How Big Coal Companies Shed Responsibility for Cleaning Up Their Messes: NPR

Last edited Mon Oct 31, 2022, 12:10 AM - Edit history (1)

- 'How big coal companies avoid cleaning up their messes,' NPR, Oct. 29, 2022. By Josh Saul, Zach Mider, Dave Mistich. - Ed.

Miles Hatfield was walking into his dining room when he felt the wooden floor give way. His legs dropped hip-deep into water that had pooled under the brick house in the green hills of eastern KY where he had lived for the past 40 years, trapping him in his own floor. Hatfield, a retired coal miner, raised 2 boys in the house a few miles from the WVa. border. But the red water running off from the nearby Love Branch coal mine had turned his backyard into a marsh, ruined his septic system, & finally sucked him through his floor 3 years ago. Love Branch used to be owned by one of the biggest coal companies in the U.S. Federal law requires companies to clean up the land when they finish mining — & Love Branch hasn't produced any coal in more than a decade.

But the former owner, now named Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc., transferred the mine & its cleanup obligations to a smaller co. in 2018, the year before Hatfield fell through his floor. "They pretty well destroyed me up there," says Hatfield, 70, who had to move to a rental nearby. "Everything for me is gone." KY regulators have said that Love Branch caused the flooding of Hatfield's home & those of his neighbors. But Alpha isn't responsible because it transferred the mine's permit to Lexington Coal. Mining permits apply to a specific patch of land & can be transferred from one company to another with the approval of state regulators. Alpha has transferred more than 300 mining permits to smaller companies since 2015, when an industrywide downturn pushed it & other big coal companies into bankruptcy.

By shedding permits, more than it currently holds, the co. also freed itself from the responsibility to clean up mines. Those old Alpha permits are now owned by smaller cos. like Lexington, many of them in precarious financial shape. The smaller cos. have drawn pollution lawsuits, environmental violations & complaints from distraught homeowners like Hatfield.

While coal's devastating contribution to climate change has been well documented, it has also left a long & painful legacy in communities where it's mined. A joint investigation by Bloomberg News & NPR found that Alpha is one of several large U.S. coal cos. that used the same playbook - transfer old mines in need of cleanup to smaller operators with meager financial resources, raising the risk that taxpayers, rather than industry, will eventually be stuck with the cost. And the very weakness of these new owners limits regulators' powers. Anything officials might do to enforce environmental laws — from issuing fines, halting coal production or revoking permits — hampers the new owners & could result in even less money to restore blighted landscapes.

The cleanup obligations held by just 3 of these new owners in multiple states amounts to more than $800 million. Coal companies that filed for bankruptcy have offloaded about $17 billion in miner pension & retiree health care costs that is now mostly the responsibility of the federal government. Many of these companies are now posting record profits thanks to a surging coal market...

- Read More + Graphics, https://www.npr.org/2022/10/29/1127520991/west-virginia-coal-mining-alpha

- This story was done in collaboration with Bloomberg News. An earlier version of the story ran on Bloomberg on October 17. Scott Carpenter of Bloomberg News contributed to this report.

- 'Paradise' by John Prine. The 1971 song recalls Prine's visits as a boy to his father's home in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. He describes the impacts on the Green River and lush environment from mining by energy giant Peabody Coal.

- John Prine,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prine