EPA's Overall Impact on U.S. Mining Industry a Matter for Debate

The ongoing debate over whether the federal government's EPA legislation is helping or hurting the U.S. mining industry seems to be an ongoing matter for debate. By taking a few recent news articles into consideration, you'll see two extremes.

Negative Impact

For those concerned with the negative impact of the EPA's mandates, a recent article bearing the inflammatory title "U.S. EPA Continual Attempt to Destroy the Coal Mining Industry" would provide ample fodder. Among other things, the article blames the drop off in coal mining jobs on "the effects of past EPA regulations targeting mercury, sulfur and other toxic pollutants" (EnergyBiz).

In the interest of fairness, we'd like to point out that while this article does make clear that EPA regulations do impact mining, sometimes in ways that limit unchecked growth--a point that we do not deny--what's seems less clear are the article's further claims regarding shadowy motives and conspiracies.

Positive Impact

Those hoping to prove that EPA regulations only have a negative impact would be stymied by claims of Minnesota coal miners, who have recently recognized an unexpected benefit of new EPA regulations; namely, that implementing them would keep the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency from playing favorites among different types of mines, as has happened in the past:

[T]he Iron Ore Alliance is grateful that state Legislators recently introduced legislation that would require the MPCA to comply with existing law that requires the agency to initiate a rulemaking process to designate surface waters in Minnesota where the standard applies. That rulemaking would ensure that MPCA fairly applies the standard (Mesabi Daily News).

Although the debate regarding the EPA's overall impact on the mining industry will be ongoing, it's nice to hear specific instances in which the benefits have been immediate, even if they may have been unintentional by-products. We also appreciate those folks in the industry who continually challenge the EPA to improve their regulations so that they better meet their goals of minimizing pollution while also minimizing their impact on mining jobs and company profits. That's a tough win-win to aim for, but it's good to see people pushing the EPA to try to accomplish their mission in a more balanced way.

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