Coal Tattoo

Suit to challenge U.S. funding for coal exports

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Here’s some interesting news from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network:

Environmental groups today filed the first-ever lawsuit challenging the federal government’s financing for the export of Appalachian coal from the United States. The U.S. government approved this financial support for coal exports without considering the increased toxic air and water pollution that could affect communities near the mines and ports, and along the railways that connect them.

The groups filing the lawsuit charge that the U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) violated federal law by providing a $90 million loan guarantee to Xcoal Energy & Resources without reviewing the environmental impacts as required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to Ex-Im Bank, the taxpayer-backed financing, approved on May 24, 2012, will help leverage a billion dollars in exports of coal mined in Appalachia. The coal will be shipped from ports in Baltimore, Maryland and Norfolk, Virginia to markets in Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.

As readers well know, with cheap natural gas pushing coal into a much smaller part of the domestic steam coal market, Appalachian mine operators are increasing interested in pumping up their share of the export market, on top of the increases that we’ve already seen.

A press release about the new lawsuit explains:

While U.S. coal consumption has declined gradually over the past 10 years, U.S. coal exports have risen. The array of air, water, safety, health, biodiversity, and other impacts on local communities and ecosystems — which face a chain reaction of increased mining, rail traffic, and port activity — remains woefully unaddressed by state and federal regulators.

“From the mine mouth to the smokestack, from Appalachia to Beijing, Ex-Im’s failure to account for the environmental impacts of U.S. coal exports not only violates the law, but it flies in the face of the agency’s own environmental policy and its Carbon Policy,” said Michelle Chan, Director of Economic Policy Programs at Friends of the Earth.