individual and cumulative
damages from MTR and embellishing the benefits of the planned mitigation. If the Corps had thoughtfully used prevailing science to evaluate the project, it would have to conclude that significant harm to the environment and communities has already occurred and the proposal will add to the devastation. Thus, because the FEIS is flawed the only alternative is for the Corps to either deny the
permit or to extensively reevaluate the FEIS, the project, and the mitigation plan.
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, things aren't going to get better, they're not!" From The Lorax by Dr. Suess
What you do is of little significance; but it is very important that you do it. -Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
For The Mountains Julian Martin Vice-President for State Affairs West Virginia Highlands Conservancywww.wvhighlands.org 1525 Hampton Road, Charleston, WV 25314
Contact me(martinjul@aol.com) for a trip to Kayford Mountain to see
active and so-called reclaimed mountain top removal. Also contact me for I Love Mountains t-shirts, hats and bumper stickers(for pictures go to wvhighlands.org ) and for speakers, information and exhibits on environmental issues in West Virginia.
And check out these blogs on mountain top removal
http://www.clipfile.org/antrim/http://mtrinfo.wordpress.com
This one on alternative energy http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2006/10/clean-coal-or-dirty-coal.html
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Linda Shuster