MORGANTOWN — Though he believes West Virginia will end up in litigation with the Environmental Protection Agency over tough new standards for surface mine permits, the state’s top environmental official apologized Wednesday for saying federal regulators would “pay the price” for illegal or unfair enforcement.

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman called the EPA to apologize for the tone of remarks he made in an interview with The Associated Press, DEP spokeswoman Kathy Cosco said.

Huffman contended in the interview that the EPA is holding West Virginia to greater scrutiny in strip mine permitting than any of the other five states it’s targeted, and he predicted the continuing conflict over the new standards may end up in court.

Several DEP employees were attending a meeting with EPA staff in Pittsburgh on Wednesday and Thursday over new water-quality standards imposed April 1 on six states. Huffman argues the standards are not only unattainable, but also being unfairly enforced.

“They are wrong on a lot of levels,” Huffman said of federal regulators, whose rules also apply to Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Tennessee.

“None of the other five states are feeling this pain. No one is being scrutinized like we are,” he said in his AP interview. “If what EPA is doing is illegal, they will pay the price.”

Huffman said his staff will “do more listening and asking questions than talking” to EPA officials this week. “I can promise you, there will be much that will be said in this two-day meeting that will be held against them later.”

Cosco said “frank exchanges” between DEP and EPA are not uncommon. The Region 3 administrator is familiar with Huffman’s argument that rules should be applied universally, “and that one state and one industry should not be unfairly targeted,” she said.

Huffman also issued a follow-up statement, saying it’s easy to forget that both agencies want to protect the state’s water quality.

“Regardless of what I say about the process, I have not forgotten that and I will not forget it,” he said.

EPA spokeswoman Terri White said the guidance was intended to provide a consistent review framework for the regional offices and to prevent “significant and irreversible damage to Appalachian watersheds at risk from mining.”

EPA ensures the new standards are applied “fairly and consistently” across the six states by holding weekly conference calls between headquarters and staff in regional offices, she said.

White said this week’s meeting, which grew out of an annual meeting of state program managers in May, will include representatives from environmental agencies in West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, as well as officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Office of Surface Mining and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Officials from Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio are not attending the Pittsburgh meeting.

The EPA’s new policy, which is open for public comment through Dec. 1, could curtail mountaintop removal mining, a highly efficient and destructive form of strip mining that blasts apart mountaintops to expose multiple seams of coal. The resulting waste is dumped into valleys, covering intermittent streams.

EPA says burying streams increases salt levels in waterways downstream, hurting fish and other aquatic life. It says its new standards would protect 95 percent of aquatic life.

The industry argues the new standards would effectively shut down strip mining, devastating coal companies and communities that depend on the jobs. The National Mining Association says the six targeted states produced more than 150 million tons of coal and employed nearly 20,500 people in 2008.

Huffman said the rules have essentially brought permitting in West Virginia to a halt. Bruce Scott, commissioner of Kentucky’s Department for Environmental Protection, said his state is feeling it, too.

More than a dozen Kentucky projects are in limbo, and operators lined up behind them for permit approvals are also forced to wait.

“The practical result is, it’s slowed things down considerably,” he said.

Kentucky has many more mines than West Virginia, but most are considerably smaller, Scott said. Many have already been forced to shut down and lay off workers.

Kentucky adopted new stream-monitoring requirements in anticipation of new EPA policies, and its system focuses on testing for contaminants after the fact. It gives the Kentucky DEP the ability to revisit permits if testing shows effluent is likely to harm water quality or aquatic life.

“The difference, then, is that EPA’s approach presumes an impact,” Scott said. “The Kentucky approach says, ’Let’s determine whether there’s an impact, then go back and assess what to do.”’

Kentucky considers its approach reasonable, but the likelihood of litigation over the federal approach “depends on what EPA’s ultimate line in the sand is,” Scott said. “One of the avenues ahead for everybody is litigation.”

If West Virginia isn’t the first state to sue, Huffman said it will quickly follow whoever does — whether it be another state, an industry association or an individual operator affected by the new rules.

While DEP agrees with much of what EPA has to say, Huffman said, “they have taken it to such an extreme that it makes it an impossible standard for the industry to meet.

“The disagreement is not about the big picture,” he said. “It’s about details.”