BLUEFIELD — As soon as he learned that President Barack Obama’s fiscal year budget for 2011 proposed an $11 million cut for state surface coal mining permitting programs, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., fired off a letter to Norm Dicks, chairman of the subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies stating his “vehement opposition” to what he characterized as nothing short of “abdication of federal responsibility.”
“This is not the first time an administration has tried to cut funding for this program,” Rahall said during a telephone interview Thursday evening. “The abandoned mine program was set up in 1977 as part of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act,” he said. “We are opposed to the proposal of cutting those funds because they are part of a 2006 agreement and we don’t want to eliminate it.”
Rahall predicted if Congress had to address the issue again, “the first amendment offered would be to eliminate mountaintop removal mining,” Rahall said. “We would lose,” he predicted.
Rahall said he was also concerned that the administration wanted to shift the cost of surface coal mining activities by increasing user fees on the coal industry. “This would not be the time to push additional costs off on the coal industry,” he said.
“I’m confident that we can beat this cut in funding,” Rahall said. “This was a compromise that was agreed to back in 1977 by the coal industry and the environmental community when surface mining was being challenged just like it is today. The compromise allowed us to reclaim abandoned coal mines and continue surface mining.”
Rahall said that the coal industry, especially in the Appalachian region, is already taxed enough by the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He urged the House Appropriations Committee to restore the funding in the budget. Rahall chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources.
– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com
Local News
February 4, 2010
Rahall reacts to Obama’s surface mining budget cuts
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