Appeals court to hear arguments in case dealing with Logan County mine

Oral arguments will begin to be heard Thursday morning by an appeals court on the Environmental Protection Agency’s veto of water pollution permits for one of West Virginia’s largest mountaintop removal mines.

Each side in the case is scheduled to have 15 minutes for arguments in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It will begin at 9:30 a.m.

The case stems back to 2011 when the EPA first denied a permit which the Army Corps of Engineers had handed out four years earlier to St. Louis based Arch Coal for its Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County.

The EPA claimed the mines activity would create permanent damage to the environment and be harmful for residents.

Industry officials, lawmakers and state regulators want the appeals court to uphold a lower court’s ruling that EPA overstepped its authority in pulling the permit. Environmentalists want to see the ruling overturned.