By KATE MISHKIN
Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — After a federal judge decided the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weren’t doing enough to clean up hundreds of state streams, a panel of circuit judges instead sided with the EPA.
The citizen group, which included the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, filed the lawsuit in 2015, arguing that state regulators weren’t writing or implementing plans to clean up hundreds of streams affected by coal mining. The EPA didn’t do enough to hold the state DEP accountable, the lawsuit said.
Under the Clean Water Act, states are required to make a list of polluted waters, and the EPA is supposed to either approve the list or disapprove the list and come up with a new list in 30 days. States are required to come up with a total maximum daily load (TMDL) for water — the limit on pollutants that go into the water — and submit them to the EPA, which is supposed to approve that in 30 days.
Read the entire article: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/judges-reverse-clean-water-act-decision/article_c247d7b9-2d3c-5fc8-a69a-85fc928cde39.html
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