After our discovery of what appeared to be a significant amount of mining taking place outside the permit boundaries provided by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP), we did a little digging to try and get a better idea of what exactly happened.

With the help of colleagues at Appalachian Voices, we found that a Notice of Violation (NOV) was issued for the Taywood West mine on February 22, 2018 (see the NOV here), for a sediment violation on the southern side of the mine. After some additional investigation, Appalachian Voices found that the Taywood West mine has had two boundary revisions over the course of its lifetime. One of these revisions accounted for ~35 acres of the disturbed area we previously wrote about.

As of the time of writing, the updated permit boundary for the Taywood West Surface mine is still not present in the data available from to WVDEP. We were able to georeference the WVDEP’s updated permit map (see above), and display it over PlanetScope imagery. To see the discrepancy yourself, check out the slider below:

It is not clear why this permit boundary revision has not yet been included in the official mine permits database provided by WVDEP. But this example serves to highlight that — in addition to enabling scientific research — our mine footprint map can be used in a monitoring capacity as well, by anyone interested in watchdogging this mining activity. You can view our surface mining data here.