statejournal.com
The federal government is considering whether to take away Arch Coal’s right to produce coal at its Spruce site in Logan County.
By Dan Page
This is an era of government overreach.
We see it almost every day. Government tells us what we can and cannot do with our property and lives. Perhaps no agency has sought to expand its power more zealously than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, especially during the presidency of Barack Obama.
This could be a telling week for the agency, public officials who represent the people of West Virginia and the state's coal industry.
The federal government is considering whether to take away Arch Coal's right to produce coal at its Spruce site in Logan County. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave Arch a permit to mine there, and the company began developing a large mountaintop operation. Now EPA effectively is threatening to force the Corps to pull the Spruce permit, thus eliminating Arch's opportunity to employ 250 miners at Spruce, produce affordable energy and contribute to the state's tax base.
EPA could simply reject the permit, but it hasn't doesn't that, instead putting pressure on the Corps to take action. Why all the drama?
Let's think about this: Arch Coal sought and received permission from government regulators to do what it does -- mine coal. Arch invested millions of dollars to acquire the mineral rights and mine the coal. And now a government agency, after a respected company devoted capital and talent to a major project, is about to prevent that enterprise from deriving benefits from its investment.
How can this be occurring? What happened to the rule of law? How can American companies conduct business when the government inconsistently interprets and enforces regulations that are critical to a company's operations?
If Arch Coal loses its right to conduct business at Spruce, the federal government should compensate the company for the damages it has caused the company. Arch clearly made its investments in good faith and complied with the laws and regulations of the nation, fully expecting to be able to fulfill its obligations to shareholders, customers and employees.
Federal regulators have intervened, imposed new standards and, as a result, have jeopardized a major commercial project.
Arch's experiences are not occurring in a vacuum. Other coal companies realize what is happening. They are having their own problems with federal regulators, who seem intent on slowing down the mining of coal through redefined water regulations while they threaten coal-fired utilities with strict greenhouse gas emissions standards.
These latest examples of government overreach are headed toward a troubling result: increased unemployment and more poverty in southern West Virginia, reduced tax revenues for state and county government and increased energy costs in regions served by coal-dependent utilities.
While the EPA moves ahead with its anti-coal agenda, West Virginia's congressional delegation is running out of time. Can Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller and Congressman Nick Rahall find a way to protect the interests of thousands of West Virginia households?
We'll know soon enough.
