Doug Jackson

OLIVER SPRINGS, Tenn. — The cleanup of TVA’s coal-fired plants in East Tennessee is fueling a new environmental battle over coal.

The installation of scrubbers over the next four years at the Bull Run, Kingston and John Sevier plants will allow the Tennessee Valley Authority again to buy more of the high-sulfur coal mined here. With TVA and a growing export market raising prices — and new mining technologies improving coal extraction — mining companies are taking another look at the strip mines abandoned here a generation ago.

“This is potentially a growing industry for Tennessee that can create a lot of tax revenue and good-paying jobs in some of the poorest communities in our state,” said Chuck Laine, executive director of an industry-backed trade group known as FACTS. “We need this coal, and the mining done today is much more environmentally friendly than in the past.”

But some environmentalists and state lawmakers are pushing new controls and higher taxes that could limit any rebound in the state’s coal industry.

“Are Tennesseans at this day and time willing to sit back and allow our countryside to be ravaged in the name of coal mining?” asked state Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, who is pushing legislation to raise severance taxes and limit types of surface mining in Tennessee. “Mountaintop removal is the most environmentally brutal method of mining known to man and that is what is being proposed to mine Tennessee coal.”

Last week, a state House committee killed a bill that would have restricted some types of surface mining and could have led the state’s biggest mining company to abandon much of its mining in Tennessee. But a Senate committee will take up a similar measure Wednesday and the Legislature continues to debate how much, if any, to raise taxes on coal mined in Tennessee.

Reopening old mines

Beneath yards of soil, shale and granite atop Buffalo and Patterson mountains, untapped seams of coal remain a generation after previous surface mining operations often scarred the ridgesides here.

National Mining Co., a Knoxville-based company established only five years ago, estimates there are at least 30 million tons of untapped coal in the Sundquist Wildlife Management Area. After acquiring the mineral rights beneath the wildlife area and buying other mining operations in Alabama and Tennessee, National Coal plans to mine at least 2 million tons of coal this year using newer forms of surface mining.

National Mining is the state’s biggest coal company, but it is not alone in trying to rebuild part of Tennessee’s coal mining tradition. Although the volume of coal remains far below the levels reached during the 1960s and 1970s in Tennessee, other companies also are seeking permits to reopen or mine new coal sites.

According to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining, 15 permit applications are in varying stages of review in OSM’s Knoxville office.

Mark Mills, assistant general manager for National Coal Corp., said miners today are required to reclaim the land in a manner not done prior to 1977 when the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was adopted. Before that law, strip miners often reshaped mountains by removing the rock above coal seams and then leaving the mountains with uncovered high walls and ugly contour lines that generated problems from erosion and acid mine runoff.

“Mining today is totally different,” Mr. Mills said. “We have to go through a very detailed and expensive regulatory process to make sure we reclaim the land after we mine the coal and make sure there are no problems with runoff or erosion.”

Mining companies still use explosives and earth-moving equipment to remove what is usually up to 20 tons of rock for each ton of coal that is mined in Tennessee. But companies now are required to store and reuse the rock and soil removed during the initial mining phase to reclaim the mountain after the coal is removed.

After the coal is recovered from one pit, overburden from the next pit is brought in to backfill the first pit, Mr. Laine said. In Tennessee, the process is regulated by the federal Office of Surface Mining, rather than state agencies as it is done in Kentucky, Alabama and most other coal-producing states.

“We replant the reclaimed areas and don’t recover the bonds we must put up with OSM until they certify that we have met all of their requirements,” Mr. Mills said.

Mr. Laine said 90 percent of the surface mining in Tennessee is on old sites, many of which remain abandoned and will not be reclaimed otherwise.

“This is the only way that some of these mountains are going to be reclaimed for my children and grandchildren,” Mr. Laine said last week while touring reclaimed mining sites here.

Moving mountains

But environmentalists object to surface mining practices they label as “mountaintop removal.”

Dawn Coppock, a Strawberry Plains attorney who joined the church-backed Lindquest Environmental Appalachian Fellowship last year, has spent the past year pushing legislation to ban surface mining operations above 2,000 feet or within 100 feet of state water bodies.

“We’re not trying to put any coal mines out of business,” she said. “We’re just trying to save our ridgesides and our water from these destructive mining methods.”

Ms. Coppock said companies may be reopening old mines, but they also are expanding those permits to remove tons of coal from other areas not previously mined.

“Why would you want a coal company to take down our mountains to provide some short-term jobs and be left with scars forever?” Ms. Coppock asked. “You can’t just spray grass seed on a padded down stump of a mountain and claim that is equivalent to what we know as mountains in East Tennessee.”

But last Wednesday, the House Environment subcommittee voted 5-3 to kill the bill Ms. Coppock and others were backing to limit Tennessee surface mining.

Daniel Roling, CEO of National Coal, said the restrictive provisions of the bill would have forced his company to abandon plans to invest $30 million in Tennessee and instead mine more coal in Alabama. National Mining spends about $50 per ton to mine coal in Tennessee where coal seams are usually only 10 inches to 40 inches thick. In coal-rich Wyoming, coal seams run up to 40 feet in depth and can be mined for about $8 a ton, Mr. Laine said.

Concerns about the loss of coal jobs and investments in Tennessee appear to have won over many committee members who voted against what they said would be some of the strictest mining laws in the country.

Rep. William Baird, R-Jacksboro, said taxes from coal operations are needed to fund schools and road construction in rural Clairborne, Campbell and Scott counties. Rep. Baird is giving up his seat in the Legislature this year to run for mayor of Campbell County.

“Coal mining is part of our heritage, and it’s something we’re proud of,” Rep. Baird said. “The coal companies that are operating now are doing the right thing. They are putting the mountains back to their original contour and they are planting trees and improving water quality.”

Without such remining, Rep. Baird said, “there are going to be hundreds of miles of ugly orphan strip mines that are never going to be reclaimed.”

Sen. Jackson, however, dismisses such claims, and he expects the Senate Environment Committee to “handily pass” a new coal mining proposal when it meets Wednesday.

Sen. Jackson said much of the mining being permitted will open new areas, especially in the Sundquist Wildlife Area.

“The taxpayers of the state of Tennessee purchased 75,000 acres of land on the Cumberland Plateau to preserve for future generations,” he said. “But lo and behold, the National Coal Co. bought the mineral rights to this land from a bankrupt coal company in this area, and they plan now their mountaintop removal methods to get at these coal rights.”

Sen. Jackson likens the damage caused by National Coal operations to “a B-52 carpet-bombing the wildlife area.”

Even if the House Environment Committee killed the proposed surface mining restriction bill this year, Sen. Jackson is still working to boost the severance tax paid for coal in Tennessee.

Currently, coal is taxed at 20 cents per ton. Sen. Jackson has proposed a bill to raise that tax to 4.5 percent — equal to the rate in neighboring Kentucky. That tax would be more than 10 times the current rate.

“It’s only fair that some adjustment be made,” said Sen. Jackson, who said lawmakers may end up phasing in increases over time.

Gov. Phil Bredesen said he favors higher severance taxes on coal, calling surface mining “a necessary evil” but one that “should not be cheap.”

Reporter Andy Sher contributed to this report.

By the numbers

* 2.6 million — Tons of coal mined last year in Tennessee

* 0.2 — Percent of U.S. coal mined in Tennessee

* $560,800 — Severance taxes paid for coal mining in Tennessee in 2007

* 2,000-plus — Number of jobs created by Tennessee coal mining

* 90 — The percent of mining in Tennessee that is remaining of old, abandoned mine areas

* 200,000 — Native trees planted each year by Tennessee’s major coal mining companies

Source: FACTS, Office of Surface Mining, National Mining Association