Victory in Important Lawsuit Challenging Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in Appalachia

In October 2008, the Sierra Club and its coalfield-based allies obtained a preliminary injunction from a U.S. District Court in a lawsuit challenging Fola Coal Corporation’s “Ike Fork” mountaintop removal (MTR) mine in West Virginia.  The Clean Water Act permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the mine authorizes Fola to bury more than six miles of streams in 11 “valley fills” -- the industry’s euphemism for burying streams and hollows with mining waste.  The injunction temporarily halts the majority of the mining pending a final decision on the merits in the case. 

This ruling has important implications for the future of Corps permits authorizing destructive coal mines throughout the region.  Prior litigation has effectively shut down the Corps permitting program for MTR mining since March 2007. Since the March 2007 ruling, the Corps has scrambled to develop an assessment tool that would enable it to continue issuing permits that authorize MTR mining.  The Corps recently adopted an "interim functional assessment approach,” and the agency approved the first MTR permit relying on its "interim assessment" for the Ike Fork mine.  The court’s decision in the Fola lawsuit will thus determine if the Corps can continue approving permits based on its new approach for assessing stream function.  In granting the injunction, the court ruled that the Club and its allies had raised a substantial legal question as to whether the interim assessment – like the Corps’ prior approach – provided sufficient protection for streams, as required by the Clean Water Act. 

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Sierra Club Threatens to Sue EPA

One of the main duties of the federal Environmental Protection Agency is to protect people and communities from air pollution. On Tuesday October 7, 2008, Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project announced plans to sue EPA for failing to update its emissions standard for nitric acid plants at least every eight years, as required by the Clean Air Act. While no legal action has been taken yet, if the EPA does not begin reviewing these standards within the 60-day notice period Sierra Club and EIP will seek a court order forcing it to do so. Nitric acid plants are significant sources of many pollutants, including nitrous oxide, which is 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming potential, and controlling it is one of the easiest ways for EPA to make a dent in global warming emissions. It is about time the EPA took steps to protect Americans for the negative effects of nitrous oxide, and this threat of legal action will hopefully jump start the EPA into action.

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Settlement Saves Grand Canyon from Uranium Drilling

On September 25, 2008, Sierra Club, along with the Center for Biological Diversity and the Grand Canyon Trust, achieved a major victory in settling our challenge to the Forest Service’s plan to allow uranium mining in the Kaibab National Forest. Just a few miles from Grand Canyon National Park, this mining would have destroyed the pristine environment surrounding the Park and threatened to contaminate the Colorado River, the source of drinking water for tens of millions of Americans. The settlement requires the Forest Service and the VANE Mineral mining firm to withdraw all current applications and approvals for exploratory drilling in the forest. It then requires the Forest Service and mining companies to prepare an environmental impact statement under the National Environmental Policy Act as part of any future permit applications. Finally, it is unlikely that any mining will be allowed thanks to a resolution passed by the House Natural Resources Committee in June which protects these and other areas of public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park from future uranium development. Our thanks to attorneys Marc Fink for the Center for Biological Diversity and Neil Levine for the Grand Canyon Trust, and our community activists including Sandy Bahr, Sierra Club’s Arizona Chapter Chair, for this major step toward protecting the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River and the surrounding communities. For more information on this case click here!