West Virginia’s fund to clean up abandoned coal mines is in such dire shape that it threatens to stick taxpayers with hundreds of millions — perhaps even billions — of dollars in cleanup costs. And yet, little is being done to turn things around.
The bankruptcy of just one significant mining company could wipe out the fund, according to the state’s top regulatory official. And auditors for the Republican-controlled Legislature said at least five major companies were “at risk” of dumping cleanup costs on the state.
At $15 million, the state’s fund for restoring land is at its lowest level in more than 20 years. The program’s latest published actuarial report in 2022 warned that a related water cleanup trust fund will lose half its balance over the next 10 years.
These are costs the coal industry was supposed to cover. Unreclaimed mine sites can not only damage the environment but also endanger coalfield residents who live nearby. Coal waste dams sometimes leak or break, flooding downstream communities. Cliffs of rock and debris left behind after mining can collapse. Runoff that isn’t contained or treated often poisons fish or water supplies.
What’s so amusing, in a sickening, depressing way, is how West Virginia markets itself as a vast and beautiful natural utopian playground for the rich retirees out of northern Virginia and DC. Go just a bit deeper west and south into that state and it looks like the hellish barren embodiment of greed and evil.
I’ve only been to West Virginia once. I only drove through it. It must have been those parts of the state because I tried to get through it as fast as possible. It was the ugliest countryside I’d ever seen. Just mountaintop after mountaintop flattened down with big coal seams sticking out everywhere on the sides and chunks of it at the tops. Not one tree. Even Kansas and Oklahoma have trees and they’re big plains.
Ok I have no idea where you drove through, but the vast majority of the state is woodland and wetland. I spent my childhood summers just literally wandering around the woods all day with neighborhood kids while our parents were at work.
You were in a strip mining area.
This would be where-
Yep, that’s a strip mine
I posted the picture before you made your edit. Or at least before I saw it.
And there were basically all strip mines through the part of the state I drove through.
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If saying what I remember when I drove through it is deceitful, I’m guilty.
West Virginia has a lot of both but more and more strip mines as time goes on. Mountaintop removal is a 21st century practice. Depending on your route through the state you see either pristine wilderness that screams to the soul to wander into or a desolate hellscape.