President Trump’s Plan to Put a Coal Executive in Charge of Coal Regulations

Earlier this month, congressional Republicans passed, and the president signed into law, the biggest federal giveaway to the coal industry in history. The big, bad budget bill slashed the royalty rate coal companies pay for the value of coal extracted from public lands nearly in half, directed the Department of the Interior to offer up at least 4 million acres of land for new coal mining, and even established a brand new tax credit for the production of “metallurgical coal,” coal which is often used in the production of steel.  

Communities, sensitive ecosystems, and the climate are struggling to deal with the impacts of existing coal mines, let alone new ones. Whether the Big Ugly Bill will lead to a true resurgence of the coal industry or just continue to line the pockets of its executives remains to be seen. But it is critical either way that the agencies which oversee these new policies and regulate the coal industry are led by individuals who are committed to following the law to protect communities, the environment, and the climate from the impacts of coal, and who do not have coal company ties or bias towards industry. 

And yet, President Trump has nominated – and Congress is currently considering – a former coal executive with a history of undermining environmental protections to be the nation’s top coal regulator. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on Lanny Erdos to be the director of Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (or OSMRE) just days after the passage of that Big Ugly Bill, and the committee will vote on whether to recommend his confirmation to the full Senate any day now. The Senate must reject his nomination.

What is OSMRE? 

OSMRE is a critically important but little-known agency within the Department of the Interior. Established as part of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977, OSMRE was charged by Congress with both addressing the impacts of abandoned coal mines and ensuring that future coal mines are well regulated to limit their harm. While some states have the primary responsibility for regulating coal activities within their states under agreements with OSMRE, OSMRE oversees those programs and serves as a backstop against violations of federal law. 

This means OSMRE plays a critical role in determining whether new coal mines get started and whether their environmental impacts are mitigated to the extent possible. For example, when the Department of the Interior approved an expansion of the notorious Bull Mountains mine in Montana last month, it was OSMRE that reviewed the project and recommended that it be approved. It is just as important now as it was when SMCRA was passed that the director of OSMRE is someone that is committed to protecting communities and the environment from the impacts of coal mining, rather than someone who promotes it regardless of the consequences. 

Who did President Trump Nominate to Lead it? 

 President Trump has chosen someone to lead OSMRE who he thinks will advance his administration’s “Beautiful Clean Coal” agenda, and that person is Lanny Erdos.  

Mr. Erdos worked for decades at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources before joining the first Trump administration in 2019, including serving for the last six weeks of the administration as the director of OSMRE. There, he oversaw the effort to weaken the Ten-Day Notice rule, which is supposed to enable communities to report violations of federal mining law and ensure the federal government addresses those violations. But in 2020, OSMRE finalized a new version of the rule that made it harder for communities to hold state regulators and mines accountable for their violations, and Mr. Erdos celebrated it. Mr. Erdos also issued a directive that weakened federal oversight of mine reclamation projects. The directive told OSMRE staff to defer to state agencies when making key decisions about whether former mine sites have been restored to their pre-mine state, overriding a decades-old policy. Mr. Erdos repeatedly used his positions of power under the first Trump administration to diminish OSMRE’s role in protecting communities and the environment from the effects of coal mining.  

Most worryingly, since the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Erdos became a coal industry executive himself, both as the president of Cardinal Reclamation Company and the vice president of Environmental Compliance for Eagle Summit Resources. Eagle Summit Resources operates not just one, but four coal mines across Wyoming and West Virginia. Two of those mines even produce metallurgical coal, the type of coal that just got a brand-new tax credit thanks to the Big Ugly Bill.  

Furthermore, during his confirmation hearing, Mr. Erdos directly praised that bill’s Big Coal handouts, including expressing excitement that cutting the coal royalty rate nearly in half will “incentivize the industry to mine more coal.” He also made no effort during the hearing to distinguish himself from an administration that is recklessly approving coal mine projects like the Bull Mountains mine expansion, moving to re-open the Powder River Basin to new coal mining, and forcing coal-fired power plants to continue to operate past their planned retirement dates at ratepayer expense. 

At a time when Republicans and the Trump administration are putting a massive thumb on the scale to benefit coal companies’ bottom lines, the Senate should not be confirming one of Big Coal’s own to regulate the industry. To put it simply: confirming Lanny Erdos to lead OSMRE would be akin to putting a fox in charge of guarding the henhouse, except instead of talking about a few chickens, we are talking about one of the most toxic industries there is. 

What will happen next, and what can you do about it? 

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a vote any day now on whether to recommend to the rest of the Senate that they confirm Lanny Erdos to be the director of OSMRE. Earthjustice Action and the Appalachian Citizen’s Law Center led a letter with a diverse group of 23 other organizations that was sent to the committee on July 21.  

If you oppose a coal executive leading the agency that is supposed to regulate coal, call your senators now and urge them to oppose the nomination of Lanny Erdos to lead OSMRE.