DEP Biologist Says Agency Chief Huffman Misled U.S. Senate


Charleston Gazette
21 August 2009
By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer

Read the DEP memo here.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection biologist has warned that DEP Secretary Randy Huffman misled Congress about the damage being done by mountaintop-removal coal mining, an internal agency memo shows.

Doug Wood, a stream assessment biologist with the DEP's Division of Water and Waste Management, said in his memo that he hoped Huffman "will be better informed the next time he represents our agency's current state of knowledge to federal authorities and elected representatives."

Wood wrote the three-page memo after Huffman testified at a June 25 Senate subcommittee hearing that the Obama administration has little evidence that mountaintop removal is doing much damage to Appalachian streams.

In the memo, Wood noted he had written numerous reports and memos on the issue since 2002 and "it appears that Secretary Huffman is unaware of the findings of our efforts to understand the effects of mountaintop coal extraction to aquatic ecosystems in West Virginia."

Wood said DEP studies are "consistent with data generated by the [U.S.] Environmental Protection Agency" regarding mountaintop removal causing negative impacts to the "chemical, physical and hydrologic ... components of aquatic ecosystems.

"With valley fill discharges, especially those from very large valley fills, we can expect the negative impacts to last for centuries, just as deep mine discharges have remained toxic for centuries," Wood wrote in the June 30 memo. "Such long-lasting adverse impacts are indeed significant."

Huffman said Friday he had not seen Wood's memo and could not respond to it until he had a chance to review it in detail.

Wood sent his memo not directly to Huffman, but forwarded it up the chain of command at the DEP to his supervisors, Jeff Bailey, John Wirts and Pat Campbell, in the water division's watershed assessment section.

Campbell, who is assistant water division director, said Friday he had looked at Wood's memo only after he heard that the Gazette-Mail had a copy of it.

"I'm really not so much concerned about the content, but with how this document got to you," Campbell said. "This was an internal memo that nobody has had a chance to read yet."