[Coach_Owens87]

You say that your against illegal valley fills, but yet as I understood your previous post you said valley fills were legal prior to May of 2002 and are now illegal because of the 2002 rule clarification. Yet all of the anti-mining groups like OHVEC, Kentuckians for the Commwealth, Seirra Club and many others were claiming valley fills were illegal over 12 years because they violated the Clean Water Act which brought on the lawsuit in 1998.

Again you claim that your only against MTR and not all mining, but yet you are against illegal valley fills (which in my opinion all valley fills are 100% legal). I've also said on several occasions that if coal companies were not allowed to place material into valley fills, they would be out of business, which you claim is BS, brings to me this point, let's assume for the moment that valley fills were ruled illegal and could not be used by the mining industry. Let's assume a coal company wants to start a contour mining operation (which in the past you've said your ok with contour mining), assuming the permit calls for moving 100 million cubic yards of overburden and keep in mind that the overburden swells about 25% which would bring the total overburden to 125 million cubic yards, now you only able place about 80% of the original 100 million cubic yards back on the strip bench where it came from that leaves 20 million yards from the original yardage plus another 25 million yards from the swell which brings the total to 45 million cubic yards. Where will that additional yardage will go to?

Let's consider underground mines, whenever you make a site for underground mines you have to build roads and move overburden for the portals. Where will you place all of the overburden? Then you have slurry impoundments, I'm sure that if the coal industary wasn't allowed to build valley fills they surley would not be allowed to build slurry impoundents either. Where would coal companies place the rock that is removed from the coal when its processed through the prep plant?

This is why I said if your against valley fills then your against all types of mining and not just MTR because as I said earlier valley fills are used in every type of mining.

Now tell me haw can the coal industry operate surface or underground mines without the use of valley fills?

A big majority of valley fills do violate the clean water act, and just recently a federal judge agreed with this stance.

Old school, you really have a hard time understanding things, I never said that all valley fills where illegal prior to the 2002 rule change, all I stated is that the 2002 rule changed allowed valley fills to "legally" violate the clean water act. It made legal what was already happening. And to say that all valley fills are 100% legal is crazy, there is no industry in the world that does something 100% legal all the time, it just don't happen, and we have the facts to prove that coal companies do not make legal valley fills 100% of the time. Im sure a lot of companies do follow the rules, and thats good if they do, but I believe some severe changes need to made to those rules, and the CWA needs to be better enforced. Also the SMCRA which is over 30 years old, really needs to be overhauled.

We keep beating this dead horse over and over again. You keep trying to make me look like nutcase, and make it seem that I am against all mining, which im not.

The environmental damage done by MTR mining greatly surpasses that of underground mining. Underground mining does have some major problems though, like polluting the water with heavy metals like uranium, release of greenhouse gases like methane, and several other issues. MTR ,though, has accounted for millions of acres in destroyed forest, thousands of miles of buried streams, floods, land erosion, polluted drinking water and many other problems.

As far as your theoretical questions on Valley fills go, why dont you tell me where the overburden can go, and cause minimal amounts of environmental damage, you are the coal expert right? My guess would be to create a valley fill.

I never said that all valley fills are illegal, so the theoretical question you posed shouldn't be an issue. Again, Im against MTR. If MTR where to be stopped, the questions of these huge valley fills wouldn't be as big of an issue. The less land you disturb, the fewer valley fills you create. MY whole point is that Im against letting coal companies by with destroying this land. Things shouldn't be made easier for them. This issue could be solved by investing into future energy sources, and trying to make them more accessible and usable. Right now coal accounts for 22% of the worlds energy and 40% of all electricity, so 60% of electricity is coming from other sources, we need to invest more in these sources, and make sure that mining of minerals like coal is not destroying the environment.