Ryan Zinke's Interior Department Gives Law-Breaking Coal Company a Pass
Source: DAILYBEAST
Under Trump, violations against three of the Farrell-Cooper Mining Companys mines have been quietly dismissedleaving landowners whose land was ruined furious.
Laura Peterson
06.25.18 5:04 AM ET
When Allen King allowed the Farrell-Cooper Mining Company to mine coal from his land in 2003, he didnt expect his 30 acres would end up looking more like the moons cratered surface than Oklahoma prairie.
My whole property is destroyed, said King. I used to have flat grassland. Now Ive got a mountain so steep you cant even drive around to keep brush off, and a ditch so deep if a cow fell in you couldnt get them out of it.
He was promised his land would be returned to its original state but instead, like many landowners in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma, his property was left ruined by mines dug and abandoned by Farrell-Cooper. The Arkansas-based company has mined coal in the area for decades, running up numerous violations of federal reclamation laws in the process.
Now the landowners in this region who voted for President Trump overwhelmingly in 2016 must swallow the fact that the Trump administrationspecifically, the Interior Department run by Ryan Zinke, represented in court by the Justice Department led by Jeff Sessionshas quietly dismissed violations that the last administration had levied against three of the companys mines. The agreement comes after meetings involving several top Interior political appointees held specifically on the litigation in 2017, according to official calendars. The involvement of a number of political appointees, including many not in the departments legal shop, in a long-standing, fairly low-profile legal dispute with a company is unusual, said former department insiders.
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