Opinion ID: 501787
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Host Soils

Text: 123 NWF here challenges the Secretary's interpretation of Sec. 515(b)(5) of the Act, which provides that coal operators must carefully remove and replace topsoil displaced by their activities. The Secretary in 1983 issued a regulation allowing the storage on host soil of topsoil salvaged from adjacent mining activities, an interpretation NWF contends will damage the topsoil. 16 124 The district court concluded that NWF had standing to bring this challenge, see Findings on Standing, at 22-23 (citing Smith Aff.). Industry now argues before us that the district court overlooked the existence of other regulations that impose protective conditions, thereby limiting possible harm stemming from the newer regulations. This argument, however, goes not to standing, but to the substantive validity of the new regulations. 125 Industry also challenges as speculative the Smith affidavit upon which the district court relied. See, e.g., Brief for Industry at 29 (concluding that Ms. Smith would be injured only upon the chance occurrence of eight events, one of which it deems to have only a 0.8% chance of occurring). We disagree; Ms. Smith alleged injury with sufficient plausibility and specificity when she asserted: 126 I am concerned that since our farmland contains prime farmland soils located over [a lessee coal company's] mineral holdings that our farming productivity will suffer as a result of [the company's] future mine. I am especially concerned with the surface impacts and disturbances that the future mine may produce, particularly related to the redistribution and spreading of additional soils from the disturbed area over non-disturbed topsoil. 127 See Smith Aff. at p 4 (emphasis added). We again recall this court's caution in Autolog Corp., 731 F.2d at 31, that we are concerned ... not with the length of the chain of causation, but with the plausibility of each of the links that comprise the chain. The Smith affidavit evinces an altogether reasonable fear of threatened harm. Accordingly, we conclude that NWF has standing to challenge this regulation. 128