Economic Implications of Strip Mining Legislation: The Small Firms

The coal mining industry has had a long history of successfully externalizing part of its costs. Thus the private or internal costs of coal mining have been minimized and the social or external costs have been ignored. The externalized costs have largely taken the form of water pollution from acid mine drainage and sedimentation of stream channels from eroding spoil banks and gob piles. The environmental problems created by strip mining are very conspicuous, so the public demand for legisla-