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Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009

Mountains of potential?

RECLAIMED SURFACE MINES OFFER LEVEL LAND, BUT VERY LITTLE OF IT IS USED FOR DEVELOPMENT

HAZARD — As attacks on mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia have grown increasingly sharp, the coal industry and its supporters have defended the practice by saying that reclaimed mine areas provide flat land for development in a place where level sites are scarce.

However, development was planned for less than 3 percent of the roughly half-million acres of land covered by surface-mining permits in Kentucky over the last decade, according to state data.

That amounts to less than 14,000 acres scheduled to be reclaimed for commercial, residential, industrial or recreational development, data from the Kentucky Division of Mine Permits shows.

"Precious little of it is actually put to a beneficial use," Tom FitzGerald, head of the Kentucky Resources Council, said of land that is surface-mined in Eastern Kentucky.

The issue of development has been a key theme in the debate over mountaintop mining in Appalachia.

Some flat land left after mining in the region's steep hills and narrow valleys has been used for development — including golf courses, prisons, housing and hospitals. Supporters of the coal industry say that flat land is a boost for the region's economy.

In and around Hazard, subdivisions and retail stores, restaurants and hotels, the industrial park, the airport, the large regional hospital, a National Guard armory and even a nursing home for veterans sit on reclaimed mined areas.

Overall, however, coal companies obtained permits calling for development on just 2.8 percent of the 496,014 acres that listed a post-mining land use in permits issued since November 1999.

Companies said most of the permitted land since 1999 — some of which has not yet been mined — would be reclaimed as fish and wildlife habitat or for hay and pasture. By far, those have been the most common post-mining land uses of the last three decades, and the industry and others say those uses benefit the region, too.

Pushing more development

A key state legislator is now pushing an idea aimed at promoting more development on reclaimed mined areas.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo advocates having coal companies consider community development needs as part of the process of getting a surface-mine permit.

Companies should sit down with local leaders, highway planners and economic-development officials to figure out whether work required to reclaim a mined area could be tailored to meet needs such as more housing sites or areas for road construction, Stumbo said.

Much of the development that has occurred on mined sites has been piecemeal, he said.

"I'd like to see us have some strategic planning so that what's left is in fact a benefit to the area, or a potential benefit," said Stumbo, a Democrat from Floyd County.

He cites the Mud Creek road project, which would create better access to Ky. 80 and U.S. 23 for residents of southern Floyd County, as an example of tying mining plans to development needs.

One section was first designed to run along the valley floor, but Elkhorn Coal Co. has offered to give the state the right-of-way to build part of the road on an adjoining mountain that the company has a permit to mine, Stumbo said.

The state could save millions by re-designing the road to be built on the mined area, Stumbo said.

When Congress approved sweeping changes in surface mining and reclamation law in the late 1970s, part of its intent was that sites have a greater use after mining than before, Stumbo said.

Appalachian coal states have skirted that concept a bit by deciding that pasture land is a greater use than timber land, which was the pre-mining use in most cases, he said.

"Not every site can be used for economic development, but strategic planning would still be worthwhile so that reclaimed land meets its highest and best use," Stumbo said.

Landowners have the final say on whether their land will be mined and on which type of reclamation to use. In some cases, coal companies own land, but in others, it's in the hands of private owners who lease it to companies.