Beshear officials should reverse Bevin decision on strip mining near Black Mountain
If the surrounding mountains had no coal, people would have vacation cabins along the creeks that flow off Black Mountain; they’d go there to hike, fly fish and admire the wildflowers.
Instead, a coal company in Houston lays claim to even the drinking water, because it flows from a reservoir created a century ago by underground mining. As investors and utilities around the globe spurn coal, the industry’s control remains near total in some Kentucky places.
A recent example: On his way out, Gov. Matt Bevin’s Energy and Environment secretary, a former coal company exec, denied protection from surface mining to the hills around the small towns of Benham and Lynch in Harlan County.
His successor, Secretary Rebecca Goodman, can and should reverse that decision.
Protecting places such as this irreplaceable sliver of Appalachia is “quintessentially” what Congress intended when it empowered states to declare some places off limits to surface mining, as attorney Tom FitzGerald of the Kentucky Resources Council explained in the lands-unsuitable-for mining petition rejected by former Secretary Charles G. Snavely.
KRC’s clients, three retired underground coal miners and a community college professor, are seeking to protect the historic districts of Benham and Lynch and their water sources from strip mining.
They already have done the state a favor by persisting after the first Beshear administration turned them down in 2011. A hearing officer reversed that decision, and last year they refiled their petition.
Their efforts have blocked a mining permit sought by Revelation Energy, a subsidiary of Blackjewel, the company whose bankruptcy threatens to stick Kentucky with tens of millions of dollars in unsecured reclamation costs.
Blackjewel’s former CEO Jeff Hoops is accused of draining tens of millions of dollars from the company for his benefit. Underground miners had to camp along a rail line to get their final pay. Hoops’ surface mines are now raining down rock and mud, threatening homes and lives, and polluting water.
Goodman and the new administration have an opportunity to exercise foresight by protecting a fragile area.
By Snavely’s own reckoning in a Nov. 19 order, the 10,000-plus acres covered by the petition include a stretch of state-protected coldwater stream that will support trout, 33 plant and 20 animal or insect species listed as threatened or endangered; 29 federally-listed bat species; possibly a threatened minnow, the blackside dace, unique to Cumberland River tributaries - plus two historic districts and 345 historic sites/structures.
Snavely concluded that all that nature fails to constitute a “natural area.”
He also stressed that most of the area already is under permit to be mined, while acknowledging that most of those permits are for underground mining, while the petition seeks to protect the land on top. FitzGerald says areas already under permit are excluded from the petition, but should be protected from future strip mining.
Most of the affected coal rights are owned by ACIN, an affiliate of Houston-based Natural Resource Partners, which collects lease royalties from companies like Revelation. ACIN estimates the petition would “sterilize” 3.7 million tons of coal.
In legal filings, the industry argues the region’s history of coal mining locks it into a future of coal mining – a stance that bodes ill for ever diversifying the economy.
In 1999, Kentucky paid $4.2 million to exclude mining above 3,200 feet on Black Mountain, Kentucky’s highest point.
In 2018, the Bevin administration, with support from Rep. Hal Rogers and Sen. Mitch McConnell, awarded a $2.55 million Abandoned Mine Lands Pilot grant to enhance tourism and job opportunities, including a walking trail that will lead to Black Mountain’s 4,145 summit and a 40-foot observation tower overlooking Virginia and Kentucky.
The grant would build on nearby attractions, including the exhibition coal mine Portal 31, Kentucky Coal Museum, Benham Schoolhouse Inn and Kingdom Come State Park.
ACIN’s lawyer argues that tourists would be interested in seeing active surface mining. Others are understandably skeptical that anyone would willingly expose themselves to the teeth-rattling vibrations and toxic dust clouds.
At a public hearing last March, petitioner Carl Shoupe, warned, “If this coal mining permit is granted, they are going to destroy everything that we can ever hope for in the future.”
He has a point. How do you plan for the future when a coal company can veto even your hopes?
Jamie Lucke is a former Herald-Leader editorial writer.