Coal industry supporters turned out in big numbers for public hearings held yesterday on an Obama administration proposal to more strictly regulate mountaintop removal mining -- and some of them attempted to shout down opponents of the environmentally destructive practice.



The hearings organized by the Army Corps of Engineers drew an overflow crowd to a 740-seat auditorium in Charleston, W. Va., while a crowd reportedly in the "thousands" -- including miners given the workday off by their employers -- packed the Eastern Kentucky Exposition Center in Pikeville, Ky.

The Kentucky crowd was described as "rowdy," while mining supporters in West Virginia attempted to shout down those speaking in favor of tougher regulation, the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reports:

...[H]undreds of coal supporters repeatedly jeered and shouted down mountaintop-removal opponents, drowning out most of the speakers who showed up to support the plan.

Corps District Engineer Col. Robert Peterson, dressed in camouflage alongside agency staffers in business attire, gently waved his hands and politely asked coal supporters to behave themselves. But Peterson refused several requests that the corps ask local police or security to remove the offenders.

"This hearing tonight is not being conducted in a fair manner," said Daniel Chiotos, an activist with the West Virginia Environmental Council. "Those cheers are the cheers of a mob, and a mob is not the way democracy works."

The corps is taking comments about the proposed modification or suspension of what's known as "Nationwide Permit 21," a type of general permit that streamlines the approval process for what are known as "stream fills" or "hollow fills," in which excess dirt and other materials blasted off by mountaintop removal operations are dumped into the valley below.

Besides destroying more than 470 Appalachian peaks, the practice has polluted or buried more than 1,200 miles of streams. Earlier this year the Environmental Protection Agency asked the corps to take a closer look at the impact these operations are having on water quality.

But coal miners and other representatives of the industry say they fear that changes in the permitting process for mountaintop removal operations would cause a loss of jobs in a region where good-paying work is already tough to find.

Yesterday's events in Charleston and Pikeville were among six hearings being held this week by corps throughout the Appalachian coalfields. Another hearing was also held last night in Knoxville, Tenn., with additional hearings planned for Thursday in Big Stone Gap, Va.; Cambridge, Ohio; and Pittsburgh.

The Corps is also accepting written comments on the matter. They should be mailed by Monday, Oct. 26 to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Attn: CECW-CO (Ms. Desiree Hann), 441 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20314-1000. They can also be submitted at the federal eRulemaking portal under docket number COE-2009-0032.

UPDATE: Here's a video of the rowdy scene outside the West Virginia hearing courtesy of coalstories: