The article linked below, dealing with the plight of those now living in eastern Kentucky (or, as they call it, "Hill Country"), pretty neatly encapsulates how screwed those people are, and how they essentially brought it on themselves.
www.nbcnews.com
I found the following excerpts from the linked article particularly informative:
Compacted dirt, destroyed mountaintops and deforestation in eastern Kentucky have often been left ignored by the coal companies that mined there, despite legal requirements that they attempt to return the land to its natural state when mining concludes. In recent decades, that spurned responsibility has, at times, turned heavy rains into floods and caused local residents who once counted on mining for jobs and prosperity to bring litigation against their former employers in Appalachian courtrooms.
Kentucky, particularly the eastern mountains, are littered with abandoned coal mines. Many are a result of strip mining or mountaintop removal mining, the latter a method in which mining companies use explosives to blast off a mountain's summit to get to the coal inside.
The loss of the natural ridge lines, vegetation and trees, and the cracks in the mountains that are largely owned by companies often funnels rainwater into the thin valleys, or low-lying hollows, where most eastern Kentuckians make their homes.
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, or SMCRA, was a federal regulation that was supposed to prevent coal companies from leaving abandoned mines behind. The law required mine owners to reclaim the land and return it to its natural form as much as possible. In the ensuing 45 years, many companies have avoided that work and many states in the region, like Kentucky, turned a blind eye to it.
Now, there are more than 2,800 entries for Kentucky in the national inventory of known-abandoned mine land, according to a Department of Interior database, and much of it is located in the state's eastern hill country.
More than 2,800 abandoned coal mines. Imagine that. Well, at least the Kentucky state government had the foresight to establish a bond fund to help pay for the costs of remediating these abandoned mines, and apparently enacted legislation requiring that coal mining companies pay a small tax into this bond fund:
Since 2013, Kentucky requires companies to pay into a single bond pool through what essentially serves as a tax on a certain amount of acreage or coal tonnage.
But there appears to be a problem with the funding of this bond fund:
But the difference between the liabilities that were left behind and the trust fund the state created in 2013 has grown significantly.
About 408,000 Kentuckians live within one mile of abandoned mine land, the regional think tank Ohio River Valley institute estimated last year, and it will cost nearly $1.2 billion to remediate it. As of 2020, the Kentucky fund had about $52 million in it, according to a state report.
So who have Kentuckians turned to in order to bail themselves out of their self created predicament? Who else? The federal government:
Kentucky spent a little more than $1.5 million from its reclamation fund, according to the 2022 executive budget. The state is expected to receive an additional $75 million this year as part of President Joe Biden's infrastructure law, which dedicated $11.3 billion toward abandoned mine reclamation over the next 15 years. Last year, the state received $9 million from the federal government.
Why don't flooded out Kentuckians sue these irresponsible coal mining companies, you might ask? Well, it turns out that it has become increasingly difficult in a State like Kentucky:
Kevin Thompson, an attorney whose work earned national attention for challenging powerful coal CEO Don Blankenship, said the images he saw out of Kentucky this past week gave him flashbacks to the 2009 King Coal case he worked on in West Virginia.
Thompson said, however, that it would be much more difficult to bring a challenge more than a decade later. While the issues are the same, he said that partisanship and the politicization of science have created new challenges in the courtroom.
"There's always been politics, but what has changed is people's unwillingness to accept science and engineering principles," he said. "It has jaded their political views to the point that plaintiffs can't get fair compensation for damage done to them by mountaintop removal."
Not all views are skewed by politics, Thompson clarified, but it can make it difficult to get all 12 members of a jury to side with the plaintiff.
“Almost all of the law firms that I know that represent coal mining families have stopped litigating these kinds of cases,” Thompson added. “It’s become really difficult.”
It's sad to see what these poor Kentuckians are going through right now, but it's difficult to help people who don't want to help themselves.
Abandoned mines and poor oversight worsened Kentucky flooding, attorneys say
“No one is denying the amount of rain we had — it truly was a 1,000 year event — but did the strip mines contribute? Absolutely," a Kentucky lawyer said.
www.nbcnews.com
I found the following excerpts from the linked article particularly informative:
Compacted dirt, destroyed mountaintops and deforestation in eastern Kentucky have often been left ignored by the coal companies that mined there, despite legal requirements that they attempt to return the land to its natural state when mining concludes. In recent decades, that spurned responsibility has, at times, turned heavy rains into floods and caused local residents who once counted on mining for jobs and prosperity to bring litigation against their former employers in Appalachian courtrooms.
Kentucky, particularly the eastern mountains, are littered with abandoned coal mines. Many are a result of strip mining or mountaintop removal mining, the latter a method in which mining companies use explosives to blast off a mountain's summit to get to the coal inside.
The loss of the natural ridge lines, vegetation and trees, and the cracks in the mountains that are largely owned by companies often funnels rainwater into the thin valleys, or low-lying hollows, where most eastern Kentuckians make their homes.
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, or SMCRA, was a federal regulation that was supposed to prevent coal companies from leaving abandoned mines behind. The law required mine owners to reclaim the land and return it to its natural form as much as possible. In the ensuing 45 years, many companies have avoided that work and many states in the region, like Kentucky, turned a blind eye to it.
Now, there are more than 2,800 entries for Kentucky in the national inventory of known-abandoned mine land, according to a Department of Interior database, and much of it is located in the state's eastern hill country.
More than 2,800 abandoned coal mines. Imagine that. Well, at least the Kentucky state government had the foresight to establish a bond fund to help pay for the costs of remediating these abandoned mines, and apparently enacted legislation requiring that coal mining companies pay a small tax into this bond fund:
Since 2013, Kentucky requires companies to pay into a single bond pool through what essentially serves as a tax on a certain amount of acreage or coal tonnage.
But there appears to be a problem with the funding of this bond fund:
But the difference between the liabilities that were left behind and the trust fund the state created in 2013 has grown significantly.
About 408,000 Kentuckians live within one mile of abandoned mine land, the regional think tank Ohio River Valley institute estimated last year, and it will cost nearly $1.2 billion to remediate it. As of 2020, the Kentucky fund had about $52 million in it, according to a state report.
So who have Kentuckians turned to in order to bail themselves out of their self created predicament? Who else? The federal government:
Kentucky spent a little more than $1.5 million from its reclamation fund, according to the 2022 executive budget. The state is expected to receive an additional $75 million this year as part of President Joe Biden's infrastructure law, which dedicated $11.3 billion toward abandoned mine reclamation over the next 15 years. Last year, the state received $9 million from the federal government.
Why don't flooded out Kentuckians sue these irresponsible coal mining companies, you might ask? Well, it turns out that it has become increasingly difficult in a State like Kentucky:
Kevin Thompson, an attorney whose work earned national attention for challenging powerful coal CEO Don Blankenship, said the images he saw out of Kentucky this past week gave him flashbacks to the 2009 King Coal case he worked on in West Virginia.
Thompson said, however, that it would be much more difficult to bring a challenge more than a decade later. While the issues are the same, he said that partisanship and the politicization of science have created new challenges in the courtroom.
"There's always been politics, but what has changed is people's unwillingness to accept science and engineering principles," he said. "It has jaded their political views to the point that plaintiffs can't get fair compensation for damage done to them by mountaintop removal."
Not all views are skewed by politics, Thompson clarified, but it can make it difficult to get all 12 members of a jury to side with the plaintiff.
“Almost all of the law firms that I know that represent coal mining families have stopped litigating these kinds of cases,” Thompson added. “It’s become really difficult.”
It's sad to see what these poor Kentuckians are going through right now, but it's difficult to help people who don't want to help themselves.
