In January the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency vetoed what would have been the largest mountaintop-removal coal mine ever, Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in southern West Virginia’s Logan County. At the heart of EPA’s veto was conductivity, a measure of stream health, which the agency announced last April it would consider in mountaintop removal permitting.
EPA says research has proven that high conductivity, which indicates a high level of salts, damages aquatic life in streams. The coal industry says that research is far from conclusive.
“EPA says it’s basing [permitting decisions] on science,” said Steve Gardner, president of Engineering Consulting Services in Lexington, Ky. “It’s more political science than hard science.”
For Rick Handshoe, who has been using the science to test streams in Eastern Kentucky’s Floyd County, EPA’s word on conductivity is good enough.
“I think that President Obama has said that this [permitting] is going to be done on sound science,” said Handshoe, a retired state-police employee and a leader in Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, which opposes mountaintop-removal mining. “I have to believe the EPA has done their research and background on this.”
In its veto of the Spruce Mine permit, EPA said “Conductivity itself is not a pollutant, but is an excellent indicator of the total concentration of all ions,” created by dissolved salts in the water. Conductivity can be measured instantly on site with a meter, without laboratory analysis, “and is precise and accurate,” EPA said.
Handshoe uses such a meter, which he calls “a tool that can be used by a common person like me.”
While conductivity reveals the amount of solids dissolved in water, it does not reveal what those solids are. When Handshoe found elevated conductivity readings in the stream near his home, the Sierra Club paid for testing that revealed elevated levels of manganese, zinc and aluminum in the water.
Handshoe said his meter “doesn’t tell you what is in the water, but it tells you something is there.”
The food chain
EPA says conductivity is a valid measure of a stream’s health because of its effect on invertebrates, animals without backbones. Those living in water must maintain certain levels of ions in their blood and tissues. Since aquatic organisms in undisturbed Appalachian streams are accustomed to water with relatively low amounts of dissolved solids, EPA said, minerals released from surface mines’ valley fills “can have a toxic effect.”
In vetoing the Spruce Mine permit, EPA said the elevated conductivity and selenium from the proposed valley fills would have a devastating effect on mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies, and declines in those invertebrate populations would hurt salamanders, fish, birds and bats that feed on them.
Gardner says the theory of effect on the food chain and downstream waters is not proven: ”The science has not been done to support that argument.”
But EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board found in September that the agency was correct in concluding that valley fills increase conductivity in downstream waters, threatening stream life.
“This independent review affirms that EPA is relying on sound analysis and letting science and only science guide our actions to protect human health and the environment,” said Pete Silva, then the EPA assistant administrator for water.
Measuring conductivity
Conductivity is measured in microSiemens per cubic centimeter. EPA has set a range of 300 to 500 microSiemens per cc as the level consistent with protecting life in Appalachian streams. The agency says mining proposals with predicted conductivity levels above 500 would impair streams, which the federal Clean Water Act does not allow. For permits with predicted conductivity between 300 and 500, EPA says it will require mitigation to ensure conductivity does not exceed 500.
If EPA’s standards remain in place, coal companies will find it difficult or impossible to win approval for mountaintop-removal permits like those issued in the past, industry and agency officials agree.
“Minimizing the number of valley fills is a very, very key factor,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said when the agency announced its new guidance for permitting. “You’re talking about no or very few valley fills that are going to be able to meet standards like this.”
And that is one thing on which the industry agrees with Jackson. “The standard being imposed is really a low standard that is going to be very difficult to comply with without new techniques and new mining processes,” said Gardner, who as a mining engineer is in the business of designing such techniques.
Procedure questioned
Because EPA called the new standard “guidance” for federal and state agencies that actually issue the permits, not a new regulation, it did not have to receive formal public comment before going into effect, and that has brought complaints from the industry and its allies in government.
“The EPA has turned the permitting process, which is already cumbersome to deal with, into a back-door means of shutting down coal mines,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky wrote in a commentary sent to newspapers. “That is outside the scope of their authority and the law, and represents a fundamental departure from the permitting process as originally envisioned by Congress.”
The industry argues that the new standard will discourage companies from mining in areas that have already been mined, because the downstream waters have already been degraded and will be difficult to bring into compliance.
“The mining we are doing today, which is in many cases re-mining of old areas, can in fact improve the quality of water due to the reclamation techniques we are performing today,” Gardner said.
In the April document announcing the conductivity standard, EPA said that if a new mine is proposed near streams that already exceed the threshold of 500 microSiemens per cubic centimeter, the agency “will coordinate with the permitting authority on a site-specific basis to ensure these new discharges will not cause or contribute to a violation of water quality standards.”
For some, the new challenges facing surface-mining permits are too strict, regardless of the science behind the new standards. McConnell and others argue that EPA is unnecessarily putting Appalachian coal jobs at risk to protect the environment.
Opponents of mountaintop-removal mining say they understand the region’s need for those high-paying jobs, but also believe federal and state officials have an obligation to enforce the Clean Water Act. “I’m not against coal,” Handshoe said. “I’m against this method of mining, because I’ve never seen it done right.”
Jackson says her agency isn’t trying to end surface mining in Appalachia.
“This is not about ending coal mining,” Jackson said in a conference call after the agency announced its conductivity guidance in April. “This is about ending coal mining pollution.”
The writer is a graduate assistant at the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, which is based in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, as an extension program for rural journalists and news outlets.
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