Amplifying Rosa Mine complaint...

Fourteen Alabama environmental organizations, led by the Alabama Rivers Alliance and including Friends of the Locust Fork River, have filed a petition with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strip the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) of its authority over water pollution permitting until it is able meet minimum requirements of the federal Clean Water Act.

“The water pollution permitting program administered by ADEM is fundamentally broken and does not meet minimum federal standards,” said Alabama Rivers Alliance Program Director Mitch Reid. “The failure is a systemic, statewide problem. From funding to implementation to enforcement, the failures of the current system are leaving the citizens and environment of Alabama unprotected,” he said.

The 77-page petition cites a number of deficiencies, including, among others, inadequate agency funding, failure to hire enough inspectors to handle the workload, failing to issue penalities for violations, failure to respond to citizen complaints, and inspecting only a fraction of the 100 percent of major permit holders required by law.

Reid said the Alliance’s plan was to file a document so definitive that the EPA would have no choice but to act.

“This latest filing reflects ADEM’s handling of water pollution problems in issuing its wastewater discharge permit last spring to MCoal Company for the Rosa Mine,” said Sam Howell, former Friends of the Locust Fork River president.

Last November, representing the Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the Friends of the Locust Fork River, the Southern Environmental Law Center petitioned ADEM for a hearing to challenge that permit. Among deficiencies in the permit cited were:

•allowing discharge of wastewater from the Rosa Mine into a segment of the Locust Fork listed as “impaired” by the Clean Water Act, a practice prohibited by the act.

•issuing the permit without a pollution abatement and prevention plan, as ADEM’s own rules require.

•granting exemptions from all pollution limits during periods of heavy rainfall, even though such limits are intended precisely to protect streams from storm water runoff.

The recent petition initiates a legal process that is expected to engage EPA, ADEM, and all interested parties in developing solutions to reform ADEM’s water permitting program, according to the Alabama Rivers Alliance. The goal is for Alabama’s water pollution permitting program to meet or exceed minimum federal standards under the Clean Water Act in order to protect the people and environment of Alabama, the agency said.