New Head of OSM Confirmed by Senate, Coalfield Community Groups Remain Concerned

At 1:30 on Friday November 6, the U.S. Senate approved the nomination of Joe Pizarchik to be the next director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

The confirmation of Mr. Pizarchik had been stalled by an anonymous hold by a senator. However, on Friday his nomination was approved with unanimous consent so apparently the concerns of the senator who imposed the hold were alleviated.

Many coalfield community groups from across the country had expressed concerns with Pizarchik's nomination, you can read about those concerns in Ken Ward Jr. Blog, here, here, here, here and here.

The following is taken from a press release from the Citizens Coal Council, an alliance that KFTC belongs to of community organizations from across the country.

 
Washington, PA – The Citizens Coal Council (CCC), representing citizen groups and community leaders in every part of the United States where irresponsible coal mining companies create severe health, safety and environmental problems, vowed today that Senate confirmation of the Obama administration’s choice to head the federal Office of Surface Mining Regulation and Environment (OSM) will make citizens work even harder to demand genuine reform in the industry-captured Interior Department agency. 

CCC Coordinator Aimee Erickson stated, "Those in the Senate who allowed this nomination to go through are helping the Obama administration continue to enable the worst coal mining practices in this country."

Bill Price, from the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice Program, stated, "Except for the first two years, the OSM has been a dysfunctional agency. The citizens groups in Appalachia and their allies across the country are expecting increased scrutiny of the OSM by Secretary Salazar. If Mr. Pizarchik tries to run the OSM in the same manner that he ran the Bureau of Mining and Reclamation in the Pennsylvania DEP, the world will know.â€

Kentucky Resource Council Director Tom Fitzgerald added, "The pressure is now really on Interior Secretary Salazar to personally see to it that genuine reform comes to Interior Department enforcement of the laws that are supposed to protect Americans against harm caused by the coal industry.  We are grateful that the Secretary is at least considering whether to start honestly enforcing mountaintop removal laws again – but in every part of America where the coal industry operates, people are losing their homes and communities, their streams and their prairie and pasturelands, because OSM simply fails to enforce the federal law regulating how the coal industry is supposed to mine and reclaim the land."

You can read the Department of the Interior's press release, here.