Modern Coal Mines’ Cleanup Has Big Unbudgeted Costs, Group Says

The price tag for cleaning up modern coal mines in Appalachia is between $7.5 billion and $9.8 billion—vastly more than the $3.8 billion known to be set aside for the job in bonds, an environmental group estimates in a new report.

The findings are alarming because the federal government has no reliable estimate of the cleanup cost for mines built after 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed a law that funded the reclamation of old and inactive legacy mines, according to Erin Savage, a senior program manager at Appalachian Voices and the report’s author.

Moreover, the dollar ...