ABSTRACT
Massey Energy already owned a 168-foot-high silo that contained up to 10,000 tons of
coal in Raleigh County, WV near the Marsh Fork Elementary School. In the summer of
2005, the company wanted to build another one. Federal law prohibited the construction
of such energy facilities within 300 feet of a school and both would be within that perime-
ter. Over the objections of residents, the West Virginia Department of Environmen-
tal Protection granted a permit to build the second silo. Environmental regulators
said that years before the current restrictions were enacted a permit had been issued and
since the new silo was within the perimeter of that older approval there was nothing they
could do. That permit, they said, took priority over federal law (Ward, 2005a).
