New report says good stripmining bill is poorly implemented

WORC’s new report says state and federal agencies are not achieving the goals of a key law enacted 30 years ago to protect society and the natural environment from damage by coalmining.

Nick Golder, Northern Plains member, explains how stripmining disrupts the flow of underground aquifers, at the news conference on August 3.

The report, Undermined Promise—Reclamation and Enforcement of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, reveals serious problems with land and water reclamation and inspection and enforcement of the law as well as with data collection and reporting. The report was released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and WORC at a news conference on August 3.

Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on August 3, 1977, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) set rules for surface mining and reclamation of mined land and provided for transfer of inspection and enforcement authority to states with approved programs. Congress intended to minimize harmful impacts of coal mining and to ensure either reclamation of mined lands to pre-mining conditions or to a beneficial post-mining use as contemporaneously as possible.

“Congress enacted a good law in 1977, but today it suffers from weak implementation and feeble enforcement,” said Helen Waller, a farmer from Circle, Montana, and WORC spokesperson. “We need a strong, vigorously enforced law to minimize the effects of coal mining on water, land, and the health and safety of local communities.” Waller and her husband, Gordy, attended the Rose Garden bill signing ceremony in 1977.
Among the report’s findings:

• State regulatory agencies in the five states failed to conduct the required number of mine inspections 80 percent of the time.
  
• The rate of reclamation in the West is shockingly slow. The reclamation that does occur is frequently inadequate and fails to mitigate environmental damage.
  
• During the 10-year period covered by the report, 22,906 acres were released from all three phases of bonding, achieving successful reclamation as set out in SMCRA. That is just under six percent as much land as was disturbed by mining during the same period, roughly 400,000 acres.
  
• Western ranchers working with the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) and state regulatory agencies report a policy of benign neglect towards enforcing the water protection, replacement and restoration requirements of SMCRA. OSM tends to focus almost exclusively on revegetation.
  
• OSM failed to include critically important data in its published reports.

“OSM’s own data show that the agency and states are not achieving SMCRA’s fundamental objectives—timely and complete reclamation and thorough, effective enforcement,” said Johanna Wald, NRDC’s senior attorney and report author.

“There are good places and bad places to mine coal,” said Ed Swartz, a rancher from Gillette, Wyoming, a member of the Powder River Basin Resource Council. He also attended the Rose Garden signing ceremony in 1977.

Swartz said the coalmines in Colstrip, Montana, and Gillette, Wyoming, are examples of good places to mine. “The Otter Creek tract in southeastern Montana and the Bull Mountains north of Billings are probably not good places to mine,” he said.

“SMCRA is a good model to follow,” Swartz added. “We need similar responsible legislation to protect surface owners, water, and taxpayers from irresponsible oil and gas drilling that’s occurring throughout much of the West.”

“We have reasonably tough, but workable, coal mining standards. We need the same for oil and gas production,” Swartz added.

Teri Blanton, with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, addressed the social and environmental costs of mountaintop removal. She said mountaintop removal in the East has destroyed more than one million acres of one of the most diverse hardwood forests in the world and more than 1,200 miles of headwater streams between 1985 and 2001.

“Mountaintop removal was supposed to be the exception to the rule,” Blanton said. “It was to occur only in areas that could be converted to a post-mining use. That isn’t happening, and now mountaintop removal is the rule, not the exception. It’s much cheaper to blow up the mountains. Three million pounds of explosives goes off every day in Kentucky alone.

“We have failed – as a state, as a nation – to fulfill Congress’s vision – that mining would be a temporary use of land, that the mined land would be restored to beneficial uses, and that mining methods would be driven by proper planning and environmental protection rather than by profit,” Blanton said.

In mountaintop removal, mining companies access thin coal seams by razing forest, scraping the topsoil and blasting off up to 800 feet of mountaintops with explosives to remove the mountain. In most cases, coal companies then dump millions of tons of former mountaintops into adjacent valleys.

“Although we don’t have mountaintop removal in the West, we do have aquifer removal,” said Nick Golder, a Rosebud County, Montana, rancher and Northern Plains Resource Council member. “Water is a serious matter in the West.”
Undermined Promise suggests eight policy recommendations:

• Require reclamation of water resources.
  
• Stop issuing permits for new mines or mine expansions in areas where strip-mined land remains unreclaimed after more than 10 years.
  
• Improve the bond release process.
  
• Strengthen terms of mine permits.
  
• Adopt a regulatory definition of “contemporaneous” reclamation.
  
• Improve reclamation success.
  
• Provide more funds to state agencies and OSM.
  
• Correct data problems.

WORC member tells congressional committee that stripmine law lacks enforcement

Testifying before the House Natural Resource Committee on the 30th Anniversary of SMCRA, Ellen Pfister, a Bull Mountain rancher represented both the Northern Plains Resource Council and the Western Organization of Resource Councils. Ellen told the committee that the law regulating coal mining is basically a good one but is poorly enforced. She cited three failures with the act:

Ellen Pfister, ranches near Shepherd, Montana. She testified before the House Natural Resource Committee in both 1972 and in 2007 on stripmining laws.

• SMCRA does not control impacts of the surface effects of longwall mining except at the mouth of the mine.
  
• The act did not anticipate the expansion of mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
  
• Coal mining companies do not reclaim water resources because the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), the administering agency, has inadequately enforced the law.

Pfister said the mining companies and regulatory agencies do not protect or adequately replace groundwater aquifers damaged by mining.

“I do not believe there is anything especially wrong with SMCRA, with the exception of not covering longwall mining and not coping with mountaintop removal, but I do believe that as an agency OSM has long been lacking intent to enforce SMCRA as it should be enforced,” Pfister told the committee.

Pfister’s ranch north of Shepherd, Montana, has been subject to proposed coalmines since the 1970s. She testified before the same committee in 1972 on a bill to temporarily ban stripmining, and she worked for passage of SMCRA. Her ranch is affected by the Bull Mountain coalmine, a longwall underground mine.

Longwall mining is an automated form of underground coal mining, feasible only in relatively flat-lying, thick, and uniform coalbeds. A high-powered cutting machine passes across the exposed face of coal, shearing away broken coal, which is continuously hauled away by a floor-level conveyor system. Water supplies, land, and buildings are often damaged by subsidence after the coal is removed.