DEP Official Apologizes to EPA for Remark
Charleston Gazette
23 June 2010:
By The Associated Press
Though he believes West Virginia will end up in litigation with the
Environmental Protection Agency over tough new standards for surface
mine permits, the state's top environmental official apologized
Wednesday for saying federal regulators would "pay the price" for
illegal or unfair enforcement.
State Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman
called the EPA to apologize for the tone of remarks he made in an
interview with The Associated Press, DEP spokeswoman Kathy Cosco said.
Huffman contended in the interview that the EPA is holding West
Virginia to greater scrutiny in strip mine permitting than any of the
other five states it's targeted, and he predicted the continuing
conflict over the new standards would end up in court.
Several DEP employees were attending a meeting with EPA staff in
Pittsburgh on Wednesday and today over new water-quality standards
imposed April 1 on six states. Huffman argues the standards are not
only unattainable, but also being unfairly enforced.
"They are wrong on a lot of levels," Huffman said of federal
regulators, whose rules also apply to Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Virginia and Tennessee.
"None of the other five states are feeling this pain. No one is being
scrutinized like we are," he said in his AP interview. "If what EPA is
doing is illegal, they will pay the price."
Huffman said his staff will "do more listening and asking questions
than talking" to EPA officials this week. "I can promise you, there
will be much that will be said in this two-day meeting that will be
held against them later."
Cosco said "frank exchanges" between DEP and EPA are not uncommon. The
Region 3 administrator is familiar with Huffman's argument that rules
should be applied universally, "and that one state and one industry
should not be unfairly targeted," she said.
Huffman also issued a follow-up statement, saying it's easy to forget
that both agencies want to protect the state's water quality.
"Regardless of what I say about the process, I have not forgotten that
and I will not forget it," he said.
EPA spokeswoman Terri White said the guidance was intended to provide a
consistent review framework for the regional offices and to prevent
"significant and irreversible damage to Appalachian watersheds at risk
from mining."
EPA ensures the new standards are applied "fairly and consistently"
across the six states by holding weekly conference calls between
headquarters and staff in regional offices, she said.
White said this week's meeting, which grew out of an annual meeting of
state program managers in May, would include representatives from
environmental agencies in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and
Pennsylvania, as well as officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, the Office of Surface Mining and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Officials from Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio are not attending the
Pittsburgh meeting.
The EPA's new policy, which is open for public comment through Dec. 1,
could curtail mountaintop removal mining, a highly efficient and
destructive form of strip mining that blasts apart mountaintops to
expose multiple seams of coal. The resulting waste is dumped into
valleys, covering intermittent streams.
EPA says burying streams increases salt levels in waterways downstream,
hurting fish and other aquatic life. It says its new standards would
protect 95 percent of aquatic life.
The industry argues the new standards would effectively shut down strip
mining, devastating coal companies and communities that depend on the
jobs. The National Mining Association says the six targeted states
produced more than 150 million tons of coal and employed nearly 20,500
people in 2008.
Huffman said the rules have essentially brought permitting in West
Virginia to a halt. Bruce Scott, commissioner of Kentucky's Department
for Environmental Protection, said his state is feeling it, too.
More than a dozen Kentucky projects are in limbo, and operators lined
up behind them for permit approvals are also forced to wait.
Kentucky has many more mines than West Virginia, but most are
considerably smaller, Scott said. Many have already been forced to shut
down and lay off workers.
Kentucky adopted new stream-monitoring requirements in anticipation of
new EPA policies, and its system focuses on testing for contaminants
after the fact. It gives the Kentucky DEP the ability to revisit
permits if testing shows effluent is likely to harm water quality or
aquatic life.
"The difference, then, is that EPA's approach presumes an impact,"
Scott said. "The Kentucky approach says, 'Let's determine whether
there's an impact, then go back and assess what to do.'"
Kentucky considers its approach reasonable, but the likelihood of
litigation over the federal approach "depends on what EPA's ultimate
line in the sand is," Scott said.
If West Virginia isn't the first state to sue, Huffman said it would
quickly follow whoever does - whether it be another state, an industry
association or an individual operator affected by the new rules.
While DEP agrees with much of what EPA has to say, Huffman said, "they
have taken it to such an extreme that it makes it an impossible
standard for the industry to meet.
"The disagreement is not about the big picture," he said. "It's about
details."