Days after a bipartisan bill was introduced to end mountaintop removal mining, King Coal has received another blow from U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, who has issued an injunction stopping the Army Corps of Engineers from allowing new mining projects through a streamlined permit procedure. Goodwin decided that the Corps’ claim that the projects it allowed through its nationwide permits would have little environmental impact was bogus, saying, “In the past twenty years, thousands of miles of streams in Appalachia, constituting over 2 percent of the streams in the area, have been impacted by the discharges associated with mountaintop mining.”
The agency has 60 days to appeal.
Read more in the Charleston Gazette.
