“Resource specialists concluded there would be no impacts to these resources if the lands were leased and subsequently mined by underground mining methods,” WNF said in a statement.
“If mining were to occur, there would be no surface activities or disturbance on the 433 acres.”
The analysis follows a request made by a private company to Bureau of Land Management to lease seven separate parcels of land in the forest.
If the lease is approved it would be open to competitive bids, with the BLM considering mining a “likely development scenario”
If a lease is issued, the lessee would then be required to obtain a coal mining permit from the State of Ohio.
The analysis was based on the potential of room and pillar underground mining and assessed the potential for subsidence, stream capture and other impacts to water quality and global climate change.
The proposal will now enter a 30-day public comment period, following which forest supervisor Anne Carey will make a decision on whether and how to implement the project.
The federal government owns about 41% of the roughly 240,000 forest acres in southeast Ohio.
