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Sunday, July 26, 2009

W.Va. strip mines not restored to approximate original contour, as 1977 federal law requires

Despite a federal law, many coal operators in southern West Virginia are not restoring strip mines to their ‘approximate original contour,’ as required by federal law Ken Ward Jr. reports for The Charleston Gazette. Environmental advocates say the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is partially to blame, since it has failed to clarify what AOC really means.

Under the 1977 federal strip-mine law, “mine operators must put rock and dirt back so that the site ‘closely resembles the general surface configuration of the land prior to mining’," Ward writes. But that language of the law has not been clarified much by regulations, unlike many other parts of the law. Recent investigations cited eight areas where mining made land was 24 to 205 feet lower.

The federal mining office has said the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection needs to do a better job tracking mining so it can better enforce the law, but advocates like lawyer Joe Lovett, director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment, say the problem is more profound. He says Compliance with AOC regulations would minimize the environmental effect of mountaintop removal, but Lovett told Ward few mines in Appalachia abide by them.

More federal studies are being conducted in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, and supporters of mountaintop removal like the National Mining Association and House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall of West Virginia are anticipating the results. "Thirty years, and we are still looking for a definition of AOC," Rahall said reflectively last year. (Read more)

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