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Tell your Delegate to Vote NO on SB 686. The short title calls it a “cotenancy” bill, but we call it a “forced subsidence” bill. This forced subsidence bill has passed the Senate. Our friends at the WV Environmental Council have made it easy to send a message to your Delegate. You can find contact information for the House Energy Committee here. Tell them to Reject SB 686 and protect surface owners. SB 686 has nothing to do with miner safety, and it is not the same as the oil and gas cotenancy law. It will just allow more people’s homes, water, fields, ponds to be damaged or destroyed by longwall coal mine subsidence without the consent/agreement of the surface owner, and without replacement value compensation. (Here are pictures of damage to people’s homes and other property damage.) Coal companies may say the law requires compensation of victims of subsidence, but the law only gives market value and not replacement value. And the coal companies fight even that. After being added to a committee agenda on the last day for committees to consider bills, SB 686 passed the Senate just ahead of the deadline for bills to be passed by their house of origin. SB 686 is currently in the House Energy and Public Works Committee, then it will head to House Judiciary. Reach out to lawmakers on those committees and your Delegate and tell them to Reject SB 686. If the bill passes and the coal company gets 75% of the people who share ownership of the coal underneath the surface to sign coal mining leases, then the coal company can go ahead and longwall mine. (The “cotenancy” law that passed for oil and gas companies forbids surface disturbance without the surface owner’s consent if the oil and gas law is used.) SB 686 is for coal companies and would give them the right to longwall mine with only 75% signed up. That WILL cause more than some surface “disturbance.” It will cause surface subsidence, without the coal company having to get the consent of the surface owners. And if a home is completely destroyed the surface owner will only get the market value before mining, not the cost to replace the home – or the cost to stay anywhere else in the meantime. Take action now to protect surface owners. Tell your Delegate to oppose SB 686. |
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