The federal Office of Surface Mining is "at a crossroads," and President Barack Obama should choose a strong leader who will reform the long-troubled agency, House Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall said Friday.
Read more in Coal Tattoo.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The federal Office of Surface Mining is "at a crossroads," and President Obama should choose a strong leader who will reform the long-troubled agency, House Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall said Friday.
Environmental and citizen groups are urging Obama to pick someone from outside the agency, but sources have said the president is leaning toward promoting acting OSM Director Glenda Owens, a longtime Interior Department employee.
Rahall added his voice to the calls for change Friday. Rahall's Natural Resources Committee oversees the Interior Department, and as a freshman congressman, Rahall served on the conference committee that created the agency as part of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
In his comments, Rahall used the agency's full name, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. The last two words - Reclamation and Enforcement - have long been dropped from the agency's shortened name and abbreviation, a move that some critics say symbolizes its lost mission.
"The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has lacked strong leadership for a long time," Rahall said. "It has abdicated its responsibility to enforce the surface mining law, to dovetail environmental protection with coal production and jobs.
"So I think we are at a crossroads here," Rahall added. "We can either have a strong leader at the helm who will conduct necessary oversight and enforcement or watch the agency continue to sink in a quagmire of ineptitude."
While not publicly supporting a particular candidate, Rahall has been pushing behind the scenes for Lexington, Ky., lawyer Joe Childers. Childers has also been backed by Tom FitzGerald, a leading environmental advocate in Kentucky, and by a number of coalfield citizen groups.
But Pat McGinley, a West Virginia University law professor, has been supported by environmental groups in this state, where dealing with the controversy over mountaintop removal coal mining poses one of OSM's biggest challenges.
McGinley has also been supported by some national groups, such as the Sierra Club, by the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and by the United Mine Workers of America union.
The debate went public last month, when the Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized in support of Childers. The Charleston Gazette then backed McGinley. And then, the Lexington Herald-Leader cautioned that Obama should at all costs avoid hiring someone from the mining industry or someone from within OSM.
Read more in Coal Tattoo.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The federal Office of Surface Mining is "at a crossroads," and President Obama should choose a strong leader who will reform the long-troubled agency, House Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall said Friday.
Environmental and citizen groups are urging Obama to pick someone from outside the agency, but sources have said the president is leaning toward promoting acting OSM Director Glenda Owens, a longtime Interior Department employee.
Rahall added his voice to the calls for change Friday. Rahall's Natural Resources Committee oversees the Interior Department, and as a freshman congressman, Rahall served on the conference committee that created the agency as part of the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
In his comments, Rahall used the agency's full name, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. The last two words - Reclamation and Enforcement - have long been dropped from the agency's shortened name and abbreviation, a move that some critics say symbolizes its lost mission.
"The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has lacked strong leadership for a long time," Rahall said. "It has abdicated its responsibility to enforce the surface mining law, to dovetail environmental protection with coal production and jobs.
"So I think we are at a crossroads here," Rahall added. "We can either have a strong leader at the helm who will conduct necessary oversight and enforcement or watch the agency continue to sink in a quagmire of ineptitude."
While not publicly supporting a particular candidate, Rahall has been pushing behind the scenes for Lexington, Ky., lawyer Joe Childers. Childers has also been backed by Tom FitzGerald, a leading environmental advocate in Kentucky, and by a number of coalfield citizen groups.
But Pat McGinley, a West Virginia University law professor, has been supported by environmental groups in this state, where dealing with the controversy over mountaintop removal coal mining poses one of OSM's biggest challenges.
McGinley has also been supported by some national groups, such as the Sierra Club, by the group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, and by the United Mine Workers of America union.
The debate went public last month, when the Louisville Courier-Journal editorialized in support of Childers. The Charleston Gazette then backed McGinley. And then, the Lexington Herald-Leader cautioned that Obama should at all costs avoid hiring someone from the mining industry or someone from within OSM.
Last week, when word leaked that Owens was going to be picked for the post, citizen groups circulated an e-mail message urging members to phone Interior officials and oppose that move.
"It would be insulting to nominate anyone from the agency to be director of OSM, and the environmental community will oppose such a nomination," the e-mail said. "The agency has not enforced the law and we need change from outside."
White House and Interior Department officials did not return phone calls last week about the OSM position.
Between 1985 and 2001, Owens was one of OSM's lawyers as an assistant solicitor at the Interior Department. Then, she joined OSM as a deputy director and has been with the agency ever since.
While with OSM, Owens has defended proposed cuts in spending on abandoned mine cleanups, been involved in working to streamline mountaintop removal permits, helped delay improvements in West Virginia's abandoned mine reclamation program, and harshly attacked federal court rulings that would have limited valley fills.
OSM has been hampered by repeatedly lawsuits by the coal industry to weaken regulations, drastic staff and budget cuts by the Clinton administration, and a move toward weakening its oversight role and deferring more to state mining regulators.
Two years ago, coalfield citizens blasted OSM at hearings held before both House and Senate committees to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the federal strip mining law.
"OSM's failure to enforce the law has allowed mining operations to permanently damage streams, forests and generations-old communities," Cindy Rank, mining chairwoman for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, told a Senate panel in November 2007.
"The very heart and soul of our mountain way of life is being ripped apart with hardly a whimper out of OSM, except to adjust one regulation after another to future aid industry and its destruction of our forests, water and communities that depend upon those resources."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
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Even if OSMRE suddenly starts to enforce the laws that doesn't mean that other administrations will follow. Then the people will again be at the whim of each administration and if Rahall cared he would acknowledge this as Rahall knows full well the implications of relying upon enforcement. Laws wihtout enforcement don't mean anything.
Rahall brags about the fact that he was the one that made sure mountaintop removal was a part of the first SMCRA laws passed. Just this morning on Bray Carey's knuckle dragging/16th century show Rahall was bragging about He arranged it. Congressman Rahall, the day is here and more days to come in which you will have to apologize for your part in the crime of mountaintop removal.
By the way: On April 7, Ned Farquhar was appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals. Most often -- but not always, this Assistant Secretary (Ned's boss), is named before those beneath him (which include the OSMRE director) are named.
Note: Ms. Owens, then Glenda Hudson, joined the Interior Solicitor's Office in 1979 -- I recall her representing OSM in an administrative law hearing in Columbia County, OH, with D&D Mining. There's a 1980 picture of OSM lawyers (online) and she's in it.