Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 5, 1993 TAG: 9302050410
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JASON GRAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THIRST IN FAR SOUTHWEST
IF YOU TRAVEL along the back roads of the coalfields, you still can see them. From a distance, they look like white lanterns along porches and steps. Up close you see them for what they are: milk jugs for hauling water home from a distant source.There are a lot less than there used to be. Yet even people with water on their land live on the edge of doing without. The reason is that, for many, coal and water do not mix.
Coal mining in one form or another has been the economic lifeblood of Virginia's Far Southwest counties for more than a century. It has paved the roads, built the towns, provided thousands with good-paying jobs.
It has also destroyed, along with the lives and health of miners, drinking water and contaminated creeks and rivers. Coal has given and it has taken away.
Throughout the mountains of Virginia, ground water is a scarce resource. In the coalfields, what good water exists in the ground often is in or near seams of coal. Mining companies which own mineral rights to the coal can legally take the water along with it. If your well or spring is damaged or destroyed by underground mining, well, too bad.
Citizen activists and legislators have fought for many years to stop the wanton destruction of water resources from coal mining. A milestone was reached in the late 1970s with passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
That act requires the replacement of water sources damaged or destroyed by surface mining. But underground mining, the most prevalent form of coal mining in the commonwealth, was interpreted as being exempt from this most basic requirement. For years, fighting over this huge exemption has been the source of much conflict and hope.
More recently, some of the more responsible coal companies have replaced water lost to residents when there was reason to believe the loss was mining-related. There is a growing commitment in some coal companies to the idea that a water-replacement program is in everyone's interest.
Starting in 1990, through an Environmental Law Institute initiative and later mediated by the University of Virginia Institute for Environmental Negotiation, a Coal and Water Roundtable was begun. A diverse group of citizens, environmental activists and coal-company representatives met to reach consensus on how a mining-related water loss program could be fairly and efficiently developed.
In December 1991, after reaching agreement on approximately 90 percent of the issues, negotiations broke down. "The devil is in the details," lamented Tommy Hudson, president of the Virginia Coal Association.
This story has a brighter future. Through the leadership of Dels. Bud Phillips of Dickenson County and Ford Quillen of Gate City, a special subcommittee of the Housing, Mining and Mineral Resources Committee began holding meetings last summer with the aim of a legislative remedy.
In the meantime, a national coalition of citizen activists succeeded in getting an amendment requiring water replacement from underground mining in the national energy bill approved last fall by Congress and signed by then-President Bush. Seeing the reason for meeting now as moot, the legislative subcommittee has apparently suspended its deliberations.
This suspension of momentum is unwise. While Congress has authorized water replacement, it will likely be several years before we see federal rule-making implemented in the coal fields. The federal Office of Surface Mining may require Virginia to answer on its own the questions we have wrestled with the past two years.
Virginia should not lose the momentum of knowledge and commitment it has gained. The commonwealth, using the expertise of the state Division of Mines, Minerals and Energy, should develop interim state guidelines to assist both domestic water users and the coal industry to see that water replacement is fair and efficient.
We should also continue to explore the possible use of coal-severance tax funds for the development of a coalfield regional water authority to emphasize and implement regional water solutions.
Virginia must continue to show leadership and assure that citizens of the Far Southwest do not have to do without water as a price of the economic benefits that coal mining provides. The devilish details remain, and Old Scratch knows that delay works to his advantage.
Jason Gray is environmental program manager of the Virginia Water Project, a nonprofit organization based in Roanoke.