Former top West Virginia regulator David C. Callaghan said Monday that the Legislature and Gov. Cecil Underwood should reconsider a new law Callaghan said allows coal companies to fill in streams without compensating the state. Callaghan, Greene and George are members of the 17-person panel. Callaghan said that one of the task force's top priorities should be to push for a rewrite of the new mitigation law. Underwood signed the law in April, over the objections of numerous federal agencies and the state Division of Environmental Protection. The recent actions of the state Legislature need to be re-evaluated.
Mitigation needs to be revisited.
Mountaintop removal mining shaves off entire mountaintops to reach valuable low-sulfur coal seams underneath. The leftover rock and earth, which swells when mountains are blasted apart, is dumped in streams in waste piles called valley fills. Federal law doesn't allow waterways to be filled in unless the person doing the filling compensates for the loss. Usually, the compensation comes in the form of building new wetlands, streams or ponds. In the West Virginia coal industry, most companies choose to pay monetary compensation instead.