Supreme Court Denies Arch Coal More Mountaintop Removal at Spruce Mine No. 1

The Supreme Court did a good thing today, rejecting an appeal from Arch Coal to review a decision by the U.S. District Court of Appeals. The original ruling of the District Court, which goes back to April of last year, found that the EPA could withdraw a previously approved Clean Water Act permit. The permits are granted to allow for pollution of waters and the filling in of streams. Coal companies need these permits to operate their mountaintop removal mines and dump the waste rock and soil or “overburden” from the mines into adjacent valleys and streams.

            Arch coal had sought the permit, and received the permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, to expand its Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia. The Spruce Mine is already huge; with the permit it would have made it the largest such mine in the Mountain State. The EPA had rescinded the permit retroactively, after the Corps had granted the permit.

            Arch Coal said that wasn’t kosher. The District Court said it was. And now the Supreme Court has said that decision stands. We are not totally out of the woods on this, but this is a good turn of events.

West Virginia AG Wants the Supreme Court to Hear Spruce Mine Case

Well, this is not a reversal, but it’s still not good news. Patrick Morrisey, the Attorney General of West Virginia, has joined 26 other states in filing a friend of the court brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case that challenges the EPA’s authority to withdraw a previously approved Clean Water Act permit for a mountaintop removal mine.

The mine is a currently existing mountaintop mining operation in Logan County, the Spruce Mine No 1. The permit was for an expansion of the mine and would have made it the largest surface mine in West Virginia.

In April of this year, the U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the EPA, and in July refused to rehear the case.

I’m not hopeful if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case. The conservative majority has been business friendly and not prone to supporting environmental regulations. John Roberts has worked as a lawyer for coal companies. The cases he worked on concerned labor issues—benefit payments and collective bargaining rights—and not those of environmental protections. Still, his relationship with the coal companies has been cozy and does not lend itself to the image of Justice blindly weighing the scales. Do you think he should recuse himself?

More than the status of one mine could be at stake here. The push from the right, the GOP, and big business has been to curtail the ability of the EPA to protect our air, land, and water. If the Court hears the case and rules in favor of Arch Coal, the owner of the Spruce Mine, the EPA’s ability to deny pollution permits across the country will be jeopardized.