PennEnergy:

The governor of Kentucky has sued the Environmental Protection Agency over coal mining permits. Gov. Steve Beshear’s administration and The Kentucky Coal Association filed a complaint October 18 in U.S. District Court in Pikeville. The industry group said the EPA’s blocking of state-issued permits over water pollution standards is part of an agenda to end coal mining in the state, according to the Lexington-Herald Leader. The governor of West Virginia filed a similar lawsuit earlier in October. The Kentucky complaint said EPA’s blocking of state-issued permits over water pollution standards put forth in an April 2010 memo amount to the executive branch taking legislative action and an improper deviation from the Clean Water Act of 1977.
In the April memo, the EPA adopted standards of conductivity — described as a measure of dissolved minerals and salts — in water discharged from coal mines. The agency used the standards to block 11 state-issued mining permits in several counties because of poor water quality in the region. The EPA approved 30 permits just before adopting the standards, Beshear’s office told local media. The EPA has said that surface coal mining has so damaged the environment of Central Appalachia that regulations are needed to limit the practice. The agency, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of the Interior, have taken other steps to regulate mining. This includes ending the use of the Nationwide Permit 21— reputed to be a less stringent water pollution permit — in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee.The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have petitioned the EPA to take over coal mine permitting, saying Kentucky doesn’t do an adequate job of protecting water.

The rest here.