U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville District
ATTN: Ms. Amy S. Babey, CELRL-OP-FN
P.O. Box 59
Louisville, Kentucky 40201-0059

                 RE:  Public Notice Number: LRL-2006-1333

Dear Ms. Babey,

As Chairperson of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC), a statewide citizen’s organization with a over 3,500 members, I would like to make our organization’s position on the reauthorization of the Nation Wide Permit known. KFTC has a 25-year history of work on mining and coal related issues both on the state and national level.

It is the position of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth that the Louisville District Office should stop allowing the use of general or nationwide permits sections 21, E and F in the Central Appalachian region for the following reasons:

• The Corps has ignored the many scientific studies contained in the Mountaintop Removal Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) that concluded environmental damage from mining is of “great concern” and “extreme ecological significance.”  The geographic focus of the study was WV, KY, VA and TN.
• From 1992 through 2002, mountaintop removal and other forms of surface mining and associated valley fills in Appalachian destroyed over 1,200 miles of streams and nearly 400,000 acres of forests (an area about ten times the size of the District of Columbia).  Here in Kentucky the Army Corps of Engineers has already allowed over 420 miles of blue-line streams to be buried by coal mining valley fills. This destruction is continuing at an alarming pace and allowing mining companies to continue to use NWPs would impact hundreds of additional miles of headwater streams.
• The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stated, “no other NWP category produces impacts greater than NWP 21” and that coal mining and valley fill operations in Appalachia cause “significant ecological damage to the headwater stream systems.”
• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says environmental impact of coalmines in Appalachia on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems as “unmitigatable” and “unprecedented.”
• The amount of earth moved by mining activities is sufficient by itself to demonstrate that the environmental impacts of mining are significant.  A recent study singles out mountaintop removal mining and valley fills in Kentucky and adjacent states as the greatest contributor to earth moving activity in the United States.
• While the Corps asserts that NWPs will not cause flooding, the U.S. Geological Survey says, “that large-scale surface mining is especially likely to increase the severity of flooding” during certain types of storms.
• The Army Corps of Engineers fails to take into consideration the cumulative impacts of multiple mining operations and associated valley fills on a given watershed.

Coal slurry impoundments should not be allowed under NWPs.  Section 404 of the Clean Water Act provides that an NWP can only be issued for activities that are “similar in nature.”  NWPs 21 and E could be used for both valley fills and coal slurry impoundments.  Coal slurry impoundments, however, are very different from valley fills and other types of stream impacts at mines.  The Corps has failed to analyze these differences, and has illegally lumped them together.

• Valley fills contain only solid materials–dirt and rock.  Surface impoundments contain liquid materials like coal slurry. A surface impoundment, unlike a valley fill, can fail and release millions of gallons of liquid mining wastes into downstream watersheds or seep into ground water. 
• In 2000, an impoundment failure in Martin County Kentucky spilled 306 million gallons of water and coal slurry (more than 27 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill) and damaged 75 miles of streams in Kentucky and West Virginia.  This was the second major breakthrough at this site, with an earlier one occurring in 1994.
• The Corps does not even recognize that impoundments can cause massive spills or contaminate well water.

Finally we would like both the District Commander and the Deputy Commander/Deputy District Engineer join KFTC members and the public to view first hand the direct and cumulative impacts of coal mining valley fills constructed under sections 21, E and F of the nation wide permit.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this process,

Doug Doerrfeld, Chairperson
Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
P.O. Box 1450
London, KY 40741