According to the US Office of Surface Mining, Kentucky fails to make the coal industry pay enough to clean up the environmental wreckage it leaves behind.
Though state and federal regulators are negotiating this summer in an attempt to solve the problem, Kentucky lawmakers said the criticism is another example of President Barack Obama's war on coal.
Making companies pay larger reclamation bonds, as required by a 1977 federal law on surface mining, is a political move intended to destroy coal companies, the lawmakers said at a joint meeting of the Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment.
State Representative Ms Keith Hall said that "They want to make coal mining illegal. I don't want to roll over dead and play stoolie in front of the federal government, either, because I believe in states' rights. There is an assault on Kentucky, and really on our way of life."
When coal companies successfully restore mined land to the conditions listed in their state permits, their reclamation bonds are returned to them. However, when companies disappear, sometimes through bankruptcy, their bonds are virtually all that exists to pay for the environmental damage they leave.
In a May 1st 2012 letter to the state Energy and Environment Cabinet, the federal OSM said Kentucky's reclamation bonds long have proven inadequate. OSM will take over Kentucky's post mining reclamation process unless the state begins to require bonds large enough to pay the full costs of land restoration.
According to state data, fifteen to 25 mining permits are forfeited in Kentucky annually. Most of the forfeited bonds prove too small to pay for the necessary hauling of rocks and dirt, grading of land, re vegetation and cleaning of ponds and streams.
In an average year, the state Division of Abandoned Mine Lands faces more than USD 4 million in unfunded reclamation costs, which means some or all of the necessary work isn't completed. That leaves land scarred and affects neighbors' properties as well.
Mr Tom FitzGerald director of the Kentucky Resources Council said that "One of the many examples is the case of Ms Susie Campbell, whose property was mined by Leslie Resources and became part of the Horizon Natural Resources bankruptcy. Her property is all but unidentifiable now because the landform was not restored, the post-mining land use not achieved and the bond was not adequate to assure that it would be properly done."
The OSM said in its May letter that the federal government has urged Kentucky for years to require larger bonds, but the bond formula has not been touched since 1993.
Mr Joseph Pizarchik director of OSM Reclamation and Enforcement wrote to the state that "I appreciate the complexities of the matter and recognize that the deficiencies that developed over the past decade or more will take a concerted effort over time to resolve. Nonetheless, it is time to make actual progress."
Governor Mr Steve Beshear's administration responded in May with a compromise proposal that raised the cost of reclamation bonds. It started with an increase in the minimum bond amount required for a mining permit, from USD 10,000 before the change to USD 75,000 now. Three dozen existing permits that have been reviewed or renewed since May 2012 climbed from USD 66,136 in bonds on average to USD 154,415.
The state acknowledges that but even those larger bond amounts wouldn't fully cover reclamation costs for more than two-thirds of abandoned mine lands.
Source - Lexington Herald Leader
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