According to the Charleston Gazette, Massey’s two existing 168ft silos are located less than 300ft from Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia. Earlier maps submitted to the DEP by the company reveal the project is outside its 122-acre boundary; however, the land the project sits on was added to the permit boundary over the subsequent eight years without DEP acknowledgment or approval.

“We need to establish exactly where (the silos) are and then compare that to the different permit boundary lines that we have, and we’re not to that point yet,” said DEP mining and reclamation director Randy Huffman.

The permit changes were never specifically requested by Massey; instead, the changes were illustrated on maps the company’s engineers regularly filed with the agency. DEP officials said they did not notice the changes until a newspaper highlighted them last week.

“We had no clue we had a boundary adjustment,” said DEP deputy director Keith Porterfield. “We clearly made a mistake.”

In the DEP order, Huffman said “the boundaries of this permit depicted on the proposal and drainage map for this revision are clearly inaccurate in an area that may [be] subject to the prohibitions” on new mining facilities within 300ft of a school.

Massey spokesman Jeff Gillenwater told the Associated Press July 15 that he was not aware of the order by DEP and therefore could not comment.

Meanwhile, the legal representative for activist group Coal River Mountain Watch filed a formal notice of intent to sue the DEP because of its approval of the project. In the documents, Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment said his clients felt both silos were “within 300ft of the school on land that was not part of the [original] permit boundary” and that Massey “[had] apparently been moving in the direction of March Fork Elementary School”

The company took over the Goals Coal facility complex in 1994 from Peabody Coal, which operated it with union members for about a decade.