Environmental concerns about coal mining are at the forefront of the U.S. Department of Interior’s policy agenda, a department director said during a presentation at the Student Center Thursday.

Robert J. Uram, director of the Office of Surface Mining for the department, discussed regulatory and legislative trends in surface mining of coal and improvements in environmental mining techniques.

There is a notion out there that surface mining is bad for the environment because of it’s reputation for accidents and environmental carelessness, Uram said.

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The truth is that the Government has been putting protective measures in place since the Surface Mining Act in 1977, which for the first time established minimum safety and environmental standards. We are helping to build a safer tomorrow for the mining industry today.

Instead of digging underground shafts and tunnels, surface mining involves gradually removing layers of earth, creating a deep pit.

In the past few years, there has been a lot of research on protective mining procedures, Uram said.

Progress in areas such as hydrology, which has improved mine drainage and water displacement, and the use of fly ash, which is used as a type of grout to prevent water seepage in the mines, has greatly improved the quality of mining over the last decade, Uram said.

The state of the coal mining industry in Illinois is another issue of concern, John S. Mead, associate dean of the Graduate School and director of the Coal Research Center said after the presentation.

The number of surface mines in Illinois has been cut in half over the past couple of years, Mead said. A couple of reasons for that are the state’s stiff clean air and pollution laws and the depth of the coal in the ground.

Mead attributes the expensive cost of mining in Illinois to exploitation of coal resources over the past 100 years.

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After a century of intensive mining, a lot of the resources in Illinois have been stripped, Mead said. Unlike most mining states, Illinois coal is deeper in the ground, which makes it less cost-efficient to mine it.

Mead said many states have lenient environmental laws than Illinois to make it more profitable for mining companies to operate.

Many state legislatures trade off environmental policies to keep their unemployment rates down, Mead said. They make it easier for mining companies to operate in their state because they cannot afford to lose those jobs.

Uram addressed the state of surface coal mining in Illinois in his speech, attributing its decline to decreasing profits and increasing operation costs. Most mining companies are shutting down and moving to Wyoming and West Virginia, where mining is more profitable, he said.

Uram said he wants to establish a positive outcome for the mining companies without compromising environmental standards.

This is an organization that wants to help mining companies meet federal mandates for the environment while maintaining productivity in those mines, Uram said. We want to create a no-lose situation where mining companies are profitable as well as environmentally sound. The best way to do that is to work together and share information to create better mining techniques.

Uram was invited to SIUC by Uday Desai, chairperson and professor of political science.

Our University is far away from Washington, Desai said. It is good for comprehensive universities like ours to bring someone in to make us aware of what is going on in our government, and I think Mr. Uram helps us accomplish that by opening our eyes to the trends in mining on a national basis.