New movement calls damage from abandoned coal mines 'ecocide,' framing it as a harm to rural people

Bankrupt coal companies often fail to reclaim abandoned mines, leaving cash-strapped rural communities to suffer devastating environmental consequences. A growing coalition of activists is calling such a move "ecocide" and wants to make it and other widespread ecological damage a crime before the International Criminal Court, James Bruggers reports for Inside Climate News. Such a declaration would have no legal bearing, since the United States isn't a member of the ICC, but the notion could help frame such "crimes against nature" in terms of the harm they do to people—especially the rural residents who live nearby and suffer the worst consequences.

The damage from abandoned mines could last millennia, according to Duke University ecologist Emily Bernhardt, who has studied Appalachian strip mines and the long-term impacts of coal mining for nearly two decades. "There are coal mines from the Roman Empire that are still emitting acid pollution," she told Bruggers.

Coal companies buy bonds that are supposed to cover the cost of reclamation if they go bankrupt or suffer a disaster. But many states don't require them to buy enough to do the job, and coal companies are increasingly leaving rural communities holding the bag. The phenomenon is rampant in Central Appalachia: "Mountaintop removal and other forms of surface mining have scarred an area of more than 2,300 square miles in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee," Bruggers reports. "Nationwide, over a million acres of land used by still operating, idle or abandoned mines need to be cleaned up and reclaimed—a job President Biden’s new $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill can only begin to address."

A recent report found that it will cost as much as $9.8 billion to reclaim coal mines in Central Appalachia. The infrastructure bill passed in November reauthorized the Abandoned Mine Land Program and allocated $11.3 billion to clean up abandoned mines.