Coal-country lawmakers ramp up push against EPA permit veto

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is launching fresh attacks against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its recent decision to block a large mountaintop-removal mining project in West Virginia.

Lawmakers from West Virginia and Ohio introduced a measure Wednesday that would prevent EPA from vetoing Clean Water Act permits that have already been approved by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) sponsored the bill, and co-sponsors include Reps. Nick Rahall (W.Va.), the top Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.); and Ohio Republicans Bill Johnson and Bob Gibbs.

Coal-industry allies are furious with EPA over its decision this month to veto the Clean Water Act permit for Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia after the large project won approval from the Corps in 2007. The new bill would apply retroactively to the beginning of this year, thus blocking EPA’s veto of the mine, McKinley’s office said.

“For years, the EPA has been bullying coal companies and the workers they employ,” the freshman Republican said in a statement. He alleges that if EPA is able to overturn Corps’s permits, “dozens of heavily regulated industries and hundreds of thousands of American jobs hang in the balance.”

“Businesses will not invest in new projects and create new jobs if they know that regulatory agencies can ignore existing permits and arbitrarily pull the rug right out from under them,” McKinley said.

Rahall told E2 on Wednesday that the measure has enough backing to clear the House, but he predicts it would not clear the Senate and that President Obama wouldn’t sign it anyway. Nonetheless, he called the bill an effort “to show the frustration that exists out there.”

“There is a fear that it has ramifications for other industries where there have been previously granted permits,” Rahall said.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is planning to soon introduce similar Senate legislation.