Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 13, 1990 TAG: 9005090636
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUS-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The 1977 federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act should require coal miners who damage or destroy wells and springs to replace them, says the Environmental Law Institute.
The recommendation by the institute was one of several resulting from a two-year study of state and government enforcement of the mine reclamation law.
Other findings of the study include:
The federal government has failed to adequately monitor states, which have primary responsibility for enforcing the federal reclamation law.
The federal Office of Surface Mining has failed to require the states to maintain adequate staffing in their mine-reclamation agencies and to set reclamation bonds high enough to pay for reclamation should a mine operator default.
State programs do not adequately protect homeowners from subsidence or the collapse of the ground above underground coal mines. The federal Office of Surface Mining should require the states to revise their regulations to protect the owners of surface structures.
Congress should reauthorize the abandoned mined-land reclamation fund in the strip-mining law. Current funding, set to expire in 1992, will pay for the reclamation of only about 10 percent of the land that was mined and abandoned before 1977. That poses serious environmental hazards, the report said.
Mike Abbott, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, said the state has a number of reclamation projects for abandoned mines - involving threats to health, safety and private property - that will not be completed if the fund is allowed to expire.
The state has not taken a position on whether the funding should be continued, but only about 1,000 acres of the 71,000 acres of orphaned land the state has identified have been reclaimed, Abbott said. Based on the current levels of funding it would take 59 years to reclaim the top-priority sites, he said.
In regard to the water-supply issue, Abbott confirmed that Virginia law does not require the operators of underground mines to replace water supplies damaged by mining. The homeowner would have to negotiate replacement of the lost water with the mining company, he said.
Virginia law is based on the federal act. It requires that surface-mine operators, but not underground-mine operators, who damage water supplies replace them, Abbott said.
Virginia is the only major coal-producing state that does not offer, or require insurance companies to offer, subsidence insurance to protect homeowners from losses resulting from the collapse of their land above underground mines, the institute said.
Ken Schrad, a spokesman for the State Corporation Commission, acknowledged that Virginia does not require companies to offer subsidence insurance. Currently the state is unaware of any companies offering such insurance in Virginia, he said.
Coal mining practices are less harmful to the environment under the 1977 federal law, but enforcement of the law has been weak in key areas, the institute's report concludes.
by CNB