Coal company fails to reclaim surface mine marring view from highest point in Kentucky
A coal company once headed by the governor of West Virginia has failed to fully reclaim a surface mine visible from the highest peak in Kentucky, leaving a large scar in view of a planned tourist attraction on the mountain.
A&G Coal Corporation agreed in January 2023 to finish reclaiming the site by Aug. 31, 2023 but has not finished the work.
The mine, called Looney Ridge, lies at the center of the view from atop Black Mountain in Harlan County, where local officials are pursuing a project to build a 40-foot-high observation tower in hopes of attracting more visitors.
The eroding expanse of bare dirt and rock is an eyesore, said Steve Esch, who stopped at an overlook on the mountain on Oct. 24 during a motorcycle tour of Appalachia with friends Dave Shea, of Minneapolis, and Jeremy Sparks, of Richmond.
“It definitely looks like an industrial waste site and it takes away from the beauty of the landscape,” Esch, 40, of Milwaukee, said of the mine. “Hopefully they can get that cleaned up.”
The company involved in the issue is A&G Coal Corporation, which first received a permit in 2004 to mine the site, according to a federal lawsuit.
At that time, it was owned by James C. “Jim” Justice II, who was elected governor of West Virginia in 2016 and reelected in 2020.
Justice switched his party registration to Republican during his first term and is now running for U.S. Senate.
His son, James C. “Jay” Justice III, was president of A&G when the company pledged in January 2023 to reclaim the Looney Ridge mine by the end of August 2023.
The company entered into that deal to settle a lawsuit filed by Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, Appalachian Voices and the Sierra Club.
The lawsuit said members of the citizen groups were concerned about the risk of erosion, landslides and polluted runoff from Looney Ridge and two other surface mines A&G had failed to reclaim as required, called Canepatch and Sawmill Hollow.
The three sites are in Wise County, Va., which borders Harlan County.
Mine reclamation not done for years
In surface mining, coal companies use explosives and heavy equipment to move earth and rock to uncover coal seams.
Federal law requires companies to reclaim surface-mined sites. That typically includes grading to eliminate sheer walls created during mining — called highwalls — and sowing grass and other vegetation to keep down erosion.
That work is supposed to be done soon after digging out the coal, but years passed without A&G properly reclaiming the three mines at issue in the lawsuit.
For instance, A&G stopped mining at Looney Ridge in April 2013, but hundreds of acres at the mine were still unreclaimed when the environmental groups sued in January 2023, their complaint said.
The coal company acknowledged as part of the complaint that almost 2,500 acres at the three mines had yet to be reclaimed and revegetated at the time the lawsuit was filed.
The January 2023 agreement between A&G and the environmental groups included deadlines for the company to finish reclaiming the three mines; required it to put $600,000 in an account to cover the costs and to keep enough equipment at the sites for the work; and file progress reports.
It also outlined financial penalties for not fulfilling the deal.
On Thursday, the three groups filed a new motion in federal court in Virginia arguing A&G has “utterly failed” to comply with the deal, called a consent decree.
The company didn’t keep enough equipment at the sites, didn’t submit status reports, failed to fund the dedicated account for reclamation, and missed the deadline to finish fully reclaiming the Looney Ridge and Canepatch mines.
At Looney Ridge, for instance, a state inspection on Sept. 26 — more than a year after the deadline to finish reclaiming the site — showed that only 275 of 590 acres had been reclaimed, the new motion says.
The amount of acreage reclaimed as of the September inspection was the same as in November 2023, meaning there was no progress in those 10 months, according to the motion.
At the Canepatch mine, which was supposed to be done by the end of February, an inspection on Oct. 8 showed only 93 acres of 699 acres that had been disturbed by mining had been reclaimed, the environmental groups said.
The deadline to reclaim the Sawmill Hollow mine is the end of this year, but A&G is likely to miss that as well, the new motion says.
The company may also have mined more coal at one or more of the mines in violation of the consent degree, and wants to do additional mining at Sawmill Hollow, according to the motion.
‘Persistent failure to meet reclamation deadlines’
“A&G’s persistent failure to meet reclamation deadlines at these sites and their continued pursuit of coal extraction despite court orders show a blatant disregard for both environmental obligations and legal commitments,” Matt Hepler, environmental scientist for Appalachian Voices, said in a release.
In a court filing of its own on Thursday, A&G said that when it signed the deal to reclaim the mines, it anticipated selling coal to a utility to get money for the work.
That deal fell through, however.
A&G currently has no mining operations or revenue and can’t pay to reclaim the three sites unless it can mine and sell some coal, according to the filing.
The company proposed changing the consent decree to let it mine coal at the Sawmill Hollow site.
The mining wouldn’t require tearing up any new ground and would generate enough money for reclamation at all three mines, according to the company.
A&G said the environmental groups have refused to agree to that additional mining, which “frustrates both the public good” and the purpose of the original agreement.
The company asked a judge to approve the mining over the objection of the environmental groups.
An attorney for the groups responded that A&G isn’t supposed to mine at the sites when it is not in compliance with the initial agreement, and that the company is “shamelessly and ironically” accusing the citizen groups of frustrating a deal it has violated repeatedly.
The motion the groups filed Thursday asks a judge to enforce the January 2023 reclamation deal, with new deadlines at Looney Ridge and Canepatch; make the company file progress reports and put $600,000 in the dedicated reclamation fund; and give any money it made on coal mined at any of the sites since Aug. 31, 2023 to the Upper Tennessee River Roundtable, a water-quality initiative.
It also seeks an order for A&G to pay penalties estimated to be at least $900,000 for violations of the deal.
Black Mountain observation tower project still a go
While that controversy plays out in court, Harlan County will continue pursuing the project to build the observation tower atop Black Mountain.
Local officials, businesses and residents have worked to develop tourism in the county as a way to improve the economy in the wake of loss of hundreds of coal jobs.
Tourism “is the shortest economic bridge to cross” in trying to boost the local economy, said Paul Browning III, a county magistrate and director of tourism for Cumberland.
There are a number of attractions in Cumberland and the historic coal towns of Benham and Lynch, which lie together at the foot of Black Mountain.
Those include Kingdom Come State Park, the Kentucky Coal Museum and Portal 31, an underground mine tour.
A section of KY 160, which goes from Lynch, Benham and Cumberland across the mountain into Virginia, is one of the routes that a group called Backroads of Appalachia promotes to try to increase visitation by motorcycle riders and motorsports enthusiasts
The route, called the Dragon Slayer 160, has more than 220 curves.
The Looney Ridge mine that A&G hasn’t fully reclaimed is visible from an overlook on that route.
The tower project is part of a larger plan to improve the Portal 31 tour — which has been completed — and renovate a native-stone bath house built more than a century ago so miners could clean up after their shifts.
There is still work to be done on the tower, called the Black Mountain High Point project, including final design work and raising some additional money, said Steve Gardner, the project engineer.
But Gardner said his goal is to start construction in early 2025.
Visitors will be able to see almost to the Smoky Mountains from atop the tower on a clear day, he said.
Except for the “blemish” of the unreclaimed Looney Ridge mine, “it’s a stunning view,” Gardner said.
This story was originally published November 1, 2024 at 12:06 PM.
