March 26, 2012 - 7:52 am
The Environmental Protection Agency has taken another defeat in court:
A federal judge says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency exceeded its authority in revoking permits for what could now become West Virginia‘s largest mountaintop removal mine.
In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of St. Louis-based Arch.
She declares a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers water pollution permit for the Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County is “valid and in full force.”
Arch spokeswoman Kim Link says the company is pleased with the decision.
The EPA had overruled the Army Corps of Engineers in January 2011. Last week, the EPA lost another major battle in the Supreme Court.
Even if the EPA can’t be eliminated, maybe it will die the death of a thousand cuts.
As much as one loves to see the EPA lose another one, there’s no reason to celebrate mountaintop mining. Even so prominent a critic of “green” energy as Robert Bryce (“Power Hungry”), who acknowledges the importance of coal in energy production, thinks such mining should be banned for the environmental damage that results. Do we really want to see the mountains of Appalachia leveled just because its simpler and cheaper than dropping mine-shafts?
You can see the mountains of Appalachia from DC?
Do we really want to see the malarial swamps of southern Maryland drained, just so you can have a place to live?
You’re a liberal, aren’t you?
Only a liberal would extrapolate One Mine into the Entire Appelachian Range.
Only a liberal would ignore the safety factor for those extracting the coal (No Blood for Coal?) over the mineshaft method.
Only a liberal would ignore the fact that strip mining only works in certain locations and not others.
Only a liberal would portray themselves as a “Reasonable Conservative” person while lying through their teeth!