A number of organizations like the Alliance for Appalachia, Earthjustice and Sierra Club, among others, who work in coal communities on issues related to the environment, law and other areas have released a policy platform to address and prevent unreclaimed “zombie mines”— idled modern-era mines that have not been cleaned up by the responsible coal companies.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 earmarked $11 billion to clean up abandoned coal mines created before the 1977 enactment of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA).
SMCRA was supposed to ensure that no mines permitted after 1977 would be abandoned without funds available to clean up and reclaim them, but the provisions put into place have not done that. Regulators have set the amount of money for required reclamation bonds too low, and they are not enforcing the requirement that coal companies reclaim land contemporaneously with coal removal.
The policies in the platform include eliminating self-bonding so that money and not promises are required to be put into place for reclamation as well as amending SMCRA and existing Treasury Department rules to ensure bonds are from certified bond companies and cover the full aggregate risk created by mines, among other recommendations.
“Zombie” mines, or mines which have not produced coal nor demonstrated reclamation for months or years, represent an unknown percentage of the total of disturbed coal mine lands nationally.
“We started by looking at mine reclamation issues – we’ve been noticing a trend of coal mines not getting reclaimed in a timely manner,” Erin Savage, senior program manager for Appalachian Voices, told the Daily Yonder. “And also a lot of mines, the permits are going through bankruptcies, sometimes multiple rounds of bankruptcies. And so we were starting to get concerned about whether coal companies are actually doing the reclamation that they’re supposed to do under the law, and also whether the systems that are in place to try to ensure mines get reclaimed are actually working as intended.”
A recent analysis by the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center of Kentucky permits found that nearly 40% of “active” mines haven’t produced coal since 2020. In part as a result of these loopholes and regulatory inconsistencies or gaps, there are nearly one million acres of modern coal mines in 12 states that have not yet been reclaimed, according to analyses by the Western Organization of Resource Councils and Appalachian Voices. Some of these mines have idled for years without producing coal or making progress on reclamation, according to the organizations. They often leave the surrounding area vulnerable to leaks and other environmental hazards, and the problem is anticipated only to grow.
Shannon Anderson, community organizer and staff attorney for the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Wyoming, said the policy platform sends a message across the country, specifically Coal Country, that policymakers and regulators must address long-standing issues related to mine reclamation and bonding concerns.
“It’s necessary right now, partly because there’s a lot of attention being paid to abandoned mines that are being funded for cleanup through the Abandoned Mine Land program,” she told the Daily Yonder. “There was an influx of money through the Infrastructure Act. And so there’s been a lot of attention nationally about abandoned mines, but what there hasn’t been attention to, really, the mines that are still under permits, with state and federal regulators. And there are issues with them as well that we need Congress to start paying attention to.”
“If mines were reclaimed more expediently, we would have more miners back at work,” Savage said. “Finishing these mines is intended to…be used for other purposes, whether that’s regenerating native forests or installing a solar farm or anything in between. If it’s just sitting there, nothing productive is happening on that land. A lot of times when these mines idled, they’re not being properly maintained. And so as they sit there, they tend to deteriorate.”
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