About 50 activists opposed to the energy company and its practices marched past the facility, while more than two dozen Massey supporters waved signs of support for the company and the coal industry in general outside the entrance to Marsh Fork Elementary School. The Goals Coal facility stands about 80m from the primary school.

Activists, there to continue demanding the company tear down the one existing silo near the school, chanted, “tear it down, it’s illegal; tear it down, save our kids”. Coal River Mountain Watch, one of the groups present, actively protests against mountaintop coal removal and has targeted Massey heavily in recent months.

Massey supporters, meanwhile, held their ground in front of March Fork. “My husband works for Massey,” one woman’s sign read. “My child goes to this school. We’re OK with it.”

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is still investigating the permits for the existing silo and the now-suspended permit for the proposed new one. State and federal law mandates no new mining operations are permitted within 100m of a school

In 2003 and again in June 2005, the department approved the silo permits anyway, saying the silos were exempt from the 100m-limit because they were within the permit boundary of an operation that existed prior to the August 1977 passing of the Mining Control and Reclamation Act, the federal act that includes the 100m rule.

Questions still remain on the accuracy of the maps submitted on behalf of Massey when it submitted both permits.

“We found a problem and we fixed it. Period,” commented DEP secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer. “We are acting swiftly to remedy the problem with the maps.”

Timmermeyer said the department was still waiting on the results of a site survey it hoped would determine the silo’s location as well as the original permit boundary.

“We must rely on the maps submitted to our agency by licensed professional engineers, who, by law, certify that the maps submitted as part of a permit application are true and accurate,” she said in a statement. “We need to make sure we hold companies and consultants to a high standard of accuracy and we have checks and balances in place to ensure the information we use to make permit decisions is the best available.”

Conservationists have called on Timmermeyer to resign over her department’s bungling.