Three small creeks in southwestern Greene County, where Foundation Mining wants to start a big, new mine, deserve the state's highest stream protections, according to new studies commissioned by environmental groups fighting the mining proposal.

The studies of fish populations and aquatic life in House Run, Hoge Run and McCourtney Run, all tributaries of the South Fork of Tenmile Creek, provide new support for recent stream reassessments done by the state Department of Environmental Protection that upgrade the classifications of those streams from "high quality warm water fisheries" to "exceptional value" -- the state's highest, most protective designation.

Those classification changes, along with the new studies' findings, could impact Foundation's plans to open a new 9,438-acre longwall mine in 2013 around the town of Holbrook, seven miles west of Waynesburg.

"We hope that Foundation will carefully protect streams with the new designations as it moves forward with its permit application," said Brian Glass, attorney for Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, one of the environmental groups that commissioned the studies. "It's possible it would be less expensive for the company to move mining operations to another site outside those watersheds."

Foundation Mining officials could not be reached for comment.

Foundation, the nation's fourth largest producer of underground coal, has applied to the DEP for a permit for the new underground longwall mine, which would cause immediate subsidence in the streams' watersheds and discharge mine waste water into the surface flows.

Foundation also petitioned the state Environmental Quality Board in February 2008 to reclassify the streams as "warm water fisheries," a less protective classification that would make it easier and cheaper to undermine a nearly 15-square-mile area containing the watersheds and build a coal preparation plant, sludge ponds and a "valley fill" where waste rock could be dumped on top of the streams. No EQB vote on Foundation's reclassification request has been scheduled.

The DEP isn't prohibited from approving mining operations in an exceptional value watershed but hasn't done so for at least a decade.

Helen Humphreys, a DEP spokeswoman, said the department is continuing to collect data on the creeks, and the new, more protective creek classifications will be a factor in the department's decision on the mining permit.

Petitions requesting stream redesignations are rare, especially from commercial companies. Almost all such petitions come from nonprofit watershed groups seeking to upgrade existing stream designations.