Regulation of the environmental impacts of coal mining in the USA. Market economics, cost-benefit analysis and mistakes of the past

Decades of environmentally unregulated coal mining in the USA have resulted in thousands of polluted streams, contaminated groundwater aquifers, subsidence effects, scarred hill sides and massive waste dumps. Similar environmental damage due to coal mining has occurred in Eastern Europe. In the USA, to correct the environmental damage due to coal mining, the SUrface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was passed in 1977. This paper examines the provisions of the Act in detail and ends with a warning to the Eastern European countries. 'The lessons to be learned from the US experience may be reduced to one essential observation: unregulated coal mining in a free market economy can cause extremely serious environmental harm with attendant adverse social and economic impacts which cannot be effectively resolved without comprehensive and strict governmental regulation'. (author). 40 refs