Ohioans: Tell your reps to vote NO on Senate Bill 386!

Editorial: Don't muddy the waters

Environmental-protection experts should regulate water pollution from mines

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 3:25 AM

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency should be in charge of protecting the state's waterways from pollution, whether that pollution comes from a factory pipe, a large-scale farm or the byproducts of mining coal. A proposed bill to put state mining officials in charge of granting water-pollution permits for coal mines is a bad idea.

State Sen. Timothy J. Grendell, R-Chesterland, is behind the bill to switch authority from the EPA to mining bureaucrats in the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

This proposal is similar to a 2001 state law -- also a bad idea -- that transferred the state EPA's authority to regulate large-scale livestock farms to the Department of Agriculture. That transfer still isn't final, because the U.S. EPA, which has ultimate responsibility for enforcing the 1972 federal Clean Water Act, hasn't approved it.

In a recent public-comment meeting, opponents of the farm-regulation switch pointed out that the Department of Agriculture's mission is to promote farming in Ohio , not to be a watchdog.

The same potential for conflict of interest exists in putting ODNR's Division of Mineral Resources Management in charge of water-pollution permits for mines.

The timing of the bill lends weight to the suspicion that the real goal is to allow an end run by a major mine company that has been denied a permit by the EPA.

Murray Energy Corp., owner of Ohio 's largest underground coal mines, wants to bury Casey Run, a 2-mile-long stream in eastern Ohio , under a 1.85-billion-gallon coal-slurry lagoon.

Slurry is water contaminated with coal dust after it has been used to wash coal. In 2005, a broken slurry pipeline from a Murray Energy-owned mine blackened 2,300 feet of Belmont County's Captina Creek, killing thousands of fish in a habitat that supports the endangered hellbender salamander.

Casey Run is a tributary of Captina Creek. EPA scientists, in recommending denial of the permit for the massive lagoon, said it would pose "insurmountable" environmental concerns for the high-quality water resource.

Murray officials say they'll have to close two mines employing about 1,000 people if they can't build the slurry lagoon, but EPA and ODNR officials said the company could find other ways to dispose of its waste.

Another supposed justification for the bill is a claim that the Ohio EPA takes too long to review mining permits. This appears to be a moot point. The bill would give mine regulators a six-month deadline for approving or denying permits. In recent months, the EPA has eliminated its backlog of applications and has pledged to handle new ones within six months.

Murray Energy's checkered track record of multiple environmental and safety violations in Ohio and elsewhere, including the Crandall Canyon mine cave-in that killed six men in Utah in August 2007, argues against easing regulation of the company.

Regardless of one company's history, safeguarding Ohio 's waterways should remain with the agency for which environmental protection is the core mission.