A curious decision by the Interior Department
An editorial opinion from The Herald-Dispatch in Huntington, W.Va.:
As the months pass since a U.S. Interior Department agency ordered an independent group to stop work on research about the possible health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining, the decision looks more and more curious.
The reason given by the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement was that the Trump administration, mindful of how taxpayer dollars are used, was halting the project as part of a financial review of any Interior Department studies costing $100,000 or more. The study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine was intended to review existing research and come up with a consensus from experts in various fields on potential short- and long-term health effects of the mining technique.
Previously, some studies concluded that people living near mountaintop removal sites had higher mortality rates and higher incidences of certain diseases such as lung cancer and other forms of cancer. Counter to that, some studies explained those differences by other factors, such as poverty, obesity, smoking rates and education. Thus, this research was to try to come up with more conclusive findings one way or another.
President Trump received strong support from West Virginia and Kentucky in last year’s election, at least partly because he said he was an advocate for the coal industry. But did his advocacy only extend to the industry itself? What about the people, many of them who worked in coal mines, who live near the surface mining sites? Does their welfare not matter?