Coal owners: Stream rules devastating
GREEN TREE – Coal industry employers and environmentalists testified Thursday before representatives of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement as it determines how to implement changes to stream-protection regulations.
The new rules announced in July would prevent coal operators from getting permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection if the permits predict damage to streams.
“The way DEP has been operating, a coal operator’s own applications can admit and account for damage, yet plan to repair and remediate the site in their application,” said Patrick Grenter , executive director for the Center of Coalfield Justice.
According to the most recent data from the state Act 54 report on underground coal mining from 2008-13, nearly 77 percent of streams that had longwall mining go underneath them experienced flow loss, pooling or both.
“The report also acknowledged that the DEP-sanctioned studies could not find exact efficacy rates of remediation efforts by coal companies. In other words, we don’t know for sure whether their claims of repairing and rebuilding sites even work,” Grenter said.
Grenter said he concedes the new rules may adversely affect the coal industry.
“I think the new rules are entirely reasonable and long overdue. Jobs will certainly be lost in coal, but gained in construction and remediation work. But the overall reason coal is losing jobs is not because of regulations, but because of market conditions.
“Coal can’t be competitive with natural gas and renewables,” Grenter said, “and it shows especially here, that when coal is held fully accountable for the damage it causes, it cannot compete.”
Grenter said his organization, like others that offered testimony at the hearing, will submit more formal and technical comments within the 60-day comment period. The hearing was one of six national public feedback sessions the federal agency is hosting.
John Pippy, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, also submitted testimony.
“The Stream Protection Rule was originally developed as a narrowly targeted regulation to address alleged effects connected with mountaintop removal mining, a method not practiced in Pennsylvania. The rule as currently proposed has expanded to … (impact) both surface and underground mining,” Pippy said.
“The proposed Stream Protection Rule is unnecessarily expansive and would be devastating to coal mining operations in Pennsylvania, as well as create irreparable harm to local economies and connected industries.”
The OSMRE said the proposed rule changes would “clearly define material damage to the hydrologic balance outside the permit area and require that each permit specify the point at which adverse mining-related impacts on ground and surface water would reach that level of damage … (and) would also require mine operators to collect adequate pre-mining data about the site … to establish an adequate baseline for evaluation of the impacts of mining and the effectiveness of reclamation.”