The Spruce No. 1 coal mine case is a welcome crimp in federal power
In 2007, the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit that authorized Mingo Logan Coal Co., a subsidiary of Arch Coal, to dump material from its Spruce No. 1 coal mine into nearby streams.
The company needed the permit to expand the mine.
The mine eventually would have led to the employment of 250 people and the production over 15 years of about 44 million tons of coal.
But when the Obama administration took office, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asserted the power to review such permits, and in 2011 revoked the Spruce No.1 permit.
This was unprecedented. Never before had the agency retroactively revoked a permit the Corps had granted.
The company sued and on Friday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C., an Obama appointee, ruled the EPA had overstepped its bounds.