Sharon Buccino has sued the Interior Department and once criticized miners for leaving a “trashed landscape and contaminated water” after digging up coal across the West.
Now, the longtime environmental lawyer and public lands advocate is on the inside, serving as a top Biden political appointee tasked with reining in coal mining pollution and leading an office at the very agency she once challenged in court.
But Buccino, a litigator at the Natural Resources Defense Council for more than three decades, faces a daunting task in leading the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, or OSMRE.
For years, President Joe Biden has declined to formally nominate a leader for the Interior agency, even as its job of cleaning up aging and toxic coal mines grows.
