By Kennedy Maize
The Interior Department has approved a tiny new strip mine in Tennessee, claiming hyperbolically that the action by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) would “strengthen America’s energy independence and create local jobs. The coal from this mine will support important industries like steelmaking and power generation.”
The 635-acre Hurricane Creek Mine #2 would resurrect a site of sporadic strip mines that operated from the 1950s to 2010 in northeastern Tennessee’s Claiborne County near the Kentucky border. Hurricane Creek Mining LLC of Tazewell, Tenn., was born in 2023. The company made an application to OSMRE, which implements the 1977 Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, the same year.
The company said in its application that it plans to use auger, highwall, and contour mining to yield a total of about 1.8 million tons of coal over 10 years. The auger mining would be underground but still subject to OSMRE oversight.
The mine would exploit 10 coal seams ranging from less than a foot to four feet. It would produce both metallurgical and thermal coal, employing about two dozen workers.
Of the 635-acre permitted site, 346 acres are territory disturbed prior to the 1977 strip mining law. The Interior analysis says, “Although little or no reclamation occurred on many of these pre-law areas, natural succession has largely reverted them to a vegetated condition.”
OSMRE reviewed the environmental impacts of the mine under its new “alternative arrangements” for complying with the National Environmental Policy Act. Those new rules provide a fast track approach to evaluating “major federal actions” under the fundamental 1969 law.
Predictably, OSMRE issued the mine a “finding of no significant impact,” known to aficionados of environmental impact statements as a “FONSI.” Happy days for Hurricane Creek Mining.
In its news release, DOI said, “This approval is a key step in the government’s plan to support reliable coal production and grow the nation’s energy resources and in alignment with Executive Order 14261, ‘Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.’ This mine approval complements the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s support for the coal industry in the United States, including by reducing royalty rates for mining federal coal and opening millions of acres for federal coal leasing.”
Claiborne County, the area of the revived strip mine, is the of the site of Cumberland Gap, the historic area where Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia meet, the gateway to the West in the 19th century. The county’s website brags it is “one of the most picturesque counties in the state. It is home to the Powell River, the cleanest river in the United States, beautiful Norris Lake, Lincoln Memorial University and the Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.”
That’s a bit of hometown hyperbole. Grist notes that the area “has long struggled economically, bears the scars of more than a century’s underground and surface mining. Local residents and scientists regularly test the creeks for signs of bright-orange mine drainage and other toxins.” Mine acid drainage from abandoned coal mines has been a problem in Appalachia for at least a century.
In 2019, The Nature Conservancy (TNC) bought 100,000 acres in Kentucky and Tennessee, known as the “Ataya Tract.” TNC later added 153,000 acres in western Virginia, creating the organization’s Cumberland Forest Project.
The conservancy says the project is operated as an “investment fund that seeks competitive rates of return for third-party investors. TNC is a co-investor in the fund and will manage the properties as the fund’s General Partner.”
TNC has raised concerns about water management in the area. It adds, “As is common in this region, ownership of the property is divided in two: a surface estate, which was acquired in this transaction, and a sub-surface mineral estate, which will continue to be owned by third parties. Because the mineral rights are held by third parties and subject to prior agreements, TNC has limited control over mining activities on the properties.”
There is reason to wonder whether such a small mine can operate economically when the U.S. coal industry is in serious decline and prices for both thermal and met coal are soft and falling.
Matt Hepler, a scientist with environmental advocacy group Appalachian Voices, told Grist, “What is this company doing differently that’s going to allow them to profitably succeed while so many other mines have not been able to make that work? All the time I’ve been working in Tennessee there’s only been a couple of mines permitted to begin with because production has been on the downswing there.”
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