Glynn Wilson

Fog in Autumn on The Locust Fork River

In another challenge to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s failure to protect the purity of the state’s waterways, the Southern Environmental Law Center today petitioned for a hearing on the permit issued last month for a 3,255-acre coal mine in Blount County.

The proposed mine would have more than 60 pollution discharge points into the main stem or feeder streams of the Locust Fork, a tributary of the Black Warrior River that is already on ADEM’s list of the worst polluted streams in the state, mainly due to sediment.

The petition was filed on behalf of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper and The Friends of the Locust Fork River.

The law center already represents the Black Warrior Riverkeeper in an ongoing legal challenge of ADEM’s actions in permitting the Shepherd Bend coal mine in Walker County. In both cases, the agency has ignored federal and state laws and its own regulations, according to a press release..

“Ultimately, the problem goes beyond these projects, and lands squarely on the shoulders of ADEM which is consistently failing to protect water quality throughout the state,” SELC Senior Attorney Gil Rogers said. “The Rosa and Shepherd Bend coal mines are exhibit A.”

The Rosa coal mine permit is deficient in numerous ways. The mine would discharge pollution into a segment of Locust Fork which is listed by ADEM as “impaired” under the Clean Water Act. Alabama law prohibits causing or contributing to the pollution of an impaired water body. The agency acknowledged the impaired status of the Locust Fork in their permit rationale, but issued the permit anyway.

“ADEM needs to quit rubber-stamping these pollution permits and get serious about its role as the environmental regulator of coal mine operations,” Black Warrior Riverkeeper Nelson Brooke said. “Our waterways are much too precious to be so utterly neglected and exploited.”

Read the rest of this entry »