DK GreenRoots

One week after the publication of a report in Science documenting the negative environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining, the Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report in response to inquiries from two Senate committees. The GAO report examined oversight for Appalachian mountaintop removal sites, including 2343 sites permitted for valley fills from 2000 to 2008.

Here is summary of the process of mountaintop removal mining courtesy of the Science article.

One major form of such mining, mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF), is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia (WV), and southwestern Virginia. Upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks to access buried coal. Excess rock (mine "spoil") is pushed into adjacent valleys, where it buries existing streams.

Here is what a valley fill looks like:

The Science report summarizes what supposed to happen to insure compliance with existing statutes:

The U.S. Clean Water Act and its implementing regulations state that burying streams with materials discharged from mining should be avoided. Mitigation must render nonsignificant the impacts that mining activities have on the structure and function of aquatic ecosystems. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act imposes requirements to minimize impacts on the land and on natural channels, such as requiring that water discharged from mines will not degrade stream water quality below established standards.

Science

The Army Corps of Engineers has oversight over compliance with the Clean Water Act (section 404) for sites with valley fills. When the GAO asked for status reports on these sites, it found:

The Corps could not readily provide us with data on the total number of section 404 permits it has issued for valley fills, the number of operators it has required to complete mitigation for valley fills, the types of mitigation called for, or the status of mitigation projects.

GAO Report D10206 page 14

These seem like fairly basic records to have if you are actively monitoring compliance for these permits. As for those financial assurances the coal companies are supposed to make to clean up their mess, the Corps is on top of that as well:

The Corps has not required operators with section 404 permits for mines with valley fills to provide financial assurances to ensure mitigation is completed, according to officials in the five district offices that approve permits in the four states we reviewed.

GAO Report D10206 page 21

Here is one of my favorite excuses given by the Corps for not getting financial assurance reports from mining companies:

It is assumed that mine operators will comply with compensatory mitigation requirements without financial assurances.

Ah, the honor code...

So who has responsibility to monitor the environmental compliance of former mountaintop removal mining sites?

OSM, the states’ mining or environmental agencies, EPA, and the Corps are not required to monitor former mountaintop mines with valley fills for long-term environmental degradation after reclamation and mitigation are complete and financial assurances have been released. While the agencies are not required to collect post-reclamation monitoring data, several have analyzed conditions near reclaimed mine sites with valley fills and found that (1) reforestation efforts at some reclaimed surface coal mine sites needed improvement, (2) some surface coal mine sites have contaminated streams and harmed aquatic organisms, (3) a link exists between valley fills and changes to water flow, and (4) mine operators have not always returned mine sites to their approximate original contour when required to do so under SMCRA.

GAO Report D10206 page 22

It sounds like nobody is responsible. How is that lack of clear oversight over reclamation working out?

According to the study, poor vegetation development with time was typical of the reclaimed sites, with significantly lower tree diversity on the mined sites than in adjacent forests. The study found that its data and other published studies supported the conclusion that mining reclamation procedures limit the overall ecological health and inhibit the desired growth of native tree and shrub species on the site.

GAO Report D10206 page 24

After a permit for mountaintop removal mining is issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers, oversight over compliance with existing environmental regulations is joke. It is a good thing that mountaintop removal mining only involves deforestation of hundreds of thousands of acres and pollution of thousands of streams across Appalachia.

More environmental impacts of mountaintop removal mining in the news:

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying the flowering trees and plants that honey bees depend on for food in the central Appalachians.

So Kentucky lawmakers are considering legislation that would encourage coal companies to replant bee-friendly vegetation on mountains after they finish mining.

Source

Encourage, not require, the companies to replant the vegetation... sigh