Sierra Club Conservation Policies

Coal Mining

Coal mining -- the extraction of coal by surface mining or deep mining methods -- has often proved to be an unacceptable activity under past and present practices. Mining has caused and continues to cause serious and extensive environmental damage, including pollution of water, depletion of water supply, destruction of land, harm to health and safety, and the serious disruption of community life.

Not only has mining destroyed thousands of miles of streams and thousands of acres of land, but the damage caused by mining is often irreparable. In addition, present mining policies result in the elimination of a nonrenewable resource without proper consideration of alternative renewable and nonpolluting energy sources and energy conservation.

The Sierra Club supports only mining that is designed and conducted to meet goals consistent with the maintenance or improvement of environmental quality. These goals must be implemented through an effective and comprehensive program of planning, research, legislation, regulation, taxation, energy conservation, and utilization of environmentally acceptable alternative renewable and nonpolluting energy resources. In these processes, public notice and participation must be fully authorized and encouraged. The health and safety of mine workers and other affected persons must be rigorously protected.

The Sierra Club opposes mining under any conditions in areas with significant environmental values or areas with unusual sensitivity to the effects of mining. The Sierra Club supports only mining that ultimately meets the following goals:

Fills a necessary energy need based on the assumption of maximum energy conservation.
Restores land affected by mining to a long-term, self-sustaining ecosystem, as indicated by: a. Equal or greater biological productivity, and b. Vegetation that can withstand natural climatic variations without long-term human maintenance and that can support native wildlife.
Maintains or improves water quality and supply.
Maintains or improves air quality.
Restores land affected by mining to a use or uses compatible with the protection of environmental quality.
Avoids creation or perpetuation of community dependence on mining, and avoids other disruption of community life.
Protects the health and safety of miners and citizens of the community.
Creates no latent environmental hazards that may affect future generations.

Adopted by the Board of Directors, October 23-24, 1976

Guidelines

The following guidelines were developed by the Club's Energy Committee to help interpret and implement the policy.

GOALS

1. Environmentally Sensitive Planning -- Mining regulation and prohibition based on ad hoc, crisis-oriented decisionmaking is not effective. Instead, decisions concerning whether or not to allow mining, and under what conditions, must be based upon an environmentally sensitive planning process that attempts to anticipate and prevent problems caused by mining rather than react to them. This planning process would also evaluate the true social and economic costs of proposed mining activities, while having the protection of environmental quality as its paramount objective.

a. Energy Planning

Restrict the rate of mining to that necessary to meet identified energy needs based on the assumption of maximum energy conservation and maximum utilization of renewable and nonpolluting energy resources.

b. Area-Wide Planning

(1) Identify -- for the purpose of designating area-wide prohibition and restrictions -- areas: (a) having significant natural, scenic, historic, recreational, scientific, wildlife, geological, or agricultural value, and (b) which are ecologically fragile or otherwise unusually sensitive to the effects of mining.

Examples of areas in (a) include: lands included in or adjacent to federal, state, or local park or natural areas systems or in wildlife refuges and management areas; areas known to provide habitat, feeding, or mating grounds for rare, threatened, or endangered animals; areas containing rare, threatened, or endangered plants; areas containing outstanding examples of plant communities, such as virgin timber; areas designated as having historic or archaeological value; areas containing outstanding examples of scenic landforms; units of the National Wilderness Preservation System; units of the National Forest System; units of the National Trail System; areas designated as Wild or Scenic Rivers; and areas of de facto wilderness under study for reservation as part of the preservation system.

Examples of areas in (b) include: arid and semiarid areas; alluvial valley floors; areas with critical water resource problems (e.g., because of aridity or extensive pollution); areas with geological hazards; areas where soils and subsoils are unsuitable to establish self-sustaining post-mining plant communities of suitably predominant native species; and areas containing waters with little or no chemical buffering capacity.

(2) Identify areas which have been degraded by mining and whose environment is likely to be improved by the application of relatively more advanced reclamation and pollution abatement techniques. Direct mining toward reaffecting those degraded areas.

(3) Allow only that mining that will be consistent with a desired land use or uses that protect environmental quality in the area to be affected.

(4) Include in area-wide planning secondary impact, including housing requirements.

c. Case-Specific Planning

(1) Coordinate all mining activity, including any publicly financed reclamation or pollution abatement activity. For example, direct mining activity away from all coal seams in the area of existing deep mine seals in order to prevent weakening of seals through strata disturbance; identify and prohibit any mining activity that might endanger the integrity of barriers-in-place; and carefully regulate concurrent mining activity in multiple coal seams where blasting is involved.

(2) Fully evaluate all environmental characteristics of any area that mining is proposed in.

(3) Control the rate and extent of mining by, among other things: (a) allowing only a limited amount of a given watershed to be mined; (b) limiting the amount of mining on a watershed at any one time; and (c) limiting the amount of mining at any one time to the number of operations that can be effectively inspected.

2. Research

Relatively little mining research has been conducted on topics not directly related to increasing coal production. Comprehensive research, aimed at developing and implementing effective methods of environmental protection, must be conducted on the following mining related problems, among others:

a. Land restoration, including methods of backfilling and revegetation. This research must be oriented toward restoration of the land to full biological productivity rather than requirements of, at best, reclamation of the land to a state somewhat more productive than the state of the land during surface or deep mining operations.

b. Pollution prediction, including methods for predicting the potential of the coal and associated materials for acid and trace element drainage.

c. Pollution control, including restoration techniques, energy-efficient methods of effective treatment of mine drainage, and determination of whether and under what conditions deep mine sealing and alternative methods of preventing pollution discharges from deep mines will be effective.

d. Hydrologic effects of mining, including the effects of mining on water supplies and aquifers. This research must include the effects of the current practice of allowing the impoundment of polluted groundwater as a surface water pollution control device.

e. Subsurface disposal of coal refuse, including subsurface disposal by slurry mixtures. Research should be additionally required by:

f. Experimental permits -- All mining permits issued must contain requirements for monitoring the effects of operations during and after mining. In effect, every permit issued must be a vehicle for research.

g. Technology forcing regulations -- Regulations and permit conditions must be expressly geared toward forcing industry to devise and employ the most effective methods of environmental protection.

LEGISLATION

Comprehensive federal legislation is necessary to set uniform minimum national standards for mining regulation and to ensure maximum citizen participation in the regulatory process.
Each state with potential or ongoing mining must adopt and enforce effective and comprehensive state laws.

REGULATION

A strong emphasis on effective regulation, including stringent enforcement, is necessary to ensure that mining is actually done in compliance with the law. Both preventive and after-the-fact enforcement are especially significant problems, since there are better laws on the books than there is enforcement of them.

1. Permits -- Permit regulation is the first and most important step in the enforcement process because it serves as the vehicle for preventing harm. Legal action to correct environmental problems associated with mining after they occur is hampered by the inability of an adversary legal system to satisfactory resolve technical problems, the general slowness of the legal system, and the insolubility of many of the problems caused by mining once the problems have been created.

a. All mining permit applications must be thoroughly reviewed by a staff highly trained in relevant disciplines and subdisciplines, including geology, botany, ecology, aquatic biology, wildlife biology, and range science.

b. All mining permit applications must be reviewed in a regional, as well as a site specific, context extending at least to the watershed boundaries. Individual permit applications must be reviewed in relation to all past, present, and proposed mining operations in the watershed.

c. The permit application must include a complete mining plan with detailed maps. Any permits granted must require that all mining be done according to the plan and that maps showing the progress of mining must be submitted at least every six months.

d. The permit application must be required to submit core samples centered at representative intervals and, where possible, drilled to at least the coal below the coal proposed to be mined. These core samples should be thoroughly analyzed. The analysis must include tests for reactive pyrite and trace elements content.

e. Permits must cover all phases of the mining operation, including all site preparation, test holes, boreholes and entries, coal refuse disposal, and reclamation.

f. Permits must cover the entire area of the mining operation, including haul roads and storage sites.

g. In order that sufficient funds are available to cover liability for all harm, including environmental damage, all permits must be issued in the name of the highest controlling corporate or other entity.

2. Effluent standards -- Stringent effluent standards must be set for all parameters of pollution caused by mining, including trace elements as well as acid and iron.

3. Performance standards for restoration of land affected by surface and deep mining must include the following minimum requirements:

a. The top layer of the backfill must always be topsoil or the best available productive subsoil. All earth removed must be segregated and replaced in the order the layers were taken out of the ground, except that all materials with a potential for pollution must be identified as they are disturbed and either buried in the backfill in a position where they will cause the least environmental damage or hauled to properly regulated offsite disposal areas.

b. All backfilling must be concurrent with mining.

c. The land must be restored to approximate original contour.

d. The area of the backfilling and other land affected by the mining operation must be revegetated as soon as possible with a permanent cover. This cover must consist of thriving grasses and legumes or native species of plants, unless seasonal agricultural crops are grown and harvested in a manner that preserves the integrity of the soil. Trees may be planted, depending on circumstances, once the permanent cover has been established.

e. All mining that affects the land surface must be conducted by a method that allows the minimum exposure to pollution causing substances.

4. Erosion and Sedimentation Control -- Mining operations must follow an approved erosion and sedimentation control plan submitted before mining commences. This plan must include a sufficiently sized and properly located water drainage and collection system.

5. Perpetual liability -- Mining operations must be held liable in perpetuity f or any environmental harm they cause.

6. Bonding -- Mining operations must be required to post sufficient bond or collateral to ensure against environmental harm during and after mining.

7. Inspections must be conducted frequently, irregularly, and without notice by trained inspectors free of conflicts of interest.

8. Monitoring -- The best available monitoring techniques must be used in mining enforcement, including infrared photography of the groundwater to ascertain pollution and geophysical monitoring of barriers to indicate their width and strength.

9. Legal remedies -- A full range of remedies must be available and used in enforcement, including cease-and-desist orders, permit suspensions and revocations, denials of permits to operators with a past history of non-compliance or with current violations, civil penalties, equity actions, and criminal actions.

10. Public participation is an essential part of mining regulation and must include the following:

a. Opportunity for public comment and challenge at key points in the decisionmaking process, for example, on permit applications, permit decisions, and bond releases.

b. Mandatory publication in general circulation newspapers of permit applications (with accurate and legible maps), permit decisions, and bond releases.

c. Opportunity for citizens' suits, including citizen enforcement in the event of agency laxity.

d. The burden of proof must be on the mining operator at all times.

11. Surface landowner's consent must be required in writing before surface mining is permitted.

12. Water supply regulation -- Mine operators must be responsible for replacing any water supply polluted or depleted by their operations.

13. Coal refuse regulation -- Coal refuse disposal on the land surface constitutes a fire hazard, a source of severe pollution, and degrades the landscape.

a. Underground storage must be the preferred method of coal refuse disposal. In cases where a high degree of compaction to avoid combustion is possible and where water pollution will not result, coal refuse must be backstowed in the surface or deep mine. In other cases, other subsurface disposal methods must be considered.

b. In specific cases where underground coal refuse disposal is environmentally unsound, unsafe, or not technically feasible, surface disposal should be permitted where stringent practices are followed to suppress fire hazards, to prevent water pollution, and to insure the stability of the pile.

14. Safety regulation -- Surface mining creates significant health and safety hazards and deep mining remains a highly dangerous activity.

a. Advances in the production capacity of machinery must not come at the expense of safety.

b. Safety and pollution considerations must be coordinated, for example, in setting requirements for the width and location of barriers, and in preventing inundation and flooding from mine breakouts.

c. Mining production must not be increased, nor new mines opened, without an adequate number of highly experienced and highly trained mining personnel.

d. For deep mines, development and application of techniques to bleed off methane gas and capture it for productive use before mining starts is essential.

e. Electrical systems must be designed to minimize and eliminate the danger of fire and explosion.

f. Adequate emergency health care and hospitalization facilities must be readily available at all times in every mine.

g. Stringent occupational health and safety standards must be set, including stringent respirable dust limits.

h. Adequate benefits must be provided to the victims of black lung disease and other mining-related diseases and disabilities.

15. Subsidence regulation -- Subsidence of land after coal removal remains a significant problem associated with deep mining.

a. The mine operator must be required to prevent subsidence that would affect buildings and structures constructed before the opening of the mine.

b. The mine operator must be required to establish an escrow fund for subsidence damage to any building or structure, wherever constructed.

c. The mine operator must be absolutely liable for subsidence damage.

16. Miscellaneous nuisance regulation -- Mining causes other kinds of nuisances that require regulation, including:

a. Blasting (1) Seismic monitoring must be required of all blasts at the operation. (2) Mining operators must be required to indemnify persons for blasting damage. (3) Mining operators must be absolutely liable for damage caused by blasting.

b. Mining operators must be liable for the offsite damages involved in coal haulage - -including tipples, machinery, and sheds -- after mining is completed, and must be required to restore the area by revegetation and other necessary measures.

16. Planning -- Federal regulations and grant-in-aid programs should encourage state and local governments to develop planning processes to evaluate the offsite impacts of providing housing and services for those who would be employed in major mining projects and to implement plans to minimize the adverse impacts of such secondary effects. Mining Taxes Taxes must be imposed on mining operations. The proceeds of such taxes must go to public projects restoring areas degraded by past mining, public improvements to eliminate adverse impacts of mining, and other environmental improvement measures.

Adopted by the Board of Directors, October 23-24, 1976