Previously
accused of sabotaging the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and
Enforcement, Steven Gardner is now likely to be its next chief.
President Donald Trump’s choice to head a federal coal mine
regulator, like more than one of his nominees, is a vocal critic of the
very agency he’s being asked to lead. Steven Gardner is a longtime coal
industry consultant, and he has called
the agency’s marquee Obama-era regulation the product of “one of the
most disingenuous and dishonest efforts put forward by a government
agency.”
But in Gardner’s case, there is an unusual — and contentious — twist:
He runs an engineering firm that produced a report as part of the
process of preparing that regulation, and the agency deemed it so shoddy
that it cut ties with Gardner’s company. Now he’s the nominee to head
that agency, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
(In broad terms, OSMRE — pronounced “oz-muhr” — focuses on mining’s
effect on the environment, while the other key regulator, the Mine
Safety and Health Administration, focuses on the welfare of miners.)
State and federal officials at the time harshly criticized a draft
report produced jointly by Gardner’s firm, ESCI, and other contractors.
They blasted it as “nonsensical,” “junk,” “inaccurate and incomplete,”
and “a piece of crap.” Some OSMRE staff members went so far as to accuse
Gardner of trying to sabotage the regulation his firm was hired to help
develop.
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