Charleston, WEST VIRGINIA -Lack of federal funding has terminated a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study on the health effects of mountaintop coal removal in Central Appalachia. Trump has been slowly and quietly dismantling the study since last fall, when the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) halted the work due to an agency wide review of grants and agreements over $100,000.

The $1 million study was funded following growing pressure from citizen groups, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the state Bureau for Public Health to review negative health consequences to communities living in or near mountaintop removal sites. The concern grew from previous research findings, both from universities and federal agencies, that found an increased risk of birth defects, cancer, premature death, and other illnesses near mountaintop removal mining sites.

The National Academies made the initial announcement, in August 2017, that the study had been halted due to budgetary reasons. Earlier this year, the 11-member voluntary committee was dismantled in the absence of direction from OSMRE. Both the Department of Interior and the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement have failed to publicly announce the halting of the study, and any other information since then.

President Trump’s 2019 budget proposed $122 million for OSMRE, a $7 million reduction from the 2018 proposed budget. The 2018 proposed budget was significantly reduced by $111 million from President Obama’s 2017 budget.

“For years, people in Appalachia have demanded to know how dire the health effects of mountaintop coal removal are and this study could have provided that knowledge so that families could protect themselves and their communities. Yet, despite the concerns of citizens and research demonstrating that there are negative health consequences of mountaintop removal, Trump maintains his callousness and disregard for the people of Appalachia as another initiative benefiting this region is sliced,” Bill Price, Field Organizing Manager at the Sierra Club said. “And once again, the quiet dismantling of the study is another example of Trump’s deliberate efforts to suppress information from the public that is in conflict with the wants of his corporate coal buddies.”