At least 260 Oklahoma Jobs at stake

OK Delegation Demands Obama Administration Stop Regulatory Regime that will Shut Down States Coal In

- EPW Blog Friday, July 15, 2011
Link to Press Release http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... &Issue_id=
Link to Letter http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... 4a9d610141

Washington D.C.—The Oklahoma delegation, including U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and Reps. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), Dan Boren (D-Okla.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Tom Cole (R-Okla.), and James Lankford (R-Okla.), sent a letter today to Joseph Pizarchik, Director of the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) Reclamation and Enforcement, to ask the Agency to reconsider decisions that will cost Oklahoma jobs.

The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) allows for a cooperative arrangement of federal and state authority for the regulation of surface mining. Under SMCRA, states have the primary responsibility for developing, authorizing, issuing and enforcing regulations and reclamation operations while ensuring that OSM maintains a limited oversight role. However, OSM has recently been overstepping its authority: through several oversight initiatives, the Agency has been trying to take over the permitting process, currently under the jurisdiction of the state.

OSM is also developing a proposed Stream Protection Rule. A leaked draft revealed that one of the potential goals of this rule is to stop new mining activity in Oklahoma: “The reasonable, foreseeable development scenario for coal production in the United States [the preferred option] is for no new mining activity in [Oklahoma]...â€