The Environmental Protection Agency has noted that alternatives exist to reduce the environmental impact of the controversial mountaintop removal plan for the Spruce Mine site in West Virginia. After filing a Freedom of Information Act request of EPA's analysis of the Spruce Mine permit, the agency has refused to provide those alternatives to Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette. Ward was told the analysis is protected from FOIA release under a legal exemption meant to cover inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums. Ward notes the FOIA exemption doesn't require EPA to withhold the documents, it just gives the agency that option.
In October, we reported that EPA had moved closer to blocking the Spruce Mine permit, which is the largest mountaintop removal permit in West Virginia history. The analysis is "a report prepared by Morgan Worldwide, the firm headed by mining engineer John Morgan," Ward writes on his Coal Tattoo blog. "EPA said the report would eventually be made public, but not until the agency finishes the process of considering whether to veto the Spruce Mine permit." Ward concludes, "If John Morgan came up with a way for Arch Coal to mine its reserves without burying more miles of streams, wouldn’t it benefit EPA to make this information public? Wouldn’t that put more political pressure on Arch Coal and the industry in general in the ongoing dispute over EPA’s crackdown on mountaintop removal?" (Read more)
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