Anywhere else this would be amazingly unbelievable- that the Director of the state's primary environmental protection agency does not realize that water quality is affected by virtually everything that happens on and under the natural surfaces of the land- whether MTR mining, oil and gas well drilling, road construction, or other industrial activities.
DEP Director Randy Huffman must have gotten his environmental degree through a Sears catalog, April fool's day edition.
Frank
----- Original Message ----- From: Vernon Haltom To: FOM, List Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 10:43 AM Subject: [fom] WVDEP says EPA lies
Of course the WV DEP is left out. They're completely useless at best, corrupt at worst.
http://www.register-herald.com/todaysfrontpage/x1765871159/DEP-secretary-tel... March 3, 2010 DEP secretary tells senators EPA is ignoring state By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter
CHARLESTON — West Virginia’s environmental troubleshooter says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is using the Clean Water Act to go after coal production and other industrial works.
Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman complained Wednesday that the EPA has moved the debate from mountaintop removal to clean water, a tactic that could affect all resource industries.
“This debate is not any longer about mountaintop mining,” he told the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee.
“It’s about water quality. It does relate to surface mining, but it relates to underground mining, other types of mining and other types of industrial activity. The driver is water quality and it affects everything we do.”
Huffman pointed out the EPA’s letter opposing the Buffalo Mining plan — one that affects the King Coal Highway — was sent on President Obama’s inauguration day of Jan. 20 of last year.
Huffman said an EPA leader “told me with a straight face the timing was purely coincidental.”
“I did not believe him,” he said, emphasizing the key role the mining permit plays as a connector between King Coal and Corridor G.
“Losing that piece would be a significant loss to the state,” Huffman said.
The letter detailed issues that had never been raised to the DEP, the secretary said.
“But all of a sudden, it became a crisis as of Jan. 20, 2009,” he said.
A year ago, mountaintop mining was the target, but that debate has since disappeared, he said.
Rather, the focus is now on clean water, and in all the discussions that ensued, Huffman said, the DEP has been left out of the loop.
“When they talked to us, they still have not asked for our opinion on how this water quality definition is to be formulated,” he said.
“That’s troubling, but not surprising.”
Consequently, he said, the “sudden change of direction” at the federal level has stalled a number of mining applications.
While the state is being ignored in the process, Huffman said, legislators and others need to keep in mind that 80 percent of the permitting for every lump of coal is performed at the state level.
What’s more, he said, even the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is being omitted from the process.
Huffman pointed to the Spruce Knob permit approved in January 2007 as “the most scrutinized surface mining permit in Appalachian history.”
Two years after the permit was approved, the EPA raised objections and has intentions of quashing it, he said.
“In the 40-year history of the Clean Water Act, the EPA has only vetoed a dozen 404 (valley fill) permits nationwide,” Huffman said.
“We have dozens of permits that are hanging under the threat of veto right now if significant changes are not made by the companies.”
In four to six weeks, Huffman said he hopes the DEP can produce a narrative standard to comply with the federal law.
“Our biggest mistake we have made and it’s the hook EPA has in our back as a state is we do not have a protocol for enforcing the narrative water quality standard,” he said.
“We’re going to do that. I know enough about what the problem is, what the real impacts are.”— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com