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Bluefield Daily Telegraph
“When there is a level of uncertainty like there has been during President Barack Obama's administration, coal companies are uncertain about investing in a coal mining operation. When a federal agency like the EPA can revoke a coal mining permit that ...
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The Spruce No. 1 coal mine case is a welcome crimp in federal power
In 2007, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit that authorized Mingo Logan Coal Co., a subsidiary of Arch Coal, to dump material from its Spruce No. 1 coal mine into nearby streams.
The company needed the permit to expand the mine.
The mine eventually would have led to the employment of 250 people and the production over 15 years of about 44 million tons of coal.
But when the Obama administration took office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asserted the power to review such permits, and in 2011 revoked the Spruce No.1 permit.
This was unprecedented. Never before had the agency retroactively revoked a permit the Corps had granted.
The company sued and on Friday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., an Obama appointee, ruled the EPA had overstepped its bounds.
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CHARLESTON -- Friday’s decision in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia taking EPA to task for overstepping its authority with its veto of the Spruce Mine permit in Logan is a victory for the West Virginia’s 63,000 coal mining families.
“It is clear that Friday’s decision was a victory, but the bigger fight remains,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “We have to bring an end, once and for all to the EPA’s regulatory war against the West Virginia’s hard working coal miners. We applaud the decision because it supports our assertion that the EPA is an out-of-control agency single-handedly destroying tens of thousands of jobs across the country and thousands of jobs right here in West Virginia. We hope that Congress, specifically the U.S. Senate, will take note of this decision as well and take action on H.R. 2018, the “Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act” (co-sponsored by Congressman Rahall and passed by the House in July 2011) to return appropriate balance on EPA’s relationship with other federal agencies.”
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The WV Coal Mining Institute, the WVCA and the Central Appalachian Section of SME will be held at the Stonewall Jackson Resort May 3-5, 2012.
Registration information was sent out previously via e-mail with detailed information. If you did not receive please let us know and it will be resent.
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The West Virginia Eleventh Annual CEDAR Golf Classic will be held on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at the Twisted Gun Golf Course in Wharncliffe, West Virginia. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. with golf beginning at 10 a.m. promptly. Contact Bud Clapp at
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