U.S. hasn't set aside enough money to reclaim coal mines - Entrepreneur Generations

CHN graphic; click on the image to enlarge it.

According to national data compiled and published for the first time yesterday, the mining industry may not have enough money set aside to clean up and reclaim abandoned mines. "Mining companies and state governments hold just $9.2 billion nationwide to ensure mining land is reclaimed if operators go bust. Experts told CHN that amount falls far short of what is needed to rehabilitate more than two million acres of mining permits the system is supposed to cover," Mark Olalde reports for Climate Home News. "The data covers all 23 states that produce 99 percent of U.S. coal and about 5,000 mining permits. It was gathered from responses to dozens of records requests submitted to the state environmental and mining agencies in charge of each state’s program."

The shortage is most troublesome in Appalachia, where coal production has dropped 50 percent in the past decade. Some Appalachian states like Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia only require companies to have a fraction of the cost of reclaiming their mines on hand because of a practice called "bond pooling," in which all the mining companies kick in a small amount. That might be enough to cover reclamation cost if only one mine closes, but many have shuttered in recent years. If enough companies declare bankruptcy without adequate reclamation funds, taxpayers might have to foot the bill or risk dealing with the environmental and health hazards triggered by the untreated mines.

"In 2015-16, companies accounting for nearly half of the coal production in the US went into some form of bankruptcy," Olalde reports. "They have since emerged from that nadir, but the massive, sudden collapse highlights the problem of sharing risk among companies that all produce the same atrophying commodity."

Scott Simonton, coordinator of Marshall University's environmental science program, told Olalde: "It just seems to be a very fragile system. That’s the problem. It’s a system that’s designed for small failures."


from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2GezcsY U.S. hasn't set aside enough money to reclaim coal mines - Entrepreneur Generations

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

Tweet