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I worked as a judge's law clerk in Kentucky for a period of time. I handled administrative cases by the State against bankrupt coal companies who had failed to reclaim the land that they destroyed after they mined all of the coal on that land. It appeared to me that the following cycle existed: Before a company could get permits to surface mine (which destroys entire mountains), it needed to submit a plan about how it would restore the environment destroyed by mining once all the coal has been mined. The company also needed to post a bond with the State to cover the cost of the reclaimation. The problem was that the plans would vastly underestimate the real clean-up cost, and the bond would only cover a protion of the unrealistically low cost estimate. The entities that pulled all of the coal from a given site often dissolved once all the coal was pulled out of the site and revenue dried up, and no entity remained to pay for the clean up of the destroyed land. The State then had the burden of implementing the clean-up plan with insufficient bond money. In my view, this cycle led to complete devestation of huge tracts of land in the State. In the rush for more and more coal to feed our greedy need for energy, no one ever seems to focus on these issues. Perhaps things have changed in Kentucky, as I have not lived in the State for quite a long time. But the harm done in the past was sufficiently horrible all on its own.
