Tagged: coal

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has introduced three amendments to a bill before the Senate that environmental groups say would gut protections for the environment.

Environmental groups are petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency to change the way it measures water quality in six Appalachian states, including Kentucky.

U.S. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to announce a bill to put limits on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of coal mining.

Call it a battle of the researchers. Scientists who have both affirmed and denied connections between mountaintop removal coal mining and serious health problems have intensified their efforts to bring public attention to their work recently. Today, a commission of scientists released an analysis of some of the recent research, and concluded that there should be a moratorium on mountaintop removal.

Over the past few years, researchers have found links between surface coal mining and maladies like asthma, COPD, birth defects and cancer. The coal industry has largely dismissed the results of those studies, arguing that the researchers are biased and the findings aren’t scientifically sound. Now, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice has formed an independent commission to review the current research and offer recommendations.

A federal appeals court says the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t overstep its authority when it vetoed a permit for a coal mine in West Virginia.

The Army Corps of Engineers issued a water pollution permit to Arch Coal in 2007 for the Spruce Number One Mine, a 2300-acre mine in Logan County, West Virginia. It would have been the largest mountaintop removal mine in Appalachia. But four years later, the EPA vetoed the permit—only the 13th time its exercised its veto power since 1972.