Eight liberal senators asked the Obama administration to exact a higher cost on coal producers leasing mining rights on federal lands.
The lawmakers appealed to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to tweak policies to better account for the impact of coal production on the United States.
“Until the market price for coal reflects its true cost to society, taxpayers will continue to bear the costs of more extreme weather, collapsed ecosystems, stranded infrastructure, increased incidences of heart and lung disease, and other effects of climate change,” the senators said in a Monday letter to Jewell.
The request was signed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sheldown Whitehouse (D-Ore.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
The legislators said they would work to pass legislation that will advance carbon emission reduction initiatives, but said the department could use existing Mineral Leasing Act powers “to consider environmental impacts, determine the public interest, and set appropriate lease terms and conditions.”
“With federal lands consistently providing 40 percent of US coal production, the federal government plays the most important role of any single landowner in determining the shape of US coal markets,” the group of eight noted.
The senators also asked Interior to update them on commitments it made in 2013, amid an Inspector General probe of the department’s coal management program.
The inquiry found that the department may have systematically failed to determine fair market rents for coal leases because it was “using its own appraisers.”
“For the Department’s coal regions, which contain vast quantities of coal worth hundreds of millions of dollars, an accurate valuation of the mineral is essential for ensuring the Government receives the proper amount for each lease,” the IG remarked.
The watchdog said that Interior should have relied on its Office of Valuation Services (OVS) to minimize the chances of taxpayer-shorting estimates, and that it should have augmented the body’s role after a 2011 decree by then-Department Secretary Ken Salazar.
Late December last year, OVS was named in the Department Manual as “the independent body to evaluate whether land acquisitions and dispositions are at market value, as required by law and regulation.”
But the senators believe this will not address the environmental impact of coal.
“We are concerned that the Administration does not yet have a plan to address its obligation to ensure not just a fair return based on current market prices but also its obligation to mitigate the negative impacts of federal coal,” they said.
Conservatives, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have decried the Obama administration for allegedly waging an environmentalist “War on Coal.”
Observers, however, have pointed out that the industry has suffered more from long-term market-based woes, including its inability to compete with natural gas amid the fracking boom.
