Qualla: Spruce 1 https://qualla.com/spruce-1 en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Spruce 1 https://qualla.com/spruce-1 Spruce 1: Introduction https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ The Environmental Protection Agency had never used its authority quite this way before. On January 13, 2011, the agency invoked Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to revoke a coal-mining permit that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had already issued. The mine was called Spruce 1. It would have been one of the largest mountaintop-removal operations ever permitted in Appalachia - 2,278 acres of West Virginia ridgetop blasted away and deposited into adjacent valleys to expose the coal seams beneath. Arch Coal had been pushing the permit since 1997. The fight over Spruce 1 became, for a few years, the central legal proxy battle for the entire question of whether federal regulators could meaningfully restrict mountaintop coal mining. The litigation went all the way up the federal courts twice. In the end, the veto stood.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Spruce 1: What Mountaintop Removal Does https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ To understand what Spruce 1 was, picture a mountain. Then picture engineers using explosives and draglines to take the top off - hundreds of vertical feet of rock, soil, and forest - and pushing the resulting overburden into the headwater streams of the next valley over. What rem...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-what-mountaintop-removal-does.mp3 0:06 2 full Spruce 1: The Permitting Marathon https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ Arch Coal first proposed Spruce 1 in 1997, originally as a 3,113-acre operation, later trimmed to 2,278. The Army Corps of Engineers, which handles Clean Water Act permits for filling stream channels, took over reviewing the application in 2005. The Corps issued the permit on Jan...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-the-permitting-marathon.mp3 0:06 3 full Spruce 1: The EPA Veto https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ In October 2010, Shawn Garvin, the EPA's Mid-Atlantic regional administrator, formally recommended against the project on the grounds that the mine would 'likely have unacceptable adverse effects on wildlife.' On January 13, 2011, the EPA pulled the permit - the first time the ag...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-the-epa-veto.mp3 0:06 4 full Spruce 1: What It Meant https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ The Spruce 1 fight mattered not just for the 2,278 acres it covered but as a signal about what federal regulators could and could not do. The D.C. Circuit's 2013 ruling - that the EPA does have the authority to revoke a previously issued permit under the Clean Water Act - changed...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-what-it-meant.mp3 0:06 5 full Spruce 1: Flying Over Appalachia's Argument https://qualla.com/spruce-1/ The Spruce 1 site sits in the West Virginia coalfields, where the topography from the air is itself a record of the mining debate. Active and former mountaintop mines appear as flat tan or grey plateaus where mountains used to rise - sometimes reclaimed as grassland or pine plant...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/v/spruce-1-wp/dnvv-spruce-1-flying-over-appalachias-argument.mp3 0:06 6 full