The U.S. Government Accountability Office (the GAO) has released its second major report on mountaintop removal coal mining in the last three months. (See previous post here).

Today’s report, Financial Assurances for, and Long-Term Oversight of, Mines with Valley Fills in Four Appalachian States,  is similar to the previous GAO study, in that it provides not a ton of brand new information for anyone familiar with the mountaintop removal issue.

But, the 68-page report, prepared for members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and Environment and Public Works committees, does again repeat and confirm what should already be well known, but is often ignored by the coal industry and its politician friends. For example, the GAO study found:

– Reforestation efforts at some reclaimed surface coal mine sites needed improvement;

– Surface coal mine sites have contaminated streams and harmed aquatic organisms;

–  Valley fills may affect water flow; and

–  Mine operators have not always returned mine sites to their approximate original contour when required to do so under SMCRA.

But, the GAO report is also interesting in that it focuses on “financial assurances” required of operators to ensure that mine sites are properly reclaimed — and on questions about whether environmental damage is occurring after bond release that is not being addressed by state or federal agencies.

It noted that coalfield states all have different requirements, and that the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has made examining how well those systems work a priority for this year. And, the GAO had this to say about what OSMRE had found previously about these state programs:

While OSM has made bonding an oversight priority for 2010 and is considering related rulemaking options, it has reported on various aspects of state bonding programs in prior annual evaluations. For example, in its 2009 evaluation year report on West Virginia, OSM reported that it did not appear that the state was meeting requirements for inspections at bond forfeiture sites. OSM estimated that the state had completed about 55 percent of the required inspections at bond forfeiture sites. In its 2009 report on Virginia, OSM reported that it had reviewed a sample of operators that applied for phase III bond release during the year and found that on-the-ground reclamation had been successful. In its 2009 report on Kentucky, OSM provided information on the number of forfeited permits at which reclamation was complete or underway.

The GAO report notes that the federal Army Corps of Engineers requires no financial assurances that mine operators will complete the mitigation projects they propose in order to obtain Clean Water Act permits. (Of course, the report also notes that the Corps doesn’t even really know how many valley fill permits it has issued over the years).

GAO investigators also noted that several other environmental laws may be able, under limited circumstances, to address environmental problems associated with mountaintop removal and valley fills. They  go through several possible scenarios under SMCRA, the Clean Water Act, Superfund and RCRA.

The GAO report includes responses from other federal and state agencies. Among those was a letter from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which complained that GAO was suggesting regulators should take “never-ending jurisdiction” over mine sites, something WVDEP said would be contrary to SMCRA.

GAO officials responded:

Our report notes that most, but not all, agencies we contacted, believe that monitoring is adequate. At the same time, there is evidence from some monitoring that environmental problems may occur after bonds have been released. We did not revise the report in response to this comment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under 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.