Kentucky bows to coal — again | Lexington Herald Leader

As he announced his lawsuit to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's increased scrutiny of strip-mining, Gov. Steve Beshear said: "Kentucky can and does mine coal while at the same time protecting Kentucky's environment."

Hundreds of miles of destroyed or polluted streams tell a different story. Instead of protecting the environment, state government has a history of abetting the coal industry's destruction of mountain forests and streams.

The latest example is the administration's eagerness to enable one of Beshear's political contributors to pollute tributaries of the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River.

Despite serious questions about whether the operation has been lawfully permitted, the administration is allowing Cambrian Coal to blast and bulldoze away a few hundred feet of mountain at a 791-acre site near Elkhorn City in Pike County.

The company's plans call for filling seven hollows with dirt and rock displaced by mining and enlarging two existing hollow fills.

Cambrian's president, James Booth of Inez, is a prominent contributor to political campaigns. In March, he gave $1,000 toward Beshear's re-election.

As outdoors enthusiasts know, this mine could harm a place that has real potential for expanding the adventure tourism Beshear touts as key to Eastern Kentucky's future.

Hundreds of whitewater boaters from all over the country already gather in Elkhorn City the first weekend of October for the Russell Fork Rendezvous. Also popular with mountain bikers, hikers and campers, the area, including Breaks Interstate Park and the Pine Mountain Trail, is one of the most spectacular in the eastern United States.

But according to the state's own data, strip-mining has polluted the area's streams with heavy metals and salts, impairing their ability to support aquatic life — or future tourism.

Nonetheless, after an administrative law judge on Sept. 29 ordered Cambrian to temporarily halt mining while the legal questions are addressed, Beshear's Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters quickly overturned the order and allowed mining to resume.

The challenge had been filed by the Sierra Club and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. Administrative Law Judge Steve Blanton found the environmental groups were likely to prevail once the full case was heard. Blanton ruled the state had used a faulty method for assessing the cumulative impact of Cambrian's mining on the watershed.

The judge also made note of another suspicious peculiarity. The state is allowing Cambrian to mine under a water-discharge permit originally issued to another company and later transferred to Cambrian.

The mining Cambrian is doing is much more destructive than that allowed under the old permit. Cambrian plans to employ area mining (mountaintop removal, in informal parlance) to get at a coal seam where the old permit allowed only less destructive contour and auger mining.

The state has ordered Cambrian to limit its mining to the footprint covered by the old permit, a condition Cambrian has already been cited for violating.

The state's failure to issue a new permit suggests state water regulators know what Cambrian is doing would not pass muster under the Clean Water Act, so the Beshear administration is essentially allowing the company to mine without a valid water-discharge permit.

An appeal is now before Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate.

Unless Wingate upholds the administrative law judge's temporary stop-mining order, a mountain will be leveled and streams destroyed or degraded by a mining operation that could eventually be ruled unlawful.

By then, of course, it would be too late.