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This article originally provided by
The Charleston Gazette
By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A Fayette County strip mine that has
repeatedly exceeded water pollution limits and not fixed other
violations should not have its permit renewed, citizen groups say in
an appeal to the state Surface Mine Board.
Lawyers for the Ansted Historical Preservation Council and the
Sierra Club said they were challenging the state Department of
Environmental Protection's renewal of the permit for CONSOL Energy's
Powellton Coal subsidiary's Bridge Fork West Surface Mine.
The 465-acre operation is located between the Gauley and New rivers,
north of Ansted and Gauley Bridge.
"This permit renewal would lead to pollution of our famed rivers,
more blasting and air pollution, and more damage to our tourism
industry, so we firmly oppose this renewal," said Father Roy Gene
Crist, president of the Ansted Historical Preservation Council.
DEP spokeswoman Kathy Cosco declined comment.
Tom Hoffman, spokesman for CONSOL, said the company believes the
permit was appropriately renewed and would "defend the validity of
the permit."
In February, more than 100 people turned out for a DEP public
hearing on the proposed permit renewal. No one spoke in favor of the
renewal.
Among those who have opposed the permit renewal is the National
Park Service, which wrote a
letter to DEP complaining that "extensive violations" of water
pollution limits by the mine "causes us great concern for potential
threats" to the New River Gorge National River and the Gauley River
National Recreation Area.
Citizen groups noted that coal operators are not guaranteed to
receive five-year renewals of mining permits. Such renewals must be
denied, the groups said, if companies are not complying with those
permits or have unabated violations on record.
In their
appeal notice, they note that the Bridge Fork mine "is
responsible for nearly 2,500 days of" water pollution violations
since February 2007, with one-quarter of those violations occurring
in November and December 2008, after the permit renewal application
was filed.
Citizen groups also noted that the mine has two unabated
violations on record.
One violation was cited when the company did not follow its
agency-approved mine sequence map, putting pollution outfalls in the
wrong locations and not keeping its reclamation up to date.
The other violation cited the company for mining outside its
permitted area, and allowing waste rock and dirt to slide off that
permitted area.
"The region in which Powellton's mine is located is one of West
Virginia's tourism gems, and the New and the Gauley are the premier
whitewater rafting rivers in the East," wrote citizen group lawyers
Derek Teaney and Joe Lovett.
"Yet Powellton treats the streams and lands surrounding its
permit areas as dumping grounds for the waste from its mines."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at
kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
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