An important court decision yesterday on mountaintop removal mining for coal has significant ramifications for future decisions.

Yesterday’s ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect clean water from coal mine and other destructive waste. As one attorney working on the case put it:

[The] decision upholds essential protection for all Americans granted by the Clean Water Act. Communities in Appalachia can finally breathe a sigh of relief knowing that EPA always has the final say to stop devastating permits for mountaintop removal mining. Now, we just need EPA to take action to protect more communities and mountain streams before they are gone for good.

Naturally, the industry’s backers in Congress are already threatening legislative action to take away the government’s authority to ensure clean water.  For example, David McKinley (R-WV) said that “Congress must be vigilant and fight against overreach by all executive agencies.”

At issue is a section of the Clean Water Act that allows the EPA to veto “dredge and fill” permits that let mining companies dispose of waste in streams and bodies of water. The permits are issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, but EPA has the authority to set certain areas off limits—effectively vetoing the permits—if it determines that dumping the waste will “have unacceptable adverse impacts” on recreation, wildlife, and the like.

But questions remained as to when EPA could veto these permits. In the particular case of the Spruce No. 1 mine, the EPA vetoed a permit to allow the mining company (a subsidiary of corporate giant Arch Coal) to dispose of waste from its mountaintop removal operation into three streams and their tributaries after the Army Corps had granted the permit.

The company sued, but the court ruled in favor of the EPA saying:

[This section of the Clean Water Act] imposes no temporal limit on the [EPA] Administrator’s authority to withdraw the Corps’s specification but instead expressly empowers him to prohibit, restrict or withdraw the specification “whenever” he makes a determination that the statutory “unacceptable adverse effect” will result.

This decision about when EPA can veto mining waste permits has major implications for what is gearing up to be one of the biggest natural resources battles in the coming years — the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. Multinational mining giants Anglo-American and Northern Dynasty are exploring a deposit of minerals including significant amounts of copper, gold, and molybdenum ore. If permitted, the mine would be located in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, the source of about 40 percent of our nation’s annual wild fish catch.

Like the Spruce No. 1 mine, the Pebble mine will need permits from the Army Corps of Engineers to dispose of its billions of tons of mining waste in nearby waterways.  Commercial fishermen and others fighting the proposed mine have asked the EPA to issue a preemptive veto of the permits by prohibiting the area from being a waste disposal site. The court’s decision yesterday that EPA may veto permits “whenever” has given these advocates an even stronger case in their fight against the mine.

Spurred by an upswell of local action, Tennessee is deliberating whether to stop blowing up its mountains for coal. Tennessee State Senator Eric Stewart (D-TN) recently spoke on behalf of the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, which would ban mountaintop removal on Tennessee peaks over 2,000 feet in Tennessee:

When a man blows up a mountain, he exceeds his authority. When a man tries to rebuild a mountain, he exceeds his ability. We have a duty to protect these mountains.

Watch it:

Stewart is retiring at the end of this session in order to run for Congress in Tennessee’s fourth Congressional District.

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Coal activists around the country have stepped up their efforts in recent years to fight the destructive mining process known as mountaintop removal, targeting politicians, coal companies, and banks that support and finance such projects. Activists in Charlotte were arrested earlier this year protesting Bank of America’s ties to mountaintop removal, while others staged a tree sit-in near Coal River Mountain in West Virginia to prevent a mountaintop removal project there.

In Kentucky, a state where mountaintop removal has destroyed more mountains than in any other state, protesters have staged sit-ins at the governor’s office and the statehouse throughout the year. Those activists visited the office of Gov. Steve Beshear (D) again yesterday, this time hoping to deliver a little holiday cheer and a few gifts for the governor who trumpeted his support for mountaintop removal and opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency during his re-election campaign in 2011, public radio station WFPL reports:

Governor Steve Beshear got an early Christmas gift from anti-mountaintop removal activists today. Protesters spent several hours in the governor’s office waiting for a chance to present him with lumps of coal.

The protest was an extension of a weekly event that’s been going on since February, but this time it had a holiday twist. Lexington teacher Martin Mudd dressed up as Santa Claus, and says he brought gifts for the governor.

“Santa brought the governor some lumps of coal and switches because he’s been a naughty boy in not doing everything that he can to protect the people of eastern Kentucky and our mountains and water,” he said.

Beshear’s support for the coal industry, and mountaintop removal in particular, has often placed him at odds with coal activists. In 2009, he angered activists by firing Ron Mills, the head of Kentucky’s mining permit division, after Mills refused multiple permits for Alliance Resource Partners, a Tulsa-based company with multiple mining sites in Kentucky. Beshear signed the permits over Mills’ objections, and Mills told the Lexington Herald-Leader that Alliance executives had lobbied for his firing.

But his support for mountaintop removal has drawn the most ire, and while yesterday’s protesters weren’t able to reach Beshear — both he and Lieutenant Gov. Jerry Abramson (D) were out of the office — they left a list of demands with their gifts. Among them: end mountaintop removal, employ workers left jobless by the coal industry through environmental reclamation projects, and help Eastern Kentucky build a sustainable economy that isn’t built on a destructive mining process clearly linked to cancer, birth defects, and numerous other chronic illnesses.

Bank of America, already a target of the 99 Percent Movement for its attempts to levy a $5-a-month fee on debit cards and other practices, is now under fire from environmental activists who want it to stop financing the coal industry and destructive mountaintop removal practices.

Yesterday, protesters aligned with the Rainforest Action Network and the local Occupy Charlotte rallied around Bank of America’s Charlotte, North Carolina, headquarters, chanting “Bank of America, Bank of Coal” and scaling nearby flagpoles, where they hung a sign that read, “Not with our money.” Eight were arrested as the activists sought to bring awareness to Bank of America’s ties to the coal industry, the Charlotte Observer reports:

Beka Stecky, a protester who lives in Charlotte, said the demonstrations are about pushing Bank of America to stop financing the coal industry and are a call to like-minded individuals to take their money out of the bank. A news release issued by the movement says that in the last two years, the bank has financed $4.3 billion in coal projects.

This isn’t the first time Bank of America has been a target of environmental activists. In August, 15 were arrested outside a Bank of America in St. Louis, and in May, protesters visited multiple Bank of America locations in Portland, Oregon.

Multiple banks finance the coal industry and, in particular, mountaintop removal. But after painting itself as a leader in environmental issues by announcing that it would “phase out” financing for companies that engaged in mountaintop removal in 2008, Bank of America drew the wrath of activists this year when it was discovered that it was still financing the practice. According to activists, Bank of America is among the largest financiers of the practice, underwriting loans to companies that perform 40 percent of the nation’s mountaintop removal projects.

The eight arrested activists were released from jail last night, according to RAN’s web site. But the organization promised this wouldn’t be the end of its protests targeting Bank of America. “As authorities attempt to evict Occupy protesters from public spaces across the country, those protesters are going to start showing up at Bank of America’s doorstep more and more,” the organization said on its web site. “Bank of America is in the center of the Occupy Movement because of its reckless financial practices that put profit before people and planet.”

The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met for annual meetings Tuesday in Washington, and while most of their talks likely centered on economic problems facing Europe and the United States, a delegation of activists from India called on the World Bank to follow through on proposed rules to cut funding for coal-burning power plants. And over the rest of the week, the Indian activists will travel to West Virginia to meet with activists who have fought coal plants and protested the use of mountaintop removal mining.

The Indian activists are visiting West Virginia to observe and learn the tactics used by American environmental activists and unite around the cause of saving the environment, as Vaishali Patil, a member of the delegation told InterPress Service:

“There is tremendous unrest,” Patil said, referring to the impact of the projects on her community. [...]

“I am looking forward to seeing what the civil society advocacy strategies are here,” Patil told IPS. “I want to learn from them, to share our struggle for community rights, for the right to natural resources, to save the land and sea – we feel this struggle is for our survival.”

As India’s economic growth continues, its reliance on coal has boomed. According to the Sierra Club, India authorized 150 coal-burning power plants in 2010 and plans to increase that number by 600 percent over the next 20 years. Though Indians consume much less energy per person than Americans, they are beginning to feel similar effects from coal-related pollution felt in West Virginia, where mountaintop removal mining in particular has destroyed mountains, contaminated water supplies, and caused health problems, including birth defects and cancer, in an untold number of local residents.

American activists have pushed back even as Republicans and anti-environment Democrats continue their attempts to make environmental destruction easier for coal and energy companies. Protesters temporarily blocked a mountaintop removal project in West Virginia by staging a week-long tree-sit, while other movements and stricter EPA rules have led to the closures of coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Kentucky, and other coal states. The Indian activists will get a first-hand look at West Virginia activists in action, as they will attend a Moving Planet Day rally there on Sept. 24, before further events take place in India.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien took a major look at mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia, bringing national media attention to the “rape of Appalachia.” Unfortunately, her “powerful documentary on mountaintop removal and the struggle to save Blair Mountain from obliteration” is told primarily through “eyes and experiences of seemingly embattled strip miners who are afraid of losing their jobs,” ignoring “the already displaced coal mining communities afraid of losing their lives,” writes Jeff Biggers.

The documentary is presented in a “jobs vs environment” frame that is “devoid of any actual analysis of whether that frame is appropriate,” writes Appalachian Voices’ Matt Wasson. In reality, coal jobs disappear once mountaintop removal is instituted, since it requires fewer miners than traditional mining practices. Furthermore, the rise in mountaintop removal has done nothing to disrupt the long-run trend of declining production from the Appalachians.

Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. is sympathetic to the “pretty balanced overview,” but believes the documentary failed by presenting coal as “the only possible future” for West Virginia’s children:

The problem was most simple. CNN interviewed Art Kirkendoll, who has been a county commissioner in Logan County for 30 years. They let him go on about what God does or doesn’t want done with West Virginia’s mountains.

But they didn’t bother to ask him about the fact that Logan County’s poverty rate is twice the national average, or why the college graduation rate there is one-third of the national average … They didn’t bother to ask him why kids in Logan County don’t deserve more than one option in life.

“It’s not just about ‘how a mountain looks,’” Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard critiques O’Brien. “Even though the segment falls short of what I hoped for, I guess I am glad to see MTR getting any coverage on cable television. I just wish they’d done a better job of it.”