Add lithium to water in a chemistry lab, and you’ll get an incendiary reaction. The same might be said of opening new lithium mines: The prospect can spark conflicts when it comes to water.

Mining companies and the U.S. government are investing in increased extraction for lithium, which is a critical component in some renewable energy technology, especially electric vehicle batteries and large grid-scale storage batteries.

The IRA injected the Department of Energy (DOE) Loan Programs Office with about $11.7 billion to support new loans for energy projects, including mines for needed metals like lithium. This builds on earlier Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) grants for battery material supply chains. The IRA also offers tax credits of up to $7,500 on eligible electric vehicles, creating additional demand for lithium by the auto industry.

With funding from the IRA, DOE and BIL, lithium miners have gained new financial vigor and governmental votes of confidence. Yet some worry what impact this newfound funding will have on the environment.

Domestic mining is still primarily governed by the outdated 1872 Mining Law, which didn’t enshrine environmental protections, but “declared all valuable mineral deposits in land belonging to the United States to be free and open to exploration and purchase,” according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) website.

Through the National Environmental Policy Act, environmental impact statements are required ahead of major projects like mines, although some statements have been criticized as rushed or insufficient. But ultimately, it’s up to companies to choose and monitor their own environmental protections and community agreements, even if they’re collecting federal subsidies.

Lithium mining poses a range of risks to biodiversity and groundwater supplies, depending on the methods used. There are three main types of lithium extraction: brine evaporation, hard rock mining and clay mining.

In brine evaporation, groundwater is first pumped to the surface. There, 90% of it is evaporated away to concentrate the lithium brine, with additional freshwater needed to complete extraction.

Hard rock and clay mining often begin with “dewatering,” or removing groundwater to reach the ore, in addition to needing more water to process the ore. These methods also require chemicals such as sulfuric acid for processing, which in cobalt and copper mining has led to contamination of local water systems.

Concerned about the risks, local residents and environmentalists have resisted new mines with tactics from protests to litigation — but a government-supported lithium boom appears to be underway regardless.

New mines emerge

A Center for Biological Diversity map lists more than 125 lithium extraction projects in the western U.S. alone. Seven are inactive, and the majority are in various stages from exploration to development. Most of the proposed mines are in Nevada, predicted as a future “Silicon Valley of lithium.”

Albemarle’s Silver Peak mine in Nevada, a brine evaporation mine that has come under scrutiny for depleting groundwater aquifers in an increasingly-arid region, is the only currently active U.S. lithium mine. That’s likely to soon change, since the IRA has incentivized metal and mineral extraction in the United States and in countries with a U.S. free trade agreement.

Through its loan support and EV sales incentives, the IRA has made lithium mines more profitable, and less financially risky for companies opening new ones. Several lithium companies, including ioneer, Allkem and Albemarle, lobbied for the IRA’s passage or for provisions within it. A 2023 IRA impact report from S&P Global noted “aggressive mine capacity additions” for lithium planned in countries including the United States, Chile and Australia.

Domestically, most lithium deposits are in the West, where water supplies are already stressed.

“There’s a critical minerals and specifically a lithium rush unfolding, especially, but not exclusively, across the western U.S.,” says Providence College political scientist Thea Riofrancos, who specializes in studying the impact of resource extraction on communities. She adds that some of the mining interest predates the IRA, “but it’s picked up a lot since the IRA, because that sent such clear signals.”

Yet new mines pose risks to the region’s biodiversity. In a lawsuit against a Rover Metals exploration project, the Center for Biological Diversity and Amargosa Conservancy alleged that even exploratory drilling near springs in the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada would threaten endangered and endemic species. Active mines can have even bigger impacts.

“We need lithium as a part of our transition off of fossil fuels, but it can’t come at the expense of biodiversity or our most precious protected areas,” Patrick Donnelly of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in announcing the lawsuit. “Some places have to be off-limits to resource extraction, and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is at the top of the list.”

Thacker Pass on track

The Thacker Pass mine run by Lithium Americas is on track to become the second active lithium mine in the United States. The project in far northern Nevada may be indicative of what’s to come as more government-fueled mines pop up.

The lithium clay mine is under construction, with most Phase 1 construction costs covered by IRA support: General Motors is investing $650 million in exchange for the mine’s lithium. The U.S. Department of Energy provided a conditional $2.26 billion low-interest loan. Permitting came earlier, from President Trump’s administration. In 2028, the Thacker Pass mine is expected to reach full capacity production.

The DOE said the loan will provide General Motors with enough lithium for 800,000 electric vehicles a year and “reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government approach to strengthening America’s critical materials supply chain, which is essential to building America’s clean transportation future and enhancing our national and energy security.”

Questions about ‘voluntary’ mitigation

Lithium Americas plans to recycle and reuse withdrawn water an average of seven times. Its Phase 1 water consumption is estimated to be about 929 million gallons per year, equal to “around five alfalfa irrigation pivots,” according to the company’s blog.

Lithium Americas purchased existing agricultural water rights, so the operation won’t increase groundwater withdrawal, although existing groundwater withdrawal may still be unsustainable. It has also outlined plans for nearby habitat restoration. A post-mining reclamation plan is intended to reduce long-lived environmental impacts by refilling pits and restoring the surface.

But implementing and tracking mitigation strategies like these is left up to the companies. 

“What I think is concerning is the proliferation of lots of voluntary governance mechanisms that companies don’t have to do,” says Riofrancos. “What’s important — and it sounds old-fashioned, maybe — is regulation that’s binding; that’s enforceable; that carries sanctions, fees, punishments, fines, whatever, if the regulations are not obeyed.”

Riofrancos believes such regulations, plus sustained protests against irresponsible mines, could get the mining industry to “do better.” She says the IRA-supported DOE loan program represents a missed opportunity to tie robust regulations to mining projects: “It’s very light on guardrails and requirements for loan recipients.”

It’s also unclear how much mitigation is realistically possible.

“There’s ways to tinker around the edges, but ultimately, there’s no mitigating an open-pit mine,” Donnelly, the Great Basin director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview. “(These mines) cause impacts to the water table, impacts to wildlife, impacts to local and Indigenous communities.”

He believes IRA loans and other federal subsidies help new mines get permitted in spite of environmental risks: “The DOE’s kind of waving a magic wand and saying, ‘This mine is okay to permit.’ ”

But the exact risks of each new lithium mine are tricky to measure. The three different types of mines can have different effects, depending on variables including location, says David Boutt, a hydrogeology researcher and professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Companies are often reluctant to share data that would help scientists evaluate impacts, he says.

“It’s hard to establish a number, like, ‘This one has like a 30% less environmental impact than the others,’ ” Boutt says. “We don’t see these numbers, because a lot of the impacts are local and hard to quantify.”

Sacred site to become lithium mine

Yet for people living near mining sites, the risks can feel tangible. Dean Barlese, an elder from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, says he’s opposed to the Thacker Pass mine both because it’s at an Indigenous sacred site, and because his people’s lives are intertwined with the local ecosystem.

“A lot of people think it’s just a desert wasteland,” he says. “But the medicines we use are still out there. As Native people, we still gather our food, roots, berries — we’ve survived here for thousands of years.”

Barlese says he’d rather not see mining projects near Indigenous communities at all, regardless of community benefits agreements and environmental mitigation plans. “I would encourage the public to really look into the devastation that getting a bit of lithium does.”

Lithium demand could be reduced if investments were made in public transit and walkable communities, so fewer people were buying cars, Riofrancos says. Although the IRA includes investments in battery recycling, it doesn’t incentivize efforts to reduce surging lithium demand. Instead, it supports extraction to meet the demand, and helps ensure that the extracting companies can profit.

“ ‘Green energy’ is not green energy,” says Barlese. “Money speaks louder than anything else.”

Another possible solution to the mining debate would be an energy transition that uses less lithium.

“One way to reduce demand for lithium (or any battery metals) would be to make smaller batteries, or batteries that are more resource-efficient,” says Riofrancos. Two-thirds of current EV models are SUVs or large vehicles; small- and medium-sized EVs account for only a quarter of EV sales in the United States. Incentivizing smaller vehicles, which can use smaller batteries, could ultimately lead to fewer lithium mines.

Other battery chemistries are another option.

“Given the complexity of getting a permit, of getting the social license, of having everything in place, it’s going to take a long time (to open new mines),” says Boutt, the hydrogeologist. “And perhaps by the time we get to the point where we are developing those resources, we’ll have different battery technology where we’re not as reliant on lithium.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action.

Billions in US funding boosts lithium mining, stressing water supplies is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following story is the third in a series produced in collaboration with KAXE/KBXE, an independent, nonprofit community radio station that tells the stories of northern Minnesota. 

A Minnesota taconite mining company and its electric utility are seeking federal funding for a demonstration project aimed at slashing diesel fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.  

After an unsuccessful attempt to secure money this spring from the state Legislature, U.S. Steel and Minnesota Power have applied for a U.S. Department of Energy grant in hopes of kickstarting the project, which seeks to test a system to partially power mining trucks with electricity. 

Once loaded, the enormous vehicles would connect to overhead power lines for the steepest part of their climb from the open pit mine. Running on electricity for that portion could reduce diesel fuel use by 70% per trip, according to the companies’ presentation to legislators earlier this year. 

That also means a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. A new Minnesota law requires power companies to only sell clean electricity by 2040, a target that Minnesota Power is making progress toward. If powered by carbon-free electricity, one mine trolley in the U.S. Steel demonstration project would equate to replacing 520 gas-powered vehicles with electric on Minnesota’s roads, each year.  

David Chura, manager of emerging initiatives for Minnesota Power’s parent company ALLETE, said the pilot project would provide insight into whether trolley systems could be scaled across the industry. The steel industry is seeing growing pressure from government, investors, and customers to lower its climate impact. U.S. Steel has committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. 

With the corporate green energy goals of Minnesota Power and U.S. Steel in mind, Chura said exploring applications of electrification in industrial settings was a natural step. 

“We developed some model mines based on characteristics of actual mines here on the on the Iron Range,” Chura said. “That really helped inform our understanding of mine truck electrification and the opportunities here.” 

Chura said energy savings are site-specific, meaning it depends on the steepness of the grade, the length of the haul and other factors. But this project’s anticipated fuel savings are 1.4 million gallons of diesel each year, amounting to 14,000 metric tons of carbon emissions. With those figures, mine trolleys could be a key approach to climate-friendly practices. 

“That’s a very significant reduction of emissions as well as criteria pollutants in a key area of the state,” Chura said, noting the area’s proximity to the Boundary Waters, Voyageurs National Park, and state-designated environmental justice communities.  

How it works 

The idea of electric-powered mining trucks isn’t new. The 1970s oil crisis prompted numerous studies exploring benefits, according to mining electrification and automation company ABB. Despite this history, adoption has been slow. But ABB, which produces mine trolley systems, said recent projects demonstrating positive impacts show demand is on the rise. This includes in an open pit copper mine in Sweden operated by mining company Boliden. 

Battery-powered electric mining trucks — which wouldn’t require hitching to a trolley line for hauling — are also moving closer to viability. In 2022, Caterpillar announced it successfully demonstrated a prototype of its first battery-powered truck at the company’s Tuscon, Arizona, proving grounds. The facility is set up to test sustainable solutions mining companies can use in their operations, offering firsthand experience with what it takes to run an electrified mining site. 

Other types of clean fuel options are emerging, too. According to Caterpillar, green hydrogen production, fuel cell power generation and energy storage systems are all part of the equation. 

“The site will also leverage a variety of renewable power sources, including wind, solar and hydrogen, capable of powering the facility and its products as they become electrified,” a news release stated. “The transformation of the facility will also serve as a learning platform for optimizing charging and energy management integration.” 

The project in Minnesota would focus on converting existing trucks that operate on a diesel-electric hybrid system, similar to rail locomotives. Chura says some of these trucks, which have electric motors on each wheel, are already in use on the Iron Range.  

Converting a truck to utilize overhead power lines to run the motors costs about $1.1 million, according to a presentation prepared for the Minnesota Legislature. The infrastructure costs would run $5 million-$8 million per mile, according to Chura. But the lines would be installed on the steepest parts of the trucks’ route, where the diesel engine works the hardest, resulting in substantial fuel savings. 

“Just as the state has helped incentivize residential and commercial electric vehicle service, funding from either the state or the feds would help achieve those same benefits, but yet, at an industrial scale,” Chura said. “And those benefits really benefit all taxpayers.” 

Bills were introduced in the state House and Senate this year to provide a $10 million grant, but they didn’t make it out of committee.  

John Arbogast, District 11 staff representative for the United Steelworkers, testified in committee on behalf of the bill.  

“Even some of the people that you thought might have been opposed to it were like, ‘Holy cow, is this interesting,’” Arbogast said. 

Arbogast spent 26 years working at U.S. Steel’s MinnTac mine in Mountain Iron and is now the co-chair of the Iron Ore Alliance, a partnership between U.S. Steel and the United Steelworkers. He said environmental policy issues are one subject on which the union and the company often find agreement. 

The trolley system would also increase the speed of the trucks as they travel up the incline, an aspect Arbogast said he thinks will appeal to the mining truck drivers. 

“I think our members, the men and women who drive the trucks, will really like that,” he said. “Because they’re really good at what they do, and they have a lot of pride in hauling the ore to the crusher and getting as many loads as they can in their 12-hour shifts.” 

Chura noted that the faster speeds mean a site could potentially get by with fewer trucks, which can cost millions of dollars each. 

State Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, was chief author of the bill. He said he’s committed to fighting for the project into the future as part of an overall approach to a cleaner energy economy. 

“Our mines are a critical part of that effort, and so why don’t we look for opportunities to move towards a cleaner industry, while also providing the very minerals and resources that we need in order to transition?” Hauschild said. “I think it’s a really a perfect putting-together of the puzzle pieces that make our region so strong and vital.” 

The project partners turned their sights toward the federal government, applying for funds through the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. About $6 billion will fund projects aimed at reducing emissions in industrial subsectors, with award announcements expected early next year. 

How giving trucks an electric boost can help cut mining pollution in Minnesota is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Environmental groups have sent a letter noting their intent to sue over releases of toxic PFAs as part of a firefighting effort at the troubled Sugar Camp mine in downstate Illinois. The move is meant to trigger action from state or federal agencies or otherwise hold the mine owners accountable for the latest in a long string of violations at Illinois’ largest mine.

Starting in mid-August, 46,000 gallons of firefighting foam was pumped into the mine to suppress a smoldering underground fire. Soon, local residents saw foam on fields and floating on the surface of a nearby stream that feeds into Akin Creek, which empties into the Middle Fork Big Muddy River, a popular recreation spot.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency conducted water tests that found PFAs — “forever chemicals” known to cause cancer, organ damage and fertility problems — in at least four sites at concentrations higher than EPA health advisory levels, Illinois drinking water health advisory levels, or Illinois draft groundwater standards.

Advocates note that residents draw water from private wells throughout the area, so they are demanding testing of wells and groundwater to determine any risks.

The Oct. 29 letter notes that the Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network will file a lawsuit against the mine owners if action is not taken within 60 days to stop any ongoing contamination and remediate the damage. The letter notes that the water contamination and PFA releases could constitute violations of the Clean Water Act, Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, all federal laws that are often enforced through such citizen lawsuits.

Sarah Rubinstein, staff attorney with the Great Rivers Environmental Law Center, which is representing the environmental groups, said they expect the state EPA and Illinois attorney general to take action within the 60-day period noted in the letter.

The environmental groups sent their letter to Sugar Camp LLC — a subsidiary of Foresight Energy that has long co-owned the mine — and American Consolidated Natural Resources. Foresight Energy and its parent company, Murray Energy, got approval for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization last year, and as part of the process, American Consolidated Natural Resources was formed by former creditors and took control of many Murray Energy assets. Foresight and Murray Energy president and CEO Robert Moore is also president and CEO of American Consolidated. The company is now the largest privately-owned coal company in the country.

Demanding accountability

It’s unclear whether the chemicals leached from the underground mine or traveled by wind or in surface run-off from foam stored or prepared before being pumped into the mine. The mine operators drilled six boreholes in order to disperse the foam, and mixed the foam in two earthen pits, according to the environmental groups’ letter based on documents obtained through a public records request.

In early September, Akin Water District officials and residents documented foam sightings on the creek surface and in farm drainage ditches and fields.

“We’re not sure if they were messy in mixing it and it ran over the land into the creek, or if it was through these boreholes that we know they drilled into the mine, that are connected hydro-geologically to the surface water,” said Rubinstein of the PFA contamination. “In any event, it definitely was present in all the surface water sampling that IEPA did adjacent to those locations and even a little bit farther downstream.”

In addition to the PFAs, the foam discharges caused “floating debris, and visible oil, color and turbidity of other than natural origin” in the stream, according to the notice of intent.   

The Illinois EPA issued a notice of violation regarding the PFAs on Sept. 21, but according to the groups’ letter, “Sugar Camp Energy has to date undertaken no action to remediate the environmental and health damage caused by the ongoing PFAS discharge to the unnamed tributary to Akin Creek and environment surrounding the Mine.”

The notice says the groups will seek “all available injunctive relief, future costs, damages and attorneys’ fees.” Rubinstein said that in the near term, the groups are demanding the mine owners stop any continuing spread of PFAs, and do testing to see if any wells could be impacted.

“Our concern is containing what is there, stopping it from continuing to discharge into the surface water, remedying what is in the surface water, and any nearby sources of drinking water that could have been impacted,” she said. “They should be offering to do sampling and providing drinking water sources to people whose wells might have been impacted.”

The Illinois EPA’s notice of violation lists the different brands of firefighting foam products used by the company, and notes that at least two of them — named Thunder Storm and Crestar Class A/B Foam, contain PFAs.

A troubled history, a call for change

A July 2020 filing in federal bankruptcy court notes 10 times in 2018 to 2020 that the mine’s wastewater was released into ditches and streams in the same area as the PFA contamination, often because of pipe ruptures, in violation of laws and Sugar Camp’s permits.

The filing said that “such violations are ongoing, including due to Sugar Camp Energy’s failure to investigate and repair its pipeline and its continued threat of discharges of contaminants into the environment in violation of the Environmental Protection Act.” The filing, by the Illinois Attorney General, was asking the court to allow the fines Sugar Camp owed for the violations to be paid as part of bankruptcy proceedings that allowed Murray Energy to avoid $8 billion worth of debt and liability.

Sugar Camp, one of the largest mines in the country, has previously logged hundreds of environmental violations, including “black water” and coal slurry released into waterways; coal waste overflowing its impoundments; aluminum, manganese and other compounds above allowable levels in effluent; “orange staining” of waterways; waste containment structures not adequately maintained; coal dust and mud accumulating on a road; and damage to unmitigated wetlands. 

The Foresight Energy subsidiaries that have run Sugar Camp have also sought to claim local farmers’ land against their will by leveraging old deeds and agreements, and the mine has been the site of the most coal-mining fatalities in the state this millennium, with federal investigations citing faulty equipment and poor training by the mine company.

Environmental leaders are framing the PFA violations as another example of the toll taken on Illinois by fossil fuel industries, and a symbol of the urgency of switching to a clean energy economy, not only in the state’s electricity generation and vehicle sectors but also by addressing coal mining. The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act passed in September includes just transition and job training components aimed at communities where coal mines close or reduce operations.

“Illinois has just picked this bold new decarbonization direction for its electric generation, so this continued extraction of fossil fuels is increasingly out of step with where we’re going as a state,” said Illinois Sierra Club director Jack Darin, who noted that electric vehicle-related manufacturing operations incentivized by another recent new Illinois law could locate in former coal mining areas.

“It’s time we think long-term about the future,” Darin continued. “There are all kinds of harms that come from mining that rural Illinois has been experiencing for a long time. This is a particularly flagrant violation because of the chemicals involved, but what’s not new is the approach of these companies who view this land and these communities as there for taking to do whatever they want with. Those days just need to be numbered.”

Environmental groups intend to sue over Illinois mine PFA contamination is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

When Robert Cohen learned about black lung disease as a medical student, he assumed it was a relic of the past. 

“I thought it was something that happened in the times of Émile Zola” — whose 1885 book “Germinal” chronicled the horrors of France’s coal industry. “I didn’t think I’d see it in my practice.” 

Almost four decades later, he still treats miners from downstate Illinois, their lungs scarred from breathing coal dust. They trek up to Chicago, sometimes looking out of place in the sleek hospital waiting room on Chicago’s ritzy Gold Coast, where Cohen sees patients. 

“The nurses love them, they are so down to earth,” said Cohen, who also founded a black lung clinic at Chicago’s public county hospital, serving miners from around the region, including many who had migrated to Chicago from Appalachia after mines there closed. 

Coal mining has become exponentially safer in recent decades, with far fewer miners dying on the job than at any point in history. However, an ancient and fatal scourge continues to take a toll beyond the workplace. 

Black lung cases have steadily increased and even spiked in recent years in Appalachia, as documented by researchers including Cohen and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is a clinical professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and director of the Mining Education and Research Center.

Cases are lower in Illinois than Appalachia, but still troubling, experts including Cohen say. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Coal Workers’ Health Surveillance Program, between 2010 and 2014, the latest data available online, Illinois led the country in the number of miners examined for black lung under the federal program, with 1,143 miners. Twelve of them were found to have cases eligible for benefits. During that time, 148 cases nationwide were diagnosed, 62 of them in West Virginia. 

Data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health shows that in 2018, there were 120 hospital discharges in Illinois for coal mine-related pneumoconiosis, or black lung. In 2001 there were 265 hospital discharges for black lung in Illinois, perhaps reflecting higher coal mine employment in years past. 

Bias in the system

Working and retired coal miners in Illinois, as in other coal areas, have long faced a lengthy and often torturous process in trying to access the federal benefits meant to compensate them and their families for inability to work, premature death and reduced quality of life. 

In order to seek benefits, miners’ lung scans are examined by experts hired both by the Department of Labor and the coal company. Miners can also hire their own experts, though many cannot afford to. 

Doctors hired by mining companies to evaluate black lung benefits claims are significantly biased against diagnosing the disease, according to a study released in March by Cohen and colleagues including Lee S. Friedman, a University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences. 

Their research found that of 63,780 radiograph classifications made by 264 physicians in Black Lung Program claims filed from 2000 to 2013, experts who were identified as having ever been hired by a coal company read the images as negative for black lung in 85% of the records. In contrast, experts hired by the federal government and by miners themselves found negative diagnoses 63% and 51% of the time, respectively.

Cohen’s and Friedman’s research even showed that the same doctors were significantly less likely to diagnose black lung if they were hired by a company than if they were hired by the government for that particular case. They also found that there were 64 experts who made negative diagnoses in 95% of their cases, with the vast majority (93%) of them being primarily hired by coal companies. Across all evaluations for black lung, evaluators found the disease in 31% of cases. (The University of Illinois at Chicago’s Sudeshna De and Kirsten Almberg were co-authors of the study.)

“While there is evidence of bias on both sides, it is clear that the degree of bias is much heavier on the employer side, and this is twofold,” Cohen said in a statement. “Not only are those hired by an employer much more likely to classify a chest X-ray as negative for black lung disease, but it is also much more likely that an employer will have the resources to hire its own expert — at a much higher fee — in the first place. It is clear from this data that this bias is a systemic problem and the most significant offenders are identifiable.”

The recent study was the first time bias in the claims process was quantified, but Cohen said it only proves what he’s been seeing firsthand for more than 30 years. 

“I’ve been in the trenches examining miners, seeing miners with very serious disease going to a coal company doctor who will read the X-ray as not black lung, not related to their coal mining and saying things that are just not true,” Cohen said. “It’s a very disturbing thing about this adversarial process.” 

One of Cohen’s patients, an Illinois miner who retired in 2014 after 25 years working underground, has extreme shortness of breath and fears he has black lung disease. But he expects getting compensation to be a struggle.

“The companies that will be contesting [the claim] are the same companies that did away with the pensions and tried to do away with health care and everything else,” said the retired miner, who asked his name not be used because he still has family working in the industry and fears retaliation. 

Inadequate oversight 

Bias in the black lung claims process is just one more way, Cohen and Friedman said, that mining companies make it harder for miners to do their work in the safest and healthiest way possible, in an industry that even under the best circumstances can be unhealthy and dangerous.

“Fundamentally our judicial system and democracy is based on the premise that every defendant has the right to a vigorous defense,” Friedman said. “The defendants in these cases — the companies — have a disproportionate amount of resources compared to the miners. There’s an inherent imbalance.” 

Cohen notes that there are various measures mines can take to reduce levels of coal dust that cause black lung. But since these measures cost money and can slow production, companies may be reluctant to do so. Cohen and other experts and labor union officials have also long complained about the federal inspection process for coal dust. Mines are notified as to when an inspection will occur and can reduce production during inspections to 80% of normal levels. Before reforms were instituted, they could cut their production to half of normal during dust inspections.

“That’s always going to give you a lower sample than what’s really happening,” Friedman said.  

After an outcry from miners and health advocates about the black lung crisis, in 2016 the Department of Labor reduced the amount of coal dust allowed in underground mines from 2.0 to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter of air. 

Over the past five years, the Mine Safety and Health Administration found dust concentrations above the legal limit 100 times in MC-1, or “Sugar Camp,” Illinois’s largest mine. One reading in 2012 was 22 micrograms per cubic meter, 15 times the legal limit, and nine readings were more than double the legal limit. 

Meanwhile, the increasing presence of silica dust in coal mines may also be contributing to black lung disease, experts say. Silica dust comes from hard rock that is mined along with coal, and the increasing ability of mine processing equipment to efficiently separate coal from rock means that more rock is being hacked out of mines — and more dust potentially created, Cohen explained. 

Silica dust is regulated as a percentage of total allowable dust levels, so it is not regulated as specifically as coal dust, even as it poses an increasing risk to coal miners. During the Obama administration, a new rule on silica limits for mines was proposed and a docket was underway, but the process stalled under the Trump administration. The Biden administration is working on writing and instituting a new rule, according to an expert familiar with the process. 

During testimony before Congress in 2019, Cohen said his research showed that silica exposure was an important factor in the resurgence of black lung disease, including among younger miners. He advised the government to require that miners wear personal monitors specifically tracking exposure to silica dust. Silica is a particular risk in Appalachia because of the geology there, Cohen said, but he believes it is also a factor in Illinois. 

“Those of us who care for these young miners in our black lung clinics see them fighting for breath,” Cohen told the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Workforce Protections. “They suffer from loss of ability to do simple daily tasks, like walking to the mailbox, playing with their children and grandchildren; not to mention a loss of their careers, hobbies, and ability to support their families. They suffer from early mortality in spite of our heroic attempts to treat them, including referrals for lung transplantation. Let me remind you, there is no cure for this disease, it confers an early death sentence.”

Healing ‘sick’ mines, supporting survivors   

Health advocates and experts would like to see both coal dust and silica dust in mines regulated more stringently. And Cohen and Friedman have proposed reforms that could reduce bias in the black lung benefits process, helping miners access benefits more easily if they have black lung disease and potentially creating more incentive for companies to operate the healthiest possible mines. 

During the black lung claims process, doctors’ evaluations are presented to a judge, who ultimately decides whether a miner or retired miner gets benefits. The Department of Labor has instituted reforms limiting the number of doctors’ opinions a company can submit, but researchers have also found that companies are likely to seek multiple opinions and submit only those favorable to their position. Federal reforms have also tried to curb this phenomenon, but Cohen and Friedman would like to see safeguards go further. 

They propose that all doctors being hired to evaluate claimants be contacted through the Department of Labor, so that they don’t know who is ultimately paying them.

“That would eliminate that coordination between the employer’s legal team and the doctor,” Friedman said. 

They also recommended expanding and diversifying the pool of experts regularly called upon to evaluate black lung claims, making evaluators annually report any payments related to black lung claims, standardizing the rate that can be paid for evaluations (so companies don’t pay exorbitant amounts to gain favor with an evaluator), and making sure the best technology is available for evaluations, including tapping artificial intelligence to aid in the evaluations. 

Improved standardization and use of the best technology could go far in reducing bias in the black lung claims system, since diagnosing black lung is an inherently subjective pursuit. “You’re looking at shadows in a dark room, it’s not like a blood test where you inject a sample into a machine and it spits out an objective measurement,” Cohen said. 

Ideally, a more fair and transparent black lung claims process, along with more stringent dust-related regulations and testing, would help motivate companies to do everything possible to avoid exposing miners to dangerous dust. 

Meanwhile, Cohen and Friedman are studying correlations between coal dust exposure and injuries in coal mines, with preliminary work indicating the two are correlated. 

“The hypothesis being that a sick mine is a sick mine, with higher dust exposure and higher injury rates,” Friedman said. “Those mines tend to have management that isn’t emphasizing safety.”

Black lung, a scourge of the past, still plagues Illinois mines is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Trebr Lenich always called his mother before driving home from his overnight shift at Hamilton County Coal’s Mine #1. 

The call she got on the morning of Aug. 14, 2017, worried her. 

“He said, ‘Mom, I am just so exhausted, so wore out,’” said Teresa Lenich, who worried about the long hours and consecutive days her son routinely worked. 

That night, Trebr Lenich never made it home. 

Coworkers driving behind Lenich saw him driving erratically and suspected he was falling asleep at the wheel, they told his mother. On the way to the West Frankfort home he shared with his parents, girlfriend and baby daughter, he drove off the road into a ditch and hit an embankment, then the engine of his car caught fire, according to a sheriff’s report. 

Like many young miners, Lenich was employed through a contracting company that provides temporary employees for mines, usually at lower wages than direct hires and with no promise the mining company will hire them permanently.

This staffing structure, and the disappearance of labor unions from Illinois mines, have made conditions less safe in mines and work more grueling for miners, according to experts and studies. With no job security, temporary staffers are reluctant to complain about potentially unsafe conditions — including long work hours — or report minor accidents, experts say. And temporary workers often have less experience in a given mine, so they may not understand the specific conditions and risks in that mine as well as a longtime employee.

A miner who retired in 2014 after 25 years in several Illinois mines said he saw firsthand the loss of union representation, the increasing use of contractors, and the increasing pressure to work long hours, with debilitating consequences for mine safety and miners’ well-being.

“Guys are working as contractors because, guess what, there are no other jobs in the industry,” said the miner, who asked his name not be used since he has family working in mines and fears retaliation. “If you have two little kids at home you’re trying to feed and they say, ‘Hey you’re staying over tonight or you’re working [overtime] tomorrow,’ basically you’re doing the job or you’re not going to be there anymore. It was never that way in the union.”

The most recent death in an Illinois mine was a contractor, like Lenich, in Hamilton County Coal’s Mine #1. John Ditterline had been a miner for 28 years at various mines in Illinois. He had been working for six weeks as a contractor through S&L Industries when he died in the mine in the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 2019. At the time of his death, 11 of the 34 people working in the mine were contract workers, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration records. MSHA determined that Ditterline died after being pinned by a pneumatic door in the mine that malfunctioned while he and three other contract workers were investigating a power cable. 

Data provided by MSHA in response to a public records request showed that between 1983 and 2018, the proportion of total coal mine work nationwide done by contractors increased steadily and significantly, from 4% in 1983 to 26% in 2018. The percent of total coal fatalities among contractors also generally increased during that time, with some years being exceptions, even as fatalities overall declined. 

Longer hours, lower pay

Teresa Lenich said that her son feared losing his job if he declined to work the seven-day-a-week shifts he was assigned. An Illinois state law that mandates all employees get a full day of rest each week has an exception for coal miners, as well as for agricultural workers, workers canning perishable goods and several other jobs.

According to Lenich’s pay stub from Custom Staffing Services, the Indiana firm that employed him, he worked 65 and 67.5 hours for $18 an hour in each of the two weeks before he was killed. Teresa Lenich said her son told her that the miners were under pressure to work overtime, and he felt the job he did on the overnight shift required twice as many miners as were assigned to it. 

Heather Dunlap, a representative of Custom Staffing, said that mining companies like Hamilton County Coal, not Custom Staffing, set miners’ hours. A representative of Hamilton County Coal referred questions about work with contractors and Lenich’s schedule to a lawyer for parent company Alliance Resource Partners, who did not return calls and emails.

Teresa Lenich said she sometimes urged her son to refuse overtime or call in sick. 

“He said, ‘Mom, you don’t understand, I can’t. I’ll lose my job, and if I lose my job I can’t support my daughter,’” she recalled in an interview. “I said, ‘Buddy, we’ll help support you until you find something else.’ He said, ‘Mom, it’s not your responsibility. I’m an adult now.’”

Researchers have found that a reliance on contract miners can correlate to longer hours worked and higher rates of injuries and fatalities. Lee S. Friedman, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found in a 2018 study that “working for a contractor was strongly associated with injuries occurring during extended work hours,” as Friedman described it. Contract employees’ “odds are significantly and substantially higher than non-contract labor of being injured after eight hours of work,” he said. 

Friedman’s study concluded that injuries occurring after nine hours of work are more likely to be fatal and more likely to involve more than one miner. And miners new to the mine or working irregular shifts were more likely to suffer fatal injuries. 

“Working for contractors is associated with working extended hours and irregular shifts, and the use of contract labour has been reported to be associated with inadequate training, lower compliance with occupational safety laws and higher injury rates,” Friedman’s study found. “An international shift towards using contract labour and extended workdays indicates that injuries during long working hours will likely continue to grow as a problem in the mining industry.”

Mining experts agree there is an important role for contractors in mines. They can provide specialized services and extra help in times of high production. And temporary or contract work often functions as a probationary process, with the mining company eventually hiring some employees directly. But critics say that mines rely too heavily on contract workers, in part to save money. 

Custom Staffing’s website says it helps mining companies “reduce employment costs.” Ditterline’s employer, S&L Industries, based in Kentucky, offered a similar pitch. “With labor costs continuing to rise, our manpower services can provide a cost-effective solution,” the S&L website said at the time. 

Bob Sandidge, then the primary owner of S&L and now the owner and CEO of a mining contracting company called RWS Resources, said that miners employed through his company typically earn between $1 and $6 per hour less than those directly hired by the mine.

He said that for S&L, miners may work long hours for several-week stretches, but “you can’t drive them into the ground.”

“If you have a special project and someone has to hammer 60 hours a week for a couple weeks, then everyone jumps in and does it,” he said, “but then we give them a break.”

The data 

Friedman and his colleagues found that nationally the proportion of injuries to contract miners compared with direct hires increased fourfold from 3.3% to 12.5% between 1983 and 2015. Meanwhile, an analysis of Mine Safety and Health Administration data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that between 2006 and 2015, mining contractors had higher odds of being killed than direct hires. 

A study by the University of Pennsylvania published in 2013 found that contract coal miners in surface and underground mines were more likely to be killed than direct hires, and were more likely to be killed after working more than eight hours on a shift, especially if they were on the overnight shift. 

“We found that for contractors, a higher proportion of injuries that occurred more than eight hours into a shift and on the first [overnight] shift were fatal, compared to other times of day,” said study co-author Kristin Cummings, who is now with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health but worked on the study before joining the government. “We did not see the same pattern for [direct hires]. We do not know the reason why, but speculated that contractors may have less experience and more difficulty functioning safely after working overnight into the morning.” 

Her team found that contractors’ odds of fatal versus nonfatal injuries were about three times higher than those of direct hires, but direct hires had higher overall injury rates. 

“There are two ways to look at this,” Cummings said. “It could be because contractors were actually at greater risk of having a fatal injury, or it could be that contractors were just less likely to report a nonfatal injury.” 

The University of Pennsylvania study also found that contractors had higher odds of being terminated or transferred due to injury. 

“Possible explanations are the contractors had more severe injuries, so couldn’t continue in the same job; that there was a lower threshold to transfer injured contractors; or there were fewer options for modified jobs for contractors, so they couldn’t be transferred to another job and instead had their employment terminated,” Cummings said.

While Friedman’s and Cummings’ studies did not examine the reasons for increased risk during long shifts, they said they believe fatigue is a “critical element,” as Friedman put it. He said he sees longer shifts and exhaustion as an increasing concern for both contractors and direct hires. 

“The mining industry has moved away from eight-hour shifts and is moving toward 10- and 12-hour shifts,” Friedman said. Federal data shows that workers in mining and logging — which are lumped together — work more weekly hours on average than other private sector occupational categories, with an average of 46.1 weekly hours in February 2019 for miners and loggers, compared to an average 34.4 weekly hours across the private sector. 

No unions, little recourse 

Union officials say contract miners may work longer hours and in more dangerous conditions because they can be easily terminated and, as a result, don’t want to speak up about concerns. Since contractors also typically earn lower wages, they also may be more eager to accept overtime.

“They’ve got contractors coming in and doing the same job regular employees do for half the money with no future,” said Ronnie Huff, an international representative of the United Mine Workers of America who is based in Illinois.

The labor union once represented tens of thousands of workers in Illinois mines, but today there is not a single unionized mine in the state. The last underground coal mine with union representation — Peabody’s Willow Lake — closed in 2012. Foresight Energy, the state’s largest coal mining company, has never had unions in its mines. 

If direct hires were unionized, the union would likely fight against the extensive use of contractors. But without a union, Huff and other labor experts say, miners hired by contractors or the mining company have less power to demand better conditions or shorter hours. 

Since her son’s death, Teresa Lenich has tried to highlight and change the law that exempts miners from a guaranteed day of rest each week. She contacted then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and wrote to former President Donald Trump in hopes they’d help. Madigan’s office communicated with her periodically, but Madigan is no longer in office and Lenich has not been in touch with the current state attorney general. Lenich said she was surprised not to hear back from Trump, “since he says he’s for the people.” 

She sometimes scrolls through photos on her son’s phone, of the mine, and his family. She reminisces about how Trebr seemed to grow up overnight after his daughter was born. Earning money to support his daughter was what kept him going during his long shifts, she said, but now he won’t see her grow up. 

“I can’t do nothing for my son. But if I could get it where no other mother has to hurt like this, that would be something,” she said. “He was just so tired. Nobody should lose their life because the company won’t give them a day off.”

Contract coal miners face longer hours, higher risk than full-time peers is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.