It’s not every day that egg farmers and cattlemen rise to the defense of a mountain-top coal mine in West Virginia. But that’s what appears to be happening as the Obama administration nears a decision on the fate of the mine.
Nearly two dozen industry groups – including the National Realtors Association, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and, yes, the United Egg Producers – are urging the White House to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from yanking a water permit for a mountaintop-removal coal mining project in Logan County, West Virginia that would be one of the largest in Appalachia.
Why do those industries care about Arch Coal Inc.’s Spruce No. 1 mine? Because, like coal producers, their businesses require federal water permits.
If EPA pulls the permit, it would mark the first time in the agency’s 40-year history that it canceled a water permit after it was issued – a scary precedent in the groups’ eyes.
“The implications could be staggering, reaching all areas of the U.S. economy including but not limited to the agriculture, home building, mining, transportation and energy sectors,” the groups say in a letter dated Tuesday to Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The letter notes that clean-water permits such as the one issued to Arch by the Army Corps of Engineers support roughly $220 billion in economic activity each year.
“If EPA is allowed to revoke this permit, every similarly valid … permit held by any entity — businesses, public works agencies and individual citizens — will be in increased regulatory limbo and potentially subject to the same unilateral, after-the-fact revocation,” the groups say in their letter.