| By Bob Weaver
Yesterday, we reported that West Virginia is lagging in developing a plan to control water in the Mountain State.
We suggested if history holds true, the state' water rights will go like its' other natural resources - little left behind for public services, infrastructure, jobs and development.
Also left behind, disturbed environment and pollutants.
Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette reports this week that
an ever-shrinking list of protected West Virginia streams is still stalled at the Statehouse.
A legislative committee delayed any discussion of a state Department of Environmental Protection proposed rule that contains the shrinking list.
Ward reported industry lobbyists still think the list is too long, while environmentalists are trying desperately to keep anymore streams from being removed from protected status.
The state Department of Environmental Protection has slashed a list of West Virginia streams targeted for extra protection nearly in half.
Gov. Joe Manchin has asked that 303 protected streams be reduced to 156 streams.
Manchin and WV legislators, after listening to coal industry lobbyists, requested the reduction.
The change will allow for several new mountaintop removal operations, where debris is used to fill in adjacent streams.
The protected designation allows a minimal amount of new pollution to enter a West Virginia stream.
West Virginia Environmental Council lobbyist Don Garvin says the new list is based on politics, not the law nor science.
The DEP will be submitting the new, shorter list to the Legislature in January.
Following Manchin's reduction plan, a federal judge ruled that settling ponds used to remove sediment from streams at mountaintop removal coal mines violates the Clean Water Act.
The ruling by US District Judge Chuck Chambers jeopardizes an industry-wide practice that's been used for decades.
Chambers also ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers doesn't have the authority to allow mines to discharge sediment into settling ponds.
Vivian Stockman, a leading environmentalist against mountaintop removal, says the movement against such practices will not be going away, but is getting stronger.
Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition says a federal court ruling says coal companies have violated the federal Clean Water Act.
"The industry practice has been illegal," she said.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers says the current practice violates a part of the law that protects streams at sediment treatment ponds built by the operators.
Stockman says federal regulators and the industry will appeal the ruling.
This week, committee Chairman Joe Minard, D-Harrison, said lawmakers had instructed the parties to meet and try to work out a compromise.
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