Market Imperfections, Social Costs of Strip Mining, and Policy Alternatives 1

All but the most hardened defenders of the coal and utility interests must admit that the visual and ecological impact of an unreclaimed stripped area is unfavorable. For those who care to look more deeply, there are the thousands of miles of acid or otherwise damaged streams and a myriad of resulting damages and treatment costs. There are in excess of one million acres of land disturbed by strip mining, with only a fraction significantly re claimed. ̂ There are mining counties in Kentucky, West Virginia andelsewhere that simultaneously produce thousands of tons of coal worth millions of dollars while yielding infant mortality andother human welfare plights that we would expect to find in an underdeveloped country -not in the U.S.A. The sum total of these impacts, and what they reallymean to the human wel fare of those who must live in these areas, is a situation which has led some observers to call for the abolition of strip mining, and the reallocationof resources to more deep mining.