Bredesen requests environmental assessment of mining operations

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN, Tenn. Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. — With coal mines in Tennessee employing about 176 workers whose jobs are underground, Gov. Phil Bredesen said Wednesday he would be reviewing related state laws while seeking a federal environmental assessment of the operations.

The governor said recent mining accidents in West Virginia prompted new attention to Tennessee’s laws. The 14 West Virginia deaths have prompted calls for tougher mine safety rules at the federal and state levels.

Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration records show nine underground coal mines, 16 surface coal mines and seven surface coal preparation plants in Tennessee, with a total of 574 employees. Of those, 176 miners work underground, records show.

Bredesen said he sent a letter to the federal agency requesting a study of the mining industry “primarily from the environmental perspective.”

“We also are looking and saying, ‘Is there anything we need to learn from West Virginia from these tragedies up there in terms of our own laws?’,” Bredesen told reporters after discussing some of his fiscal 2007 budget plans. “As we tried to do from (Hurricane) Katrina, let’s learn from these things and not wait until they happen to us.”

Bredesen asked for an environmental impact statement that would supplant one conducted in 1985, shortly after the federal government took over the state’s coal-mining program.

“We believe that since the last EIS was done in 1985, and even in the two years since (the Office of Surface Mining) last considered this issue, there have been a number of developments that warrant this action,” Bredesen wrote in a Jan. 9 letter.

In a follow-up letter, Tennessee Deputy Commissioner for Environment Paul Sloan said the request was “based on our view that environmental regulation should be based on best available scientific and technological resources and should be developed in a process that is open to the affected interest groups and the public.”

OSM spokesman Michael Gauldin said the agency received both letters.

“We are reviewing them and we will respond, of course, directly to the governor when the time comes,” Gauldin told The Knoxville News Sentinel.

In Marion County, 13 men were killed Dec. 8, 1981, when methane gas exploded in Grundy Mining Co.’s No. 21 mine.