President Joe Biden might be about to satisfy a long-standing environmental goal of putting former coal miners to work cleaning up the abandoned mines that remain a blight on their communities, often polluting streams and releasing methane into the air.
The Biden administration wants the $11.3 billion mine cleanup windfall from the bipartisan infrastructure bill to also be a jobs initiative in communities that were once the lifeblood of the U.S. coal industry before the decline of coal-fired power. It’s an unprecedented cash investment toward addressing the enormous backlog of mine sites stranded before 1977, when Congress passed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
But there’s a big wrinkle with this money: Congress didn’t require that former or current coal industry workers get the cleanup jobs.
Instead, the infrastructure law included a nonbinding recommendation that states and tribes receiving the funds prioritize projects that include employment opportunities for displaced coal workers.
This squishiness now worries advocates who want to see the funding provide the most extensive benefits, not just ridding struggling communities of environmental hazards but providing a much-needed economic boost. While there is a natural pathway for some of these jobs to go to coal workers, they could legally go to any workers, including those outside the coal industry.
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