US EPA revokes mountaintop removal mining permit of Arch Coal in West Virginia

US’s Environmental Protection Agency took the unusual step of revoking a permit Thursday for the country's largest surface mine, a setback for the controversial practice of mountaintop removal that helps produce 10% of the US's coal.
EPA announced it revoked Arch Coal’s proposed Spruce number one mine in West Virginia, which would have seen the destruction of more than 2,000 acres of mountain tops, because it would have created an unacceptable risk to the environment.
It said “The project would have used unsustainable mining practices that jeopardized the health of Appalachian communities and clean water.”
The EPA's assistant administrator for water, Peter S. Silva, said the Spruce No 1 coal mine, whose expansion was scaled back from 3,113 acres to win a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers in 2007, would use destructive and unsustainable mining practices that jeopardize the health of Appalachian communities and clean water on which they depend.
The 2,300 acre operation at the Mingo Logan Coal Co's Spruce No 1 coal mine in West Virginia has been mired in litigation since 1998. The Bush administration had approved the construction of the project in 2007.
The decision is expected to be challenged by Arch Coal.
The EPA's decision could affect dozens of other mining projects across Appalachia, where firms have been blasting the peaks off mountains for years to reach coal seams and then depositing the remaining rubble in surrounding valleys. While the federal government issued permits for hundreds of these activities under the Clinton and George W Bush administrations, the EPA adopted new environmental guidelines in April and is now reviewing 33 other pending permits.
Sourced from washingtonpost.com