Manchin Flaps Gums About Coal Mine Site Restoration Because Environmental Legacy Something Something

Before he numbered his days in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., spent the morning chairing a hearing on abandoned coal mine land reclamation economic revitalization programs. The powerful Senate and Energy Natural Resources chairman listened as witnesses, including a West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection unit director, reported how legislation championed by Manchin had created opportunities for environmental restoration and economic growth.

The Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act of 2021 allotted about $11.3 billion to eligible states to help communities address environmental hazards and pollution caused by past coal mining and support jobs through reclamation projects. DEP Division of Land Restoration Director Rob Rice testified that West Virginia’s abandoned mine lands program has awarded $53 million in design and oversight contracts for 127 projects over the past two years that will use over $200 million in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding. “Whether it’s acid mine drainage impacting rivers and streams; subsidence and landslides threatening homes, businesses and infrastructure; or dangerous mine openings, AML [abandoned mine land] sites pose serious risk to the health and safety of communities across the country, particularly in Appalachia,” Manchin noted.

But the senator’s fossil fuel-friendly approach to energy and environmental policy has sparked criticism that he has helped perpetuate cycles of economic reliance on and environmental scarring from resource extraction. “Joe Manchin has no legacy of environmental protection that I’m aware of,” Vernon Haltom, executive director of Raleigh County-based anti-surface mining nonprofit Coal River Mountain Watch, said in an email.

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But critics say Manchin’s key support for the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is outweighed by an embrace of fossil fuels that they say set a costly ceiling on climate action with Democrats controlling the levers of power in the previous congressional session. “Joe Manchin’s legacy on climate and energy policy is one of taking what could have been game-changing and paradigm-shifting and making it, at best, a good start,” Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action Board President Eric Engle said in an email.

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