By Taylor Kuykendall

While the coal industry itself has decreased moderately and steadily in recent years, coal mined by the controversial process of mountaintop removal mining has fallen precipitously.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration featured the decline in its Today in Energy feature online July 7. According to that post, coal production from mines using mountaintop removal has decreased 62% from 2008 to 2014 while total coal production has fallen by just 15% and surface production by 21% in the same period.

Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, said much of the issue is that coal companies simply cannot get the permits they need to mine. Special permits apply to those opening a surface mine and further permits are required if a mine includes a valley fill, which is the transfer of the overburden from the mine to another location, often a nearby valley.

"This is not only about poor market conditions that hit high-cost regions severely but also dramatically illustrates the impact of the administration's regulatory policies on the region, especially its failure to approve permits," Popovich said. "So behind this picture of a regional industry in distress is the larger canvas showing rising unemployment, declining living standards and poor communities courtesy of an administration that now offers welfare to replace the livelihoods it has destroyed."

Arch Coal Inc.'s well-known attempt to open the Spruce No. 1 mine is often held up as an example of permitting difficulty. While various courts came to different conclusions, ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear arguments about the latest ruling finding that the U.S. EPA does have the authority to retroactively veto a permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Many in the industry are expecting permitting to become even more difficult under the recently revised Clean Water Rule and the pending rewrite of the Stream Buffer Zone rule. Both could limit where it is acceptable to conduct coal mining operations.

Mary Anne Hitt, director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, said the decline is the result of an overall reduction of demand in coal, but also about court decisions that found coal companies responsible for the pollution they have released and decades of local opposition from those worried about the health and environmental effects of the practice.

"These new EIA numbers give us a clear sign that we're making progress in slowing mountaintop removal, but they probably provide little comfort if coal companies are blasting near your home or you have a loved one who is sick," Hitt said. "We still have work to do to end mountaintop removal and create a sustainable Appalachian economy."

The EIA defines mountaintop removal as a method in which entire coal seams are mined by removing the overburden of rock, soil or mineral deposits and creating a level plateau or "gentle rolling contour." The agency notes that quantifying the amount of coal produced from mountaintop mining is difficult due to a variety of mining techniques that can be performed on a mountaintop that could be going on in addition to mountaintop removal, including contour mining and area mining .

Because the EIA uses all production from mines with mountaintop removal permits, the agency said they present an "upper bound" of mountaintop removal production. The practice is most often used in Central Appalachia, and West Virginia accounts for the most domestic mountaintop removal production. About 61% of the state's surface mine production came from mountaintop removal mines in 2013.

On the other hand, EIA said, Tennessee has had no active mountaintop removal mines since at least 2007. Bill Bissett, president of the Kentucky Coal Association, said very few Kentucky mines still use the process.

“ Behind this picture of a regional industry in distress is the larger canvas showing rising unemployment, declining living standards and poor communities courtesy of an administration that now offers welfare to replace the livelihoods it has destroyed. ”

 Luke Popovich, spokesman, National Mining Association

"I think the reasons for that are several," Bissett said. "One is the nature of the reserves we have now that we are mining don't really need that practice. I think there was a lot of scrutiny from activists, which increased costs and litigation connected to the practice, and I think you also had a federal government who seemed especially focused on mountaintop mining and even surface mining in some cases that for a period of about four years from 2010 to 2014, and it created a blockade of necessary permits to conduct surface mining, which would have also of course affected mountaintop mining."

Bissett said he is unaware of any company in the state that has sought a mountaintop removal permit in well over a decade.

Coal moving away from controversy

In the midst of its first bankruptcy, environmentalists leveraged a large selenium obligation held by Patriot Coal Corp. to convince the company to give up on mountaintop removal in exchange for a delay on its selenium cleanup obligations. Then CEO Bennet Hatfield later told SNL Energy that exiting the practice of mountaintop removal avoided costs and risks and noted the company was planning to retire the technique anyway.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc., once heavily targeted by numerous groups for its mountaintop removal practices, noted a trend away from the practice in its 2014 year in review. When it did conduct mountaintop removal, Alpha noted, it restored mined land to "accommodate an approved higher and better post-mining land use, such as community services like schools, highways or economic developments."

"While our affiliates have successfully employed [mountaintop removal] in the past to create public benefits on restored mined lands, our surface mining in 2014 only utilized area, contour and highwall mining," Alpha wrote. "We have no current plans to utilize [mountaintop removal] practices in 2015."

Facing criticism from environmentalists who targeted the financing of mountaintop removal, financial institutions such as Bank of America Corp., Barclays Plc, PNC Financial Services Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs & Co. have announced plans to slow or stop participation in deals involved with the practice.

Dianne Bady, co-director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said litigation from citizen groups has been successful in raising the costs for companies that choose mountaintop removal. Litigation from such groups has resulted in numerous lawsuits that have ultimately forced costly selenium treatment that underground mines may avoid.

“These new EIA numbers give us a clear sign that we're making progress in slowing mountaintop removal, but they probably provide little comfort if coal companies are blasting near your home or you have a loved one who is sick.”

 Mary Anne Hitt, director, Sierra Club Beyond Coal campaign

Environmentalists have also won a case over conductivity pollution resulting in biological impairment of streams. Bady noted that while that suit is not yet settled, it has put the industry on alert that more expensive pollutant controls are going to be required.

"Entire communities have been obliterated. Southern West Virginia, where mountaintop removal takes place, is at the bottom of just about every health and quality-of-life indicator that exists," Bady said. "It is a major national tragedy that simply would not have been allowed in most places in the U.S."

Bady expects mountaintop removal practices to continue to decline but is afraid some damage cannot be undone. She said that citizens may have slowed the practice, but "there just aren't enough resources to fight every illegal aspect" of mountaintop removal.

Thom Kay, Appalachian Voices' legislative associate, said it is important to not assume mountaintop removal is going away just because of the EIA's latest numbers. He said production numbers fail to convey the extent of human health impacts and do not account for mine location, blasting extent and impacts to the environment. He said that while production from mountaintop removal may be on the decline, they are also getting closer to communities.

"Fewer mines is good news," Kay said. "But don't expect us to celebrate. The EIA reports that last year there were over 30 mountaintop removal mines operating in Central Appalachia, producing more than 20 million tons of coal. Those numbers should be zero."

He said further progress on reducing the practice is "inevitable" due to an expected decrease in demand for Central Appalachia coal, but groups such as Appalachian Voices will not rely on the market to end mountaintop removal.

"We need action from the White House and Congress; a lot could be riding on the Stream Protection Rule coming out this summer," Kay said. "Allowing mountaintop removal mining to continue as residents demand new investments and support for economic alternatives will only burden communities searching for a better path forward."

Bissett said he believes he is seeing environmentalists pivot from focusing on mountaintop removal to hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and pipeline construction. However, he notes that there may be some confusion regarding mountaintop removal versus surface mines in general, which are still a major production force in places like Kentucky.

"Half of the coal mining in eastern Kentucky and 15% of the coal mining in western Kentucky is still done through surface means," he said. "I still think you have a need to do surface mining where it is applicable and where it makes sense for a number of reasons, but at the same time I don't think the specific federally designated practice of mountaintop mining is really being used much anymore and to a lesser degree moving forward."

Vernon Haltom, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch, said coal companies are still engaging in the techniques that make mountaintop removal troublesome to those that live near mining sites whether they classify it as another surface mining technique or mountaintop removal.

"Alpha Natural Resources says that they didn't do mountaintop removal in 2014 and don't plan to this year," Haltom said. "But I'm presently a few thousand feet from an active Alpha mountaintop removal site, and today I was on a site visit for a new 847-acre application. Regardless of what they call it, it's the same method, and the blasting dust has the same effect on human health."