The EPA, Science and Mountaintop Mining

As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emerges from a dark eight years under the Bush administration, it is consciously and relatively successfully trying to base its decisions on science. That is why its decision last week to not object to a permit for a mountaintop mine in West Virginia seems so odd now.

A comprehensive study in Friday's issue of the journal Science points to a striking lack of attention to the science in the agency's handling of mountaintop mining practices in Appalachia.

The study, by 12 hydrologists, ecologists and engineers, concludes that "mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses."

The EPA has been trying to strike a compromise when it comes to regulating mountaintop mining, but the scientists say their findings clearly show there is no middle ground that does not permanently damage the health of the region's environment and communities.

"The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop mining is strong and irrefutable," says lead author Margaret Palmer. "Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes."

During mountaintop mining, coal mining companies strip away native forests then blast the bare mountaintops, cutting through hundreds of feet of rock to reach buried coal seams.

The dynamited rock, soil and unearthed heavy metals, collectively called "spoil" or “overburden,” is dumped into adjacent valleys, often burying streams that wildlife and area residents depend on. Toxins and dust from those mined sites have been blamed for health problems including birth defects and chronic heart and lung diseases. In fact, a recent study by Physicians for Social Responsibility found coal was damaging human health throughout its lifecycle.

While mining companies argue that they take measures to mitigate damage to the mountain ecosystems, the scientists found that the water filtered through these filled-in valleys contains sulfates that can be toxic to wildlife, bio-accumulate in larger species and be carried great distances by the streams.

The scientists says efforts by mining companies to restore these mined mountaintops are doomed to failure. No "restored" streams have recovered their former biodiversity, they say.

"Notwithstanding recent attempts to improve reclamation, the immense scale of mountaintop mining makes it unrealistic to think that true restoration or mitigation is possible with current techniques," says co-author Keith Eshleman.

Hobet 45

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has repeatedly said that her agency will base its decisions on “the best available science,” but the EPA’s decision last week to support the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issuing a Clean Water Act permit for the Hobet 45 mine flies in the face of the latest science.

The mine's operator, Patriot Coal, agreed to cut the impact its operations would have on streams by half — from burying six miles of stream to burying three. The EPA says this meets Clean Water Act requirements. The Science study, published two days later but already being discussed, calls that into question.

"If the Obama administration is serious about science driving policy, then this report should be the nail in the coffin that prompts the administration to issue new Clean Water Act regulations that prohibit the dumping of mining waste into streams,” said the Sierra Club's environmental quality program director, Ed Hopkins.

Regulating Mountaintop Mining

Coal releases more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy produced than any other fossil fuel, but it also provides more than half the United States’ electricity supply. Mountaintop mining, a practice that has grown throughout the past 30 years, now supplies about 10 percent of U.S. coal.