The coal industry lobby has a filed suit against the United States Environmental Protection Agency to challenge President Obama’s administration’s stated plan to take steps toward setting limits to govern the environmental impacts of Mountaintop Removal Mining.
Lawyers for the National Mining Association, filed the suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, are challenging EPA’s more detailed review of Clean Water Act permits for surface mines and the agency’s new guidance for controlling “conductivity” pollution from mountaintop removal operations.
The suit itself alleges that EPA’s has:
… Substantially and illegally amend the statutory and regulatory permitting processes for coal mining that form the backbone of coal companies expectations in planning to extract coal for our nation’s power supply, particularly for those companies that require “valley fills” for their coal mining operations.
The suit names The United States Corps of Engineers as co-defendents and alleges that they:
By dramatically altering timelines and imposing new requirements in complete disregard of existing federal law and procedure, EPA and the Corps have launched a moving target in coal mining permitting that is substantially and irreparably harming NMA?s coal mining members.
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