The Tiny Insurance Company Standing Between Taxpayers and a Costly Coal Industry Bailout
Erin Savage, a scientist with Appalachian Voices, a Boone, North Carolina-based organization dealing with the long tail of coal mining pollution, has made it a pet project to research Indemnity’s holdings in states beyond West Virginia and was shocked by what she found…
The other possible danger, Savage says, is that “a lot of these mines won’t be cleaned up in a timely manner, and they will cause problems like water pollution, erosion, and earth instability for the people who live near them.”…
His report found that all but six of the coal companies with mining operations in the state and a minimum of $4 million of Indemnity bonds had had past bankruptcies…
So what happens if they go bankrupt and can’t clean up their mess?
When Congress wrote the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, it gave states a fair bit of leeway on how to mandate mine cleanup. Some states, including West Virginia, formed their own reclamation funds with taxes on coal. These funds serve as a backup if mine owners go broke and their bonds aren’t sufficient…