Large U.S. coal companies used bankruptcy and asset transfers to move old mines to shaky new owners, putting at risk federally mandated land reclamation, an investigation by Bloomberg News and NPR finds.
The situation has gotten so bad that West Virginia regulators took the extreme step of suspending Lexington's Crescent permit in early September. And the federal judge overseeing a lawsuit accusing Lexington of polluting streams and rivers at two other minesand imposed a $1,500 per day fine.
warned that the cost of abandoned mine permits could exceed the reclamation fund by hundreds of millions of dollars, eventually threatening to stick taxpayers with the losses.that it believes environmental stewardship is integral to coal mining and that it strives for full compliance with environmental regulations."The majority of LCC's [Lexington Coal Company's] active work company wide is reclamation," it said.
Selenium is just one of the threats to Appalachia, home to one of the oldest and most biodiverse mountainous ecosystems on Earth. Some streams near mining areas are laced with sulfuric acid, salts and metals such as aluminum and iron, which turn the water orange.