by STEVE IGO

CLINTWOOD — The supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office in Abingdon says a conflict of interest does not exist because of her membership in a local social activist/environmental organization.

Roberta Hylton said she once served on the board of directors of the Abingdon-based Coalition for Jobs and the Environment and remains active in the group.

The CJE and its members have been at the forefront of opposition to a Mountain Forest Products wood chip processing facility since the parent company, Pittston Coal, announced its intentions to build and operate the mill on a former coal processing site in Dickenson County.

Before the mill could operate, the company sought and received a pair of permits that Hylton, in her official federal capacity, has now challenged. One is a water discharge permit under the ultimate control of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the other is a post-mining land-use permit under the auspices of the federal Office of Surface Mining.

The permits were actually issued by Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality and the state Division of Mined Land Reclamation. The EPA and OSM have oversight authority over the state agencies.

In a Sept. 17 letter to OSM Regional Director Allen Klein and EPA Regional Administrator Michael McCabe, Hylton asserts that logging operations to feed the chip mill might harm federally listed threatened and endangered species in the upper Tennessee and Big Sandy watersheds. She has asked the OSM and the EPA to suspend the permits until the potential effects of Pittston’s logging plans on endangered species can be studied.

Hylton told the Times-News she is doing her job ‘‘to protect and conserve (endangered species) for the public good.’’

She said the DEQ and the DMLR did not take into consideration the potential threat that Pittston’s logging operations might pose to endangered species. The DMLR doesn’t regulate logging, and the DEQ’s water discharge permit involves only the chip mill site, not Pittston’s 150,000 acres of woodlands.

Hylton said when any federal agency issues a permit ‘‘they must consider all interdependent actions’’ that might harm endangered species. The DMLR isn’t in the logging regulatory business, she said, but the EPA and OSM must consider potential impacts to endangered species.

‘‘We are trying to protect threatened species of these watersheds,’’ Hylton said.

Until Pittston’s logging plans are analyzed, she said, ‘‘we have no idea what those impacts are. What I’m saying is that somebody needs to look at their plans ... and if need be we can work with them to modify those plans or work something out.’’

DMLR acting Director Roger Williams said he was a little befuddled by it all.

‘‘I hate that it has taken this turn. ... Basically that was a land-use decision on the permit — to change the post-mining use to develop a chip mill on that site,’’ he said.

‘‘All we did was approve the change. Pittston basically wanted to reclaim (the site), and industrial development is an approved land use. In fact, it was reclaimed to a higher and better land use ... than we usually see.’’

Both Williams and OSM’s Ian Dye praised Pittston’s restoration of what was an old coal processing site.

‘‘I’m not sure I fully understand where she’s coming from on that,’’ Williams said. ‘‘From our perspective, it was a site that really needed reclaim work on it, and the company did a fantastic job. That is one really successful reclamation effort.’’

Dye, who works in the OSM’s Big Stone Gap field office, said the chip mill site was an ecological mess before Pittston did its reclamation work.

It is not the site the chip mill is on that concerns Hylton. It is how logging operations that will feed the mill will affect endangered species like mussels and bats.

The DEQ’s water discharge permit and the DMLR’s post-mining use permit, when linked to potential harm from logging operations, provide her with the ‘‘nexus,’’ she said, to ask the EPA and OSM to suspend those permits. Then all agencies can determine whether the company’s logging plans might violate the Endangered Species Act.

Walter Crickmer, an Allied Resources vice president in charge of Pittston’s forest operations, said his company plans to conduct logging operations on 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the company’s 150,000 acres per year.

‘‘We’re looking at a cut on 1,200 to maybe 1,500 acres a year,’’ Crickmer said. ‘‘And we’re talking best management practices. We have five or six professional foresters to manage our forestlands for the future.’’

The chip mill employs six people. An adjacent sawmill to produce crossties and higher-grade lumber products, now being built, will employ another 25 people.

Wood chips ‘‘go all over’’ and for use in a wide range of other products, Crickmer said. ‘‘It’s the white paper industry, mostly. From paper you write on to Kleenex to toilet tissue. Everybody uses wood chips products in one form or another.’’

Crickmer said the company spent ‘‘hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars’’ to reclaim the old Moss No. 1 Prep Plant site. Logging operations will actually result in a healthier, more productive forest, he said.

Logging operations of the past took the best timber from a stand, leaving behind poorer-quality timber instead of the high-grade hardwoods. What gets fed into a chip mill is ‘‘the lowest of the low-grade stuff’’ that never would be marketed otherwise, he said.

When scrub trees are removed, foresters manage the sites to produce high-grade trees such as red oak and white oak.

‘‘There’s no additional logging going on. We’re just doing a better job at managing these properties,’’ Crickmer said. ‘‘We intensely manage our forests in Virginia working with both the state and federal agencies.’’

Crickmer claims the Fish and Wildlife Service ‘‘signed off’’ on the permits that Hylton now challenges. He also said her concerns that the company’s logging operations will harm the environment are ‘‘just ludicrous.’’

The DEQ and the DMLR, Crickmer added, ‘‘didn’t have a problem with this. In fact, they were tickled to death.’’

The former coal processing site was ‘‘pre-law’’ and Pittston didn’t have to reclaim it. Crickmer said the company ‘‘built the mill right there, and we took it upon our own to do it right.’’

Crickmer said the chip/sawmill will pump $7 million a year into the local economy once the sawmill comes on line.

As for Hylton’s association with the group that has vigorously opposed the company’s mill and logging plans, Crickmer said a federal employee with the authority to derail a legal business should avoid at least the appearance of a conflict of interest.

‘‘It’s not for us to decide what is a conflict of interest for Ms. Hylton. I’m sure there are other federal agencies that can do that,’’ he said.

‘‘But we do think it very odd that someone who has a direct role in the permitting process, and is a director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, to be a past member of a board of directors, and is an active member of one of the most radical environmental groups in the Appalachian area. They stand against all mining, all logging, and oil and gas.’’

Hylton said she chose not to serve on the CJE board any longer because she ‘‘decided not to do that for a while.’’

She said her involvement with the CJE does not violate conflict of interest laws and that she can ‘‘legally do it ... it is technically legal under ethics laws.’’