Well, the special session of West Virginia’s Legislature is over. And Gov. Joe Manchin managed to get lawmakers to fix technical problems with his big energy bill — and he convinced the House leadership to go ahead and pass his post-mining land use legislation, despite serious questions about both bills.

The energy bill  phases in a requirement that electric utilities get part of their power from alternative energy sources … But, of course, the definition used in the bill is so broad that critics say it’s practically meaningless.

Here’s what is included:

(A) Advanced coal technology;

(B) Coal bed methane;

(C) Fuel produced by a coal gasification or liquefaction facility;

(D) Synthetic gas;

(E) Integrated gasification combined cycle technologies;

(F) Waste coal;

(G) Tirederived fuel;

(H) Pumped storage hydroelectric projects;

(I) Recycled energy, which means useful thermal, mechanical or electrical energy produced from: (i) Exhaust heat from any commercial or industrial process; (ii) waste gas, waste fuel or other forms of energy that would otherwise be flared, incinerated, disposed of or vented; and (iii) electricity or equivalent mechanical energy extracted from a pressure drop in any gas, excluding any pressure drop to a condenser that subsequently vents the resulting heat;

(J) Pulp mill sludge; and

(K) Any other resource, method, project or technology certified as an alternative energy resource by the Public Service Commission.

One Coal Tattoo reader suggested I compare that to this relatively simple definition of “alternative energy facility” included in the federal tax code:

A facility for producing electrical or thermal energy if the primary energy source for the facility is not oil, natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

I’ve never really understood why Manchin’s post-mining land use bill was needed … I mean, the law already requires coal companies that want to leave their land flattened after they mine it to develop the sites — the problem has always been that state regulators never really enforced that part of the law.

Earlier today, I talked with DEP Secretary Randy Huffman (the guy who says that his main concern about mountaintop removal is developing the land after it’s mined)  and tried again to understand the legislation.

Randy says the main goal is to require local officials in coalfield counties to write land-use master plans (currently, doing so is optional)  and to require coal companies who propose in mining permits a change in post-mining land use to propose one that complies with those master plans. (Of course, the bill contains a big loophole that allows DEP to waive that second requirement for a variety of reasons).

Proponents say that local economic developers have a hard time convincing coal companies and landowners to come up with — or even go along with — plans to develop sites that are flattened by mountaintop removal. Requiring these master plans, and making coal operators work within them, supporters of the bill say, will help this process along.

Maybe so. But the law already requires operators to come up with these post-mining development plans, and officials admit that’s not happening. I’m just not sure how this legislation is going to fix that.

And previously, Huffman himself has said that the issue wasn’t a problem with existing law. Go back to when Manchin first talked about this, during his 2008 State of the State address … as I wrote at the time:

During his State of the State address Wednesday, Gov. Joe Manchin said such lands could be used for “renewable energy projects such as biomass, solar and wind.”

Manchin said that he was “committed to examining the legal barriers that restrict” such developments.

And as Randy Huffman said, also at the time:

Huffman said that the problem really isn’t so much “legal barriers” to post-mining development, but a failure by coal companies to come up with valid post-mining developments.

“They’re not going to,” Huffman said. “That’s not what they do.”

Huffman said the goal is to come up with local land-use plans that give mining operators more help in developing concrete post-mining development proposals

“It makes no sense to go and mine these places and move all this dirt and not leave something of a higher order behind,” Huffman said.

Sure it doesn’t. That’s the same argument that Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin made today in a Daily Mail article supporting the legislation:

Tomblin further stated that the bill would override what he deemed outdated laws regarding post-mine land use.

“Now after the mining’s complete, we go back to the early 1970s laws that say you have to put the land back to the approximate original contour,” he said.

But Tomblin said some mined sites could be developed.

“When there’s an operation going on, you might have power lines, water lines and all these things in,” he said. “Then when the mining is complete, all of that, including the roads built for heavy mining equipment, is basically torn out. You already have infrastructure in place and instead, it’s getting torn out.”

Tomblin’s just wrong. The current law requires no such thing — mine operators can leave all of that infrastructure there, as long as their permit includes some sort of post-mining development plan. And DEP is supposed to make sure those plans are part of the permit.

The most interesting thing Randy Huffman told me to today was that he doesn’t really think this law is going to have very broad applicability. In most instances, he said, large strip mines are far enough away from four-lane highways and other major infrastructure that they aren’t likely to be part of the prime area that counties target for development under their land-use plans:

 We’re really trying to hone in on the areas that are obvious for future development. The farther you get away from the infrastructure — four-lane highways and so forth — the priority goes down.

We’re not talking about something that is going to apply to every surface mine out there.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Legislature, Mountaintop Removal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.