MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Five green groups assert that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had legal authority to veto water-pollution permits for one of West Virginia’s largest mountaintop removal mines, and that the federal judge who ruled otherwise improperly considered the potential economic implications.

In a brief filed recently with the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the environmental groups say Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s March ruling on the 2,300-acre Spruce No. 1 mine should be overturned “to prevent unacceptable harm to vital West Virginia waterways.”