The President and Congress Deliver $11 Billion for Abandoned Mine Cleanups

Until about half a century ago, coal was king in southern Illinois. Home to the largest deposit of steelmaking metallurgical coal in the country, Illinois was one of the cradles of the nation’s labor movement. It employed hundreds of thousands of people at its peak in the 1920s. And though the number of Illinois mines has dwindled to double digits, it remains the fourth-largest coal producing state in the U.S.

Spoiled lands and waters was the cost of doing business. Coal companies routinely walked away from gaping chasms in the land, polluted streams, and deforestation. As hotspots for this early, unregulated mining, the three states which make up the Illinois coal basin — Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana — have some of the highest environmental burdens from abandoned mines.

For the last 45 years, the U.S. chipped away at these cumulative environmental damages. Since the country began regulating abandoned mines in 1977 under the Abandoned Mine Land program, the country spent $5 billion, and about $400 million in the Illinois basin, to repair clogged and polluted streams, recontour steep highwalls, and reforest denuded landscapes.

But the program, funded by a per-ton tax on coal extraction that was not tied to inflation, was never going to be enough. The Illinois basin still has over 30,000 acres of unreclaimed land and waters, joining over 3 million acres nationwide.

Mine Cleanup Law Weakened By Coal’s Decline

In the late 1970s, a golden age for American coal, skyrocketing oil prices coupled with rising demand for electricity set off a boom in coal-fired power plants. The New York Times declared that the industry hung up a giant “Help Wanted” sign. Coal production was set to roughly double over the next 20 years. 

So in August of 1977, when the nation’s coal mine cleanup law went into effect, it reflected the market’s optimism. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act allowed the states to hold a bond to pay for cleanups if the mining company couldn’t. Lawmakers figured that bankruptcies would be few and far between. To enforce cleanup, the law allowed states to revoke mining permits, a prized commodity. 

Forty-five years later, coal is in free fall. The threat of revoking permits no longer holds the force it once did. 

The mine cleanup law, however, no longer reflects current conditions. It is still built for the industry’s roaring ‘70s. The issue boils down to the fact that the government is not collecting enough money to pay for cleanup. 

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
 

Speaking of Water Podcast: Tap Water Failures and Distrust of Government: A Conversation with Manny Teodoro

Bad tasting and polluted tap water are not just infrastructure problems. Municipal drinking water failures like the crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, are also threats to government legitimacy.

That’s one of many arguments that Manny Teodoro and co-authors Samantha Zuhlke and David Switzer make in a compelling new book titled The Profits of Distrust. 

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