By Kate Mishkin

March 21, 2018 - After Trump administration officials ordered a halt to a study on the health effects of mountaintop removal last fall, the study’s committee has been released, effectively terminating the project.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s study would have looked at the health effects on residents who live near mountaintop removal coal-mining sites. It was put on hold when the Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining announced that it was reviewing grants and agreements that would cost more than $100,000.

The OSM previously had committed at least $1 million to the study, called “Potential Human Health Effects of Surface Coal Mining Operations in Central Appalachia.”

Without further orders from the OSM, the National Academies released the 11-member committee earlier this year. The committee members volunteered their time, but were compensated for travel and room and board.

“We need the funding to keep the committee going with its work, and also, without the funding and additional guidance from the department when the review will be completed, it didn’t seem feasible to keep this going,” said Riya Anandwala, a spokeswoman for the National Academies. She emphasized the National Academies’ gratitude to the researchers involved in the study.

Although the project won’t continue, the National Academies website lists the project as “completed.” “I think, any time you take down projects, it just marks it complete,” Anandwala said.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department did not answer questions about why the study was terminated, and if there were plans to revive it in the future.

“Your paper covered this in September 2017. Nothing has changed since,” Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift wrote in an email.

Anandwala would not speculate as to why Interior put the study on hold.

“It’s very rare. It’s not unprecedented, but it’s very rare. I can’t give you an example, because I don’t have one,” she said.

Paul Locke, chairman of the study, said he’s sat on at least seven other committees, one of which he also chaired, and has never seen a situation like this one. The group was officially dismissed in January, about five months after the Interior Department first said it was conducting an agency-wide review of projects. The committee was about halfway through the study process, he said.

“I’m disappointed that we as a committee couldn’t contribute, because I think we really could have produced a report that could’ve been useful,” he said.

He said the committee had held two town halls, reviewed extensive research and talked to state officials before funding was cut. The project would have lasted two years.

Anandwala said the National Academies explored private funding, but the option was never really feasible.

The OSM first committed to providing funds for the study in August 2016, after citizen groups and state officials urged the federal government to look into health risks associated with living near surface mine sites. The committee was asked to “identify gaps in the research and consider options for additional examination to address concerns about potential health risks,” a news release from the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation Enforcement, dated Aug. 3, 2016, stated. The release referenced a formal written request from the state of West Virginia to the Obama administration in 2015 and similar studies by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency on the topic.

Founded in 1863, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine provides objective, nonpartisan research and analysis to policymakers.

“The Academy was set up by Abraham Lincoln to give this sort of advice to government agencies, state agencies and the public, so there’s no better group to be doing this in the country, and especially with an issue as controversial as this,” Locke, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, said.

The August 2016 news release explained that the Academy would operate independently, and that experts on the committee wouldn’t be active members of the coal industry or government agency that regulates coal mining.

“While OSMRE will oversee the Cooperative Agreement with NAS, it will not have a role in the research, the development of the final report or identification of any findings that may result from the study,” the news release states.

The research was much-needed, Locke said.

“I know leadership changes, but the facts and the science don’t change, so we’re now in a position where we don’t know what we could have known,” he said. “I hope you hear the frustration in my voice. I’m very frustrated and disappointed.” 

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