A mining company’s debt-cutting plan will leave taxpayers facing a bigger bill for cleaning up nearly two dozen hazardous sites primarily in the central U.S., including a swath of northeast Oklahoma that once produced lead ore for bullets in both World Wars, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The 22 properties will be shed by miner Peabody Energy Corp. when it leaves bankruptcy with a plan that shifts cleanup costs to the government. Peabody’s chapter 11 plan, approved on March 17 by a federal judge, and related settlements allow the company to provide about 2 percent of as much as $2.7 billion in environmental liabilities asserted by federal, state and tribal authorities for the sites polluted from lead and zinc mining that ended decades ago.
