Is half a loaf better than none? Should half a solution to the state Department of Environmental Protection’s strip mine reclamation fund deficit be applauded, or loudly condemned as insufficient? That’s the dilemma West Virginians face in DEP Secretary Michael Callaghan’s mine bonding liability proposal before this special session of the Legislature.

No doubt, Callaghan inherited a fiscal and environmental debacle when he took over; and he is trying to do some good – although some fear he’s only trying to avoid the embarrassment of having the reclamation program taken over by the federal Office of Surface Mining, which allowed the problem to snowball over the past 10 years.

We’d all like to believe that his 14-cents-a-ton tax will liquidate the cost of cleaning up mine sites – but we can’t. Why? Because we were told to trust the state plan in 1991 when the deficit was a mere $6 million. Today it’s approaching $50 million.

In 1991, it was claimed that a 3-cents-a-ton tax would fix the problem of ruin-and-run mines. That "solution" landed us in the horrid place we’re in today, with 245 new abandoned sites. To date, the DEP has reclaimed only five. Disgraceful.

Unfortunately, there are a number of significant flaws in the proposed legislation. Historically, DEP’s water reclamation figures have been grossly underestimated. In this proposal, there is no cushion whatsoever for unexpected or inflated costs. For example, the proposal does not take into account the possible catastrophe of a single huge mountaintop mine being abandoned. Just one such 1,500-acre site could cost DEP $10 million or more.

And the new bare-bones plan only reclaims the land to current pathetic levels of reclamation (smoothed-over subsurfaces with no trees and no real post-mining use). Additionally, the Special Reclamation Fund Advisory Council would be packed with the very same pro-coal voices that have landed us where we are today.

A better proposal would be to augment Callaghan’s tax proposal with a minimum $5,000 per acre bond on smaller permits, and $20,000 per acre on major mountaintop removal permits. This double-bonding system would greatly reduce the state’s future liability for ruin-and-run operators. As a last resort, the DEP should push the governor to prosecute ruin-and-run operators and to declare eminent domain, thereby seizing such abused land for the state permanently.

These ideas would put some teeth in the DEP’s bite. Given that environmentalists weren’t included in the closed-door deal with coal that produced the plan, coupled with the reality that the Legislature does only what coal tells it to, such proposals never even became part of the debate.

That being said, we can pray that the Legislature will add a 2-cents-a-ton "tree tax" to Callaghan's 14 cents. With coal selling for around $27 per ton, is a mere two cents too much to ask to turn our ravaged mountains back into forests again, thereby giving the poverty-stricken people of the coal-producing counties much-needed jobs planting trees to heal the environment? I think not.