There’s been some progress. Interior announced the appointment of Deputy Principal Director Sharon Buccino earlier this month. Proposed rules, first released by OSMRE last spring, would restore authorities the previous administration stripped away. A long-held strength of OSMRE enforcement had been citizens’ ability to bypass more lax state-level rules and demand federal regulators step in if they’d proven too lax. The Trump White House tried, instead, to make it easier for state regulators to ignore complaints and tie up would-be enforcers in endless bureaucratic processes. Morgan says he expects a final rule to be announced sometime within the next six weeks.
“The most important thing OSMRE could do right now is to just pull the curtain back and shine a light on what is happening on the ground and how bad things are,” Morgan says. “OSMRE has access to all of this data for all of the states. Whether intentionally or because they’re under-resources, state records on all of these individual permits are not reflecting the realities on the ground.” Setting that record straight would entail going state-by-state to see whether mines really are active or not, ideally prompting more inspections and enforcement action. Claiming that a mine is active is a way for companies to punt on clean-up obligations, even if there’s no reasonable expectation those sites will produce more coal. “There are all of these zombie mines listed on state permit databases as being active. If you dig down,” Morgan says, “they haven’t produced coal in years. They haven’t done any reclamation in years. They probably don’t have any employees any more—or have one employee with a pickup truck who sits on a mine site.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story on its plans for the office, and doesn’t appear to have been too responsive to other reporters who’ve pointed out the director vacancy over the last several months and years, either. Top of mind in their calculation, undoubtedly, is the fact that Manchin holds the deciding vote on whether a nominee gets through.