Failure of State: For Decades, Alabama’s Mining Regulator Has Left Citizens Unprotected

Undermined: Thirteenth in a series about the impacts of longwall mining in Alabama.

OAK GROVE, Ala.—The regulators have known all along. The residents have been telling them.

Alabamians have for decades been raising their voices about the risks of longwall mining, an aggressive method of extracting coal that has left sinking homes in its wake and increased the risks of an explosive gas seeping to the surface. 

“Currently we are living in fear of gas escaping from the underground mines and causing an explosion or burns,” a Kimberly, Alabama, resident wrote in a letter to regulators in September 1999. “There have been people killed who were above longwall mines.”

A quarter-century later, little has changed. 

“I don’t want to blow up,” a resident above another Alabama longwall mine said in June.

All the while, an investigation by Inside Climate News shows that state regulators—who have long championed state rather than federal primacy over the regulation of coal extraction—have done little to nothing to address residents’ fears or mitigate the considerable risks of longwall mining. 

Instead, a review of thousands of pages of public documents shows that state regulators have rubber-stamped coal mining permits that have left citizens largely unprotected from the impacts of subsidence and methane escape. 

Even when, in March 2024, a home explosion atop Oak Grove Mine killed a man and critically injured his grandson, state mining regulators kept the situation at arm’s length, never taking substantive action to address what residents and coal mining experts still say are imminent, potentially deadly, dangers.

Longwall mining uses bladed machines that shear coal from expanses as wide as 1,000 feet and as long as two miles, leaving behind a rock ceiling that then collapses behind the cutting tool, typically causing the land above it to sink. 

Methane is a climate “super pollutant” contributing to worsening floods, heat waves and other disasters. But it can also trigger explosions when it builds up in enclosed places, like homes. The subsidence caused by longwall mining that can damage buildings can also create cracks in the ground that provide easy routes for underground methane to escape to the surface.

Kathy Love, director of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission (ASMC), declined repeated requests to comment on this story before publication. 

Alabama Primacy and a History of Vocal Residents

Since Alabama was approved to regulate for itself the surface impacts of underground mining in 1982, Alabamians haven’t been shy about how coal operations have harmed them. Over the years, residents living atop coal mines in particular have been outspoken about their experiences.

In 1999, for example, as Alabama was implementing updates it had made to state mining law, residents begged federal regulators to step in, citing their fear that the state was doing nothing to help with the impacts of mining on their lives and homes. Instead, residents said, the newly enacted changes would violate homeowners’ property rights—closely held in Alabama—in favor of enshrining expansive benefits for coal companies into law. 

Henry E. Snow, a property owner in Kimberly, Alabama, penned a handwritten letter to the director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to express his concerns about the changes the state regulator had backed. It defies common sense, Snow argued, that mining companies be allowed to dig a mine beneath—or undermine—a property without the consent of the surface owner whose property would almost certainly be impacted. 

“Any law that allows a company or anyone to damage your property without the approval of surface rights owner is wrong,” he wrote in part. 

Under state law, so-called “mineral rights”—the right to, for example, mine for coal under one’s property—can be separated from surface ownership over time. One person or entity can own a surface property under Alabama law while another person or entity can own the rights to all the resources below that same piece of land, a situation known as a “split estate.” 

Homeowners may not even know that they don’t own the mineral rights under their property until it’s too late. 

Snow also emphasized the impacts of longwall mining—from cracked foundations and crumbling homes to methane escape and the loss of nearby water bodies. 

And he wasn’t alone. 

Wilton Hood was the first person to show up at a Birmingham Shoney’s just off I-65 to testify at a 1999 public hearing held by federal regulators about ASMC’s proposed revisions to its state regulatory plan. 

“I’m a deacon at Big Sandy Methodist Church,” Hood said. “And the Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Mining beneath his home in rural Tuscaloosa County caused his land to sink, leaving cracks so large he could stand in them. The sinking cracked his brick home “from one side of my house to the other,” Hood told regulators. 

Methane gas was now escaping from the ground outside his home, Hood testified. He’d been forced to ignite a water well on his property to safely flare off the releasing methane—a well the mining company had said they’d already sealed appropriately. 

A resident named Bobby Snow testified later in the hearing, echoing concerns about subsidence, water quality and access, and the risks of methane escape atop expanding mines. 

Children, Snow said, were one of his biggest concerns. 

“You can go down there and play or go down there and hunt, but don’t smoke or you’ll be standing in your smutty underwear wondering what the heck happened because the methane gas is coming up out the ground,” he said.

Isaac Espy, an attorney for coalfield residents, summed up the impact of Alabama’s new regulatory scheme during the 1999 hearing: “[It] gave to … managers of coal mines a right to subside and trash the land of the surface owners above them.”

Espy echoed Hood’s concerns about methane gas escaping above mines, as well. In one rural community, Clements’ Crossroads, water wells regularly spewed methane and could easily be ignited.

“One house caught fire after lightning struck the water well where the methane was coming from it,” Espy said. “Yet with the potential for explosion, the regulatory authority has not addressed the problem.”

Six families in the community had watched their property subside, he explained, and all six lost their homeowners’ insurance. The value of their homes dropped by 80 percent following the mining beneath the properties. 

“These [issues] have not been addressed by either our state or our federal regulatory authorities,” Espy said, according to a transcript of the hearing. 

Espy pointed out that the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), the federal law governing the regulation of surface impacts from coal mining, allows regulators to designate areas unsuitable for mining, but that “no such area has ever been designated to protect the homes of these families, many of whom are here this morning.”

Espy specifically called out staff of the Alabama Surface Mining Commission present at the public meeting.

“Instead of protecting the environment, surface landowners and society, this commission has apparently supported allowing the mining industry to trample the rights of coal field citizens and trash the environment,” he said.

A commission representative present chose not to comment. 

Even with Alabama’s control over surface mining regulation, the federal government still has oversight obligations. Federal regulators would later push back against some of the state’s proposed changes, securing some revisions in the planned program from state regulators before eventually approving it. Those limited revisions would not prove pivotal in preventing the undermining of Alabama communities.

A Quarter-Century Without Progress

An Inside Climate News review of state regulatory permitting and enforcement actions over decades shows that ASMC and other state agencies in Alabama have done little to substantively mitigate the risks and impacts of longwall mining in the state. Meanwhile, residents have continued to speak out, voicing concerns into what appears to be a bureaucratic void.

The experiences Alabama residents outlined 25 years ago in an outcry to regulators mirror, sometimes nearly word for word, concerns expressed by community members currently living atop the expanding Oak Grove Mine, a longwall mine below a rural community in Jefferson County, less than an hour’s drive from Birmingham. 

“I don’t want my kids to blow up,” Michael Cole, a gravedigger in Oak Grove, said in an interview earlier this year. “I don’t want to have to bury my own family.”

Even before the fatal home explosion in March, residents were feeling the strain of the mine growing below their community. A local park was closed because of mining activity beneath it. At least one church suspended services. One gas station closed completely. Another stopped pumping gas because of safety and environmental concerns, forcing residents to travel miles for fuel. 

Then, the explosion put everything into focus. Crimson Oak Grove Resources, the mine’s operator, had recently reached the area beneath the home of W.M. Griffice, a grandfather. 

For weeks, Griffice had been complaining about booming noises around the home, according to a relative. He’d explicitly expressed concern about the risk of an explosion, too. 

On March 8, his fears came to pass when his small home exploded, critically injuring Griffice and his 21-year-old grandson. Griffice would later die from his injuries. His family is suing the mine operator, arguing that methane released from its longwall mining operation caused his death. The mine’s lawyers have denied responsibility in court filings, and representatives of the mine have repeatedly ignored requests for comment.

In the wake of the explosion, the Alabama Surface Mining Commission has not acted substantively to address residents’ concerns, records and interviews with residents and officials show. 

In a previous interview, Love, the commission’s director, suggested the regulation of methane escaping from coal mine operations may well be a “black hole,” with no government agency squarely tasked with its oversight. Following the explosion, Love said she suspected the mine operation was not the cause of the blast, though she said at the time the speculation was based only on her past experience and the rarity of such an event. 

State fire investigators, too, largely avoided weighing in on the explosion, characterizing its cause as “undetermined” after producing a report extensively documenting both the circumstances around the underground mining operation and the presence of methane gas at the site well above ambient levels. 

Their investigation also confirmed revealing details of the night of the explosion, which had been previously reported by Inside Climate News. Tim Griffice, the victim’s brother, was next door when the explosion happened. The blast knocked the pictures off his walls, the report said. Once he’d run outside, Griffice heard his brother speak just before he’d lost consciousness: “It was methane,” he reportedly said. 

Coal experts and retired regulators interviewed by Inside Climate News have pushed back on the suggestion that methane mitigation is outside the scope of current regulatory power, arguing that both state and federal regulators have the ability to address this risk if they choose to do so—but often simply don’t. 

Joe Pizarchik, former head of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, emphasized the point in an interview earlier this year, saying that the failure of Alabama regulators to mitigate methane risks demanded a response from his former agency. 

“They should be able to conclude that blowing up people’s homes and killing them is an imminent hazard, and they should be able to suspend underground coal mining beneath those areas,” he said of federal regulators. “It appears we have a documented example of the regulator’s failure to fulfill their mandatory duty to protect the health and safety of the public.”

Three days after Inside Climate News reported Pizarchik’s comments, the federal agency sent inspectors to the community and found methane still escaping from newly installed vents at the site of the home explosion. 

In December, federal regulators took a step toward meaningful oversight, issuing a so-called “Ten Day Notice” that directs ASMC to require Oak Grove Mine to update its subsidence control plan. 

Federal authorities said the current plan, approved by ASMC in June 2024, was inadequate. Among its deficiencies: no information about mitigating or monitoring the risks associated with methane release from the operation. 

“The absence of this information for evaluation in the approved plan must be corrected as soon as possible,” the report said.

Lisa Lindsay, the closest neighbor to the Griffice property, has said that state regulators have completely failed to address the community’s issues, both before and after the explosion. 

Lindsay relayed her concerns to state regulators again and again after the explosion, both formally and informally, in person and electronically. 

In response to one of her formal written complaints, ASMC staff sent a letter saying only that the agency would inform Crimson Oak Grove Resources of the subsidence damage to her home. The response to Lindsay’s complaint did not mention methane at all. 

Ghosts of Oak Grove Past

Few know the long-term impacts of state regulatory laxity like Benny Walden, an Oak Grove resident whose father died inside the mine in 1974.

It was difficult for Walden, 60, to talk about his father outside his home earlier this year. Walden’s father died inside Oak Grove Mine when his son was only 10, crushed to death by a hoisted chunk of coal. 

All these years later, Oak Grove plans to undermine Walden’s home. 

He’s been heavily involved in the fight against the Oak Grove expansion since Griffice’s death. And he has no intention of backing down. 

“I don’t care if they think it’s their coal,” he said. “It’s my damn property.”

Walden was present at an August public meeting on mining issues held at Oak Grove High School almost 25 years to the date after the 1999 public meeting on mining impacts. Officials said they had little formal power to intervene on residents’ behalf, particularly when it came to methane. 

“Don’t totally lose faith in us,” Love, wearing American flag cowboy boots, told those gathered. 

Walden rolled his eyes. 

Crimson Oak Grove Resources did not send a representative to the event. 

“We can’t make the mining company come and have these meetings,” said Stephen Miles, a staffer with ASMC.

Walden rolled his eyes again, got up and left the meeting, which only confirmed a bitter truth he’d wrestled with for the past 25 years: His faith in the mine, and the officials who regulate it, had died with his father.