Concerned Citizens Or NIMBYs?

I’m not sure what to think of this latest development in West Virginia mining. In perhaps what might be called a fit of NIMBY, opposition has formed to a mountaintop mine operation going in right next to the Kanawha State Forest, which is about five to ten miles from the state capitol Charleston. Almost 200 concerned residents met at a local church on Tuesday to discuss ways they could have the permit for the planned mine rescinded.

Where the mine is planned next to the state forest. Image Tye Ward The Charleston Gazette

Officially designated as a state forest, the 9,300 acres of land are nonetheless managed as and considered by local residents to be a public park. People camp, hike, hunt, and fish there. While a company called Keystone Development has been mining an area east of the forest, the permit would allow an expansion of that mine into a mountaintop removal operation. Originally, the mountaintop mine would have come to within 100 feet of the forest and would have filled in an adjacent valley with mining debris, but Keystone scaled back some of the mining footprint and changed plans for the debris to possibly be dumped at another mining site.

While preserving the beauty and pleasure of a park is fully understandable, mountaintop mining is harmful wherever it happens. I don’t mean to jump allover these people, who certainly have a legitimate concern, but where were have they been as hundreds of mines have flattened the rest of their state? Did they show up at other churches as their fellow West Virginians were diagnosed with bladder cancer caused by mountaintop mining? Did they want to rescind permits to mines that would cause expectant mothers to give birth to babies with birth defects?

Groups Seek Federal Intervention For West Virginia Mountaintop Mining Regulation

The record of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has not been a good one. In her exposé of Appalachian mountaintop removal for U.S. News and World Report Penny Loeb found that enforcement of environmental regulation was lax to nonexistent in West Virginia.[i] And Ken Ward, who has covered mountaintop removal, as well as all things related to coal and coal mining for the Charleston Gazette, had once uncovered in an investigative report that the DEP did not know the number of acres under mountaintop removal operations. The West Virginia DEP did not even keep track of the number of mountaintop mining permits that it had granted.[ii]

            Well, finally after all this time, a group of environmental and religious groups hope that they can get officials from the federal surface mining office to ameliorate things in the Mountain State. They want the feds to hear the concerns of citizens who claim that they have been rebuffed by West Virginia’s environmental department. And now in response to a petition by 19 community and environmental groups, including the League of Women Voters and the Catholic Committee of Appalachia, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement said it would investigate five aspects of West Virginia’s DEP mining regulation.

            Among the complaints are wells drying up or being contaminated and damage to homes and other structures. Rob Goodwin, technical analyst for the Coal River Mountain Watch, a small grassroots organization that works to empower local residents in the face of mountaintop removal, says, “Ninety-nine percent [of the complaints], if not all, are being dismissed as frivolous or unsubstantiated.”

            The coal industry responds that it is over-regulated.

The coal industry says that this type of mining is over-regulated.

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[i] Loeb, Penny “Shear Madness,” US News and World Report 3 August 1997

[ii] Ward, Ken “Flattened,” Charleston Gazette, 9 August 1998