WASHINGTON, D.C. – Environmental groups are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to hold mining companies financially accountable for on-site damages at mines in a report released this week.
The report was released just days before the U.S. House on Thursday passed the 2017 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, which includes funding for the Department of the Interior and the EPA. The bill awaits passage in the U.S. Senate. The House stripped language that would have blocked proposed EPA rules that the environmental groups are demanding.
Published by the environmental interest group Earthworks, the report says that the EPA should require mining companies to provide financial assurance that they can pay for any necessary hazardous waste cleanup at mine sites.
Earthworks, along with the Sierra Club, Amigos Bravos, Great Basin Resource Watch and Communities for a Better Environment, successfully sued the EPA in 2015 to require that the agency draft rules on the issue, after the Gold King Mine spill. While a Superfund law has required these assurances since 1983, the EPA did not work to finish writing them until required by a D.C. Circuit Court last year.
Report author Stu Levit of the Center for Science in Public Participation said that requiring companies to put money in bonds up-front is a vital and reasonable way to ensure that they pay for expenses, rather than taxpayers.
“I don’t blame industry for watching its bottom line, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of taxpayers,” Levit said. “Mining and the cost of cleanup are a necessary and imperative part of business.”
Levit said that companies need to put enough money into a bond or trust to pay for the “reasonable worst case scenario” that is determined after a mine has been evaluated. He also said that if an adequate bond had been in place at sites such as the Gold King Mine, money would have been in place that could have lessened financial impacts.
In Colorado, some state regulations require individuals and companies to post a reclamation bond to ensure they have sufficient funds to reclaim the site. However, if these new rules are adopted by the EPA, companies would no longer be allowed to post “self-bonds,” or corporate guarantees of payment, but would need to be able show funds up front.
Steve Fearn, a former stakeholder in the Gold King Mine, said he believes that Colorado’s laws are working, and that local and state governments are capable of handling issues.
More than 50 organizations, including the San Juan Citizens Alliance, have signed a letter in support of the report’s key components, said Lauren Pagel, Earthworks policy director. One of those components is to prioritize putting money into trusts for sites that will require long-term hazardous waste monitoring.
“We know that a lot of these mines, as we’ve seen from mines like the Gold King Mine, is that they need long-term treatment for hundreds or even thousands of years,” Pagel said. “So making sure that the money for that perpetual treatment is there, so that 25 or 50 years from now, that money is there and taxpayers won’t be left to clean up the bill.”
The EPA is required to release a draft of its rules by Dec. 1, and the final rules will be released in December 2017.
Kate Magill is a student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Journal.
