Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
October 24, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section 1; Page 24; Column
4; National Desk
LENGTH: 349 words
HEADLINE: Officials Say Dumping Ban Could Destroy Coal
Mining
BYLINE: AP
DATELINE: CHARLESTON, W. Va., Oct. 23
BODY:
West Virginia's coal industry warned that it
was headed for ruin, and the Governor ordered a state freeze on hiring and
spending on Friday after a Federal judge barred the dumping of strip
mine waste in streams.
"This ruling will be devastating
to state and local budgets," Gov. Cecil H. Underwood said. In a victory for
environmentalists who sued the coal industry last year, Judge Charles Haden 2d
of United States District Court ruled on Wednesday that dumping mining waste in
West Virginia's streams violated the Federal Clean Water Act. The law bans
mining operations within 100 feet of a stream.
The ruling could all but
shut down mountaintop removal mining, a strip mining technique in which the top
of a ridge is sheared off, the coal is extracted and the leftover rock and dirt
are pushed into a river valley.
Coal industry leaders warned that the
ruling could cripple traditional underground mining, which also disposes of
waste in river valleys.
"They gave us a death sentence," said Ernest
Woods, president of United Mine Workers Local 5958.
State regulators
said they did not yet know how many mines would be affected. But the Tax
Department said it could cost West Virginia as much as $100 million this fiscal
year, out of an annual budget of $2.6 billion. As a result, the Governor put a
freeze on hiring and spending and told state agencies to prepare for a 10
percent budget cut in January.
The director of the Federal Office of
Surface Mining, Kathy Karpan, said the ruling could affect mining nationwide.
"It could virtually stop all coal mining," Ms. Karpan said.
As officials
worried about the impact of the ruling, a plaintiff in the case was back before
state regulators on Friday, fighting a new mine near her Mingo County home. The
plaintiff, Patricia Bragg, was appealing the Division of Environmental
Protection's decision to allow the Mingo-Logan Coal Company to open a second
underground mine at Pigeon Creek.
After the company opened its first
mine there, "We lost our water, and the streams have gone dry," Ms. Bragg told
the Surface Mine Board. http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: October 24, 1999 
