This is a showdown that's been months in the making. The EPA has been giving increased scrutiny to Corps of Engineers permits for blasting the tops off of Appalachian mountains to get at the coal underneath.

But would the agency be willing to take the ultimate step: using the agency's powers under the Clean Water Act's Section 404(c) to initiate what would be only the 13th veto since 1972?

Today comes news from Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward Jr. that the EPA is indeed taking the first step to veto the largest mountaintop mining permit of them all.

In a letter to the Corps of Engineers' district boss in West Virginia, EPA regional administrator William C. Early wrote that the EPA wasn't taking this step lightly:

"While we recognize that the project has been modified to reduce projected impacts, the project will still bury more than seven miles of streams and additional analyses ...provide evidence that there is the potential for its associated discharges to cause further stream degradation."

The question now is what will the Corps and the mining company do next: modify the permit to deal with the EPA's questions? Or turn to Congress and other politicos to pressure the EPA to back down?

And what other big wetlands permits might the EPA start cracking down on? When we wrote "Paving Paradise", the agency had become more of a lapdog than a watchdog. Could it now have regained its teeth?