CHAPTER 11 IT'S A COAL ENVIRONMENT—BUT THERE ARE TRADEOFFS

• Jurisdiction: United States

Western Coal Development
(Mar 1973)
CHAPTER 11
IT'S A COAL ENVIRONMENT—BUT THERE ARE TRADEOFFS
James H. Krieger ^*
Best, Best & Kriegel
Riverside, California

It has been a cold environment this winter for many Americans. Next year and the year after, and for the next 15 years it will be even a colder one, unless the Nation's coal resources are turned on to make it a coal environment. To meet new energy demands, or to use coal where oil or gas is now used, requires the ingenuity, energy and understanding of business, politicians, environmentalists and the courts. As Secretary of Interior Morton recently said, it will take nothing short of a "superhuman effort" to negotiate the stormy seas of an energy crisis to reach 1985 intact.

That coal is the most likely fuel to meet the emergency is generally conceded. The reason is that there is an abundance of coal in America, and it can be mined, transported by train or pipeline, converted to gas, coal slurry or used directly in mine mouth power plants. There is enough coal to meet the Nation's energy demands for several hundred years.

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It is estimated that 34 billion tons of coal can be recovered by strip mining methods in Wyoming and Montana alone. It is good coal, low in sulfur and moderately high in BTU content. It can be strip mined by disturbing only 3% of the land in which it is generally located. Some coal is already being transported eastward by train to be mixed with high sulfur coals to meet the emission standards of those states where coal is burned to produce electric power. Also, there is enough water in this same region to fully develop these coal supplies for all their purposes.

Against this background of abundance is an equally great concern on the part of the states and the environmentalists that these resources be developed in such a way that the mined land will not be blighted, its water resources exhausted, or that the communities where coal is burned be not degraded.

Great Plains Energy Policy

It is my thesis that this can and will be done. To guarantee such an integrated achievement, the Secretary of Interior, on October 3, 1972, created an Interagency Task Force to assess the complications of resource development in the five Northern Great Plains states, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska. In the news release announcing the creation of that task force Secretary Morton said:

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"With effective management of the resources, the Nation can have an energy fuel it so vitally needs for power production, while minimizing environmental degredation. These major coal resources will be developed. That is inevitable. But how they are developed is of national interest. As a Nation we must learn to develop our resources without the traditional environmental losses. I am charging this task force with the responsibility of detailing and possibly reviewing all aspects of the proposed development with a critical view toward the strict controls which will be mandated as the program goes forward."

This study is well under way under the leadership of Frank E. Clarke, Jr., and no doubt all the permits or other actions required of the federal government to develop coal and water will be reviewed by the task force. In addition, the Bureau of Reclamation has announced that all future contracts for water in this region must be accompanied by an environmental impact...