EPA to Revoke Permit on Wise County Surface Mine?

The Bristol Herald Courier reports:

...the Environmental Protection Agency has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to revoke a permit needed for surface mining on Ison Rock Ridge in Wise County.

The nearly 1,300-acre site just outside the town of Appalachia is proposed for mining by A&G Coal Corp. The permit – one part of a permitting process still pending for the site – would allow the deposit of mining waste into valleys, which the company says is necessary for such operations to be cost-effective.

Sounds like great news, especially if the following is true:

...Oliver Bernstein, spokesman for the Sierra Club, said Thursday that EPA letters written on this and other proposed mining sites bode well for efforts to stop mountaintop mining throughout the region.

“I think that the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have definitely taken some really good first steps on mountaintop removal coal mining,” Bernstein said. “Going forward, the administration will eventually need to fix the regulatory loopholes … to end this most destructive form of coal mining for good.”

Meanwhile, here is a much better way to move southwestern Virginia's economy forward without trashing its beautiful environment:

As a $1.8 billion coaland biofuel-powered generating plant is being constructed at the eastern edge of Wise County, fields of wind turbines are proposed for the western end, along the Virginia-Kentucky line.

Dominion Virginia Power, which is building the power plant, joined with BP Wind Energy in January to propose the Wise County wind farm and another one in Tazewell County.

Combined, the projects present a potential investment of more than $600 million. Together, they could generate as much as 250 megawatts of power.

Clean wind vs. dirty coal? A sustainable economic future for southwestern Virginia vs. a dying industry which has seen its employment plummet for years? This is not a difficult decision, or at least it wouldn't be if not for powerful corporations - A&G, Massey, Dominion - that profit off of destructive coal mining practices. Perhaps we're finally going to start putting people before corporations here in Virginia? Yeah, I know, what a concept!