For Decades, Alabama’s Mining Regulator Has Left Citizens Unprotected
Alabama has long demanded it remain the primary regulator of coal mining within its borders. The result? Unmitigated risks for citizens and statutory benefits for coal companies. Undermined: Thirteenth in a series about the impacts of longwall mining in Alabama. OAK GROVE, Ala.—The regulators have known all along. The residents have been telling them. Alabamians have for decades been raising their voices about the risks of longwall mining, an aggressive method of extracting coal that has left sinking homes in its wake and increased the risks of an explosive gas seeping to the surface. “Currently we are living in fear of gas escaping from the underground mines and causing an explosion or burns,” a Kimberly, Alabama, resident wrote in a letter to regulators in September 1999. “There have been people killed who were above longwall mines.” A quarter-century later, little has changed. “I don’t want to blow up,” a resident above another Alabama longwall mine said in June.
