By Frank Young

Barely nine days after declaring that valley fills of coal surface mining wastes are illegal, Federal Judge Charles Haden granted a stay of his October 20th order prohibiting the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) from granting further mining permits based on this mining method. He issued the stay, pending appeal, not because the defendants motions for the stay were convincing, he said. Rather the Judge said he issued the stay because he wanted to diffuse irrational fears generated by political exaggeration and hyperbole.

In issuing the stay, Judge Haden apparently also slowed down the West Virginia congressional delegation's plunge toward enacting legislation that would negate much of the federal Clean Water Act and Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act.

Corporate spin meisters and their rented politicians often accuse environmentalists of overstatement and misinformation. But exaggeration designed to create an artificial public frenzy has taken on record levels of official endorsement recently in West Virginia.

A federal judge's simple ruling that putting surface mining overburden directly into streams violates 100 foot stream protection zones has spawned one of the biggest official public hoaxes we've ever witnessed.

The ridiculous assertions and implications that the economy of West Virginia is coming to a screeching halt are heard from the governor, from the tax commissioner, and from the entire congressional delegation. These folks put the best paid negative spin doctors for any organization to shame.

The governor has said that the decision would end all surface mining in West Virginia. An official of a mining lobbying organization even said that fill construction, including shopping centers, housing development and highway construction in the entire United States would cease! Their aim appears to be to create a phony public frenzy to support a public backlash against the court's straightforward decision.

For years coal companies and West Virginia environmental regulators said that water quality laws didn't apply to anything related to mining. Now all of a sudden they claim it applies to everything.

The roar of exaggerations from officialdom on the effect of the court's ruling is deafening. Who can hear the real message over the orchestrated roar?

The governor and coal operators working in concert with him are using coal miners as pawns in a political chess game. These workers and their union should be incensed that their livelihood is viewed so lightly by their governor and their employer. Their plight is the result, not of a court's order that the state obey the law, but by decades of coal companies, through political manipulation, running the regulatory agencies and inviting the very lawsuit that brought about the court's order.

For years the governor has been saying that the Department of Environmental Protection has been following the law. Now that the court has determined otherwise, the governor and coal industry blame the court, blame environmentalists, blame the messengers in the media, blame anyone but the most obvious culprits -- themselves. They are like street thugs and gangsters who have never had to be accountable. They've bullied their way through decent society all their life. When brought to the bar of justice they deny all method of rehabilitation, and blame their plight on the courts, on their alleged harassers, and claim purity.

Instead of creating deception and promoting desperation, Governor Underwood should be calling for thoughtful study and deliberation of the forty nine page injunction before inciting other governmental officials and the public to retaliation.

The court's decision doesn't affect all mining, not by a long shot. Assertions to the contrary are deliberate exaggerations. The decision doesn't affect construction of shopping centers, housing or highways. Assertions to the contrary are deliberately deceptive. It affects only mining that would put the "waste" from surface mining into the designated types of streams. Mining methods can continue that put the spoil back up on the mined bench. Mining can continue on sites that put the spoil into only wet weather streams. I suspect that more mining operations will soon apply these methods.

By promoting deliberate misunderstanding, government and industry officials are contributing to an official social atmosphere based on overstatement, exaggeration and deliberate deception.

Governor Underwood owes his economic and political life to King Coal. Now that King Coal's absolute control is threatened, it is calling in the chips from Cecil Underwood. The only way he can produce those chips now is to cash in his public capital to create an atmosphere of artificial indignation and public pressure to either change the court's order, or to change the law, so that the coal industry can continue to regulate itself.

But to change the law by slipping secret riders into unrelated legislation without public deliberation is simply undemocratic and is a slap in the face to generations of Americans who gave their fortunes and their lives for a representative government.

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy thanks Federal Judge Charles Haden for his honest assessment of the laws governing mining and water quality. All we asked of the court was an honest hearing. It is refreshing that our assertions that the law means what it says have been validated. It is unfortunate that a small group of citizens had to go all the way to federal court to force its own state government to take notice.

It is equally unfortunate that the Court had to stay its order to lower the level of public frenzy created by official misinformation, orchestrated at the highest levels.

It has been said that coal is a dying industry. It seems determined to take with it as much of us as it can.