Orange cloud at Jacobs Ranch Coal Mine in Powder River Basin of Wyoming. Photo taken from nearby Thunder Basin National Grassland.
A coalition of environmental groups is calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to for the first time impose air pollution limits on coal mines.
That’s right … EPA has adopted air pollution standards for gravel mines, coal-fired power plants, coal processing plants, and dozens of other sources. But currently, no national limits exist for the air pollution from coal mines.
Hoping to change that, the groups WildEarth Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Integrity Project and the Sierra Club filed this petition with EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. The groups are represented by attorneys from Earthjustice.
Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians, said:
It’s time to finally hold coal mines accountable to our health, safety, and environment. With mines spewing methane, dust, toxic orange clouds, and other dangerous gases, we need a national response that puts clean air before coal.
Sign posted on eastbound Wyoming Highway 450 near Black Thunder Coal Mine.
In their petition, the groups ask Jackson to exercise her authority under the Clean Air Act to both list coal mines as a source of harmful air pollution and to ensure the best systems of emission reduction are used to control this pollution.
The petition cites emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, and of particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.
Methane has more than 20 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide, and nationally, coal mines are responsible for 10 percent of all man-made methane emissions, yet no standards exist to control those emissions. In a news release, the environmental groups said:
Overall, the EPA estimates more than 85% of all U.S. coal mine methane emissions can be eliminated at a cost of $15/ton, although when factoring in health benefits, the payback could be as much as $240/ton of methane reduced.
And Aaron Isherwood of the Sierra Club added:
Methane is a dangerous gas, but it’s probably the most cost-effective to control. The health, safety, and climate benefits of reducing methane from coal mines are simply too important to ignore.
The petition notes that in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, huge surface mines have caused or contributed to violations of national air quality limits for particulate matter. And according to the groups:
Nitrogen oxides are an especially visible example of the problem. Blasting at strip mines, such as those in the Powder River Basin of northeastern Wyoming, produce dense, orange clouds of nitrogen oxides are often produced. No standards currently limit such pollution from coal mines. Instead, signs posted along public highways warn of orange clouds, advising people to “Avoid Contact.”
Ted Zukoski, staff attorney for Earthjustice, said:
Other industries are already required to do their part to protect the air we breathe. It’s time for the EPA to hold the coal industry accountable for its air pollution too.
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
It will be interesting to see how Friends of Coal tries to spin this one – “It’s a Western problem,” perhaps?
I’m sure it will be “the big bad EPA coming in and trying to make us poor, beleaguered multimillion-dollar coal companies not poison people.”