CASPER — The news that the U.S. Department of Interior intends to dramatically restrict mountain-top removal coal operations back East, shouldn’t get Wyoming citizens too excited (unless your coal company removes mountain tops).

Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) announced proposed rulemaking regarding the protection of streams from the adverse impacts of mountain-top removal operations, by overturning a stream buffer zone rule issued by the Bush Administration in December 2008.

Mountain-top removal is widely used in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, producing 130 million tons of coal annually.

In the mountainous terrain of Appalachian coalfields, dumping into streams has been far cheaper than finding other places to deposit overburden. Environmentalists have complained bitterly that the practice destroys stream ecosystems and clean water, while mining companies counter that it saves money and lives by avoiding the expense and hazards of underground coal mining.

According to University of Wyoming economist Rob Godby, the proposed rule changes for Eastern coal won’t be a game changer for Wyoming coal – not like the 1970 federal Clean Air Act, which sought to control acid rain by setting limits on sulfur dioxide emissions. Low-sulfur Wyoming coal got a huge boost as mid-western power plants opted to buy Wyoming coal to avoid the expense of scrubbing out sulfur dioxide from plant emissions.

Godby is the chairman of University of Wyoming's Department of Economics and Finance

Godby said that if Eastern coal production is significantly reduced, consumers won’t turn to Wyoming, because Wyoming coal’s advantage (low sulfur) is irrelevant to Eastern coal customers, while Wyoming’s disadvantages (lower Btu, high-moisture, high transportation costs) are daunting.

Eastern coal is high in sulfur and generally has much higher energy value than Wyoming coal. Godby reasoned that if low-sulfur coal is important to you, you already buy Wyoming coal. If low-sulfur coal isn’t critical, then you’re not now or likely to ever be a customer of the Wyoming coalfields, he added.

"If you’re already using Eastern coal, you’d probably look for a reasonable substitute, closer at hand than Wyoming," said Godby. That probably means Illinois coal, he suggested.