Interior drops website claim of jobs saved by repeal of Stream Protection Rule

President Trump signing the Stream Protection
Rule repeal (Interior Department photo)

The Department of the Interior has removed a debatable statement from its website that said blocking the Stream Protection Rule prevented the loss of "7,000 clean coal jobs in 22 states," Dylan Brown reports for Greenwire. The department, which said it edited the text "for clarification," still "hails the rule's repeal as President Trump's first step to make good on promises 'to harness the power of American energy'."

The department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which spent nearly the entire eight years of Obama's presidency working on the rule, on Dec. 19 issued a final version with new limits on mining near waterways. In early February Congress voted to kill the rule. Trump signed the resolution Feb. 16.

The statement of 7,000 lost jobs contradicted OSMRE's "analysis during the Obama administration that the rule, which enhanced water quality and monitoring requirements at coal mines, would actually create a few hundred jobs in reclamation," Brown writes.

A 2015 National Mining Association-backed study by consulting firm Ramboll Environ "estimated as many as 77,000 coal mining jobs would be lost—a figured quoted by lawmakers after Trump signed their resolution repealing the rule," Brown writes. Glenn Kessler, a Washington Post fact checker, "said the 77,000 estimate was 'simply not credible' because it relied on a small sample of coal operators already vehemently opposed to the rule and outdated coal employment numbers," Brown writes. (Read more)