One lengthy and bitter dispute between industry and environmentalists has concerned the need for federal legislation designed to discourage and control surface coal mining. Although strip mining techniques can be used to obtain only three to 18 percent of the nation's coal resources and may preclude further mining by other methods, the coal companies have always found strip mining economically attractive. Part of the reason for strip mining's profitability has been that the cost of reclaiming gutted land has largely been avoided by irresponsible mine operators. The Department of the Interior has estimated the cost of reclaiming the 2.5 million acres of wasted lands left from abandoned strip mines to be $18 billion.

Over the past few years, coal companies operating deep mines in the East have been faced with increased expenses due to rising wages and health benefits, and the cost of compliance with the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969.¹ As costs of eastern deep mining have risen, the disadvantages of shipping coal produced in the western states back to the major users in the East have seemed less and less onerous. The coal industry regards the western fields of low-sulfur coal as a new frontier ready to be exploited. Planned facilities in the West include gasification plants to manufacture synthetic oil or gas from coal ore and large generating plants near mining sites. Like the coal industry, the oil companies look to the West for new sources of oil from oil shale. The question now facing the Congress is whether by failing to enact strong controls it will allow much of the already sparsely vegetated, arid West to become even more so.