WVDEP and Selenium: Stalling or Stopping?
Charleston Gazette
15 March 2010
By Ken Ward Jr.
Afters years of delays, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental
Protection has taken a small step toward forcing the coal industry to
stop violations of the state’s water quality limits for toxic selenium.
Tom Clarke, director of the WVDEP Division of Mining and Reclamation,
has denied 17 requests from mining operations to extend the deadline
for them to comply with selenium limits.
In some instances, WVDEP has concluded mine operators have done enough
work to try to come into compliance to deserve another extension. In
others, WVDEP believes approving the extension would violate the Clean
Water Act’s prohibition against “backsliding” on permitted pollution
limits.
Sounds pretty good, huh?
Well, wait. There’s more.
It turns not that not all of the public notices issued by WVDEP
indicating it planned to approve selenium compliance extensions were
sent out in error.
WVDEP plans to approve compliance extensions on at least 14 other
mining permits, and public notices on those have gone out — seeking
comment before WVDEP finalizes the extensions.
In the meantime, some of the companies that have been turned down by
WVDEP have already filed appeals with the state Environmental Quality
Board, and are hoping that board suspends the WVDEP denials before the
crucial deadline of April 6, 2010. If EQB WVDEP doesn’t, then the
permit limits on those operations would become final — and might mean
the anti-backsliding provisions of the Clean Water Act would prohibit
the mine operators from getting any further extensions.