Last month, the Republican County Judge of McMullen County — a county that gave Trump 90% of its vote — pleaded with state leaders to deny a permit to expand a coal mine. It didn’t work; despite record gas production and the phenomenal growth of solar and storage, the San Miguel Electric Co-op (SMEC) will expand coal mining in Texas.

The County Judge (Texas’ title for the county chief executive) and the Mayor of Three Rivers both warned that the pollution from the mine’s coal ash and other toxic waste would poison groundwater and make parts of the county unlivable. “Our communities,” they wrote, will “lose their ability to exist.” 

The Railroad Commission approved the permit anyway. 

Coal is an expensive, dirty and dangerous electric generating source that communities don’t want — the Ford Pinto of electric generating sources (except at least Pintos were cheap!). Competitive companies have a hard time attracting enough capital to expand a coal mine, especially one that would feed an uncompetitive coal plant.

But when a company is a monopoly built on captive ratepayers — as SMEC and its sister co-op the South Texas Electric Cooperative (STEC) are — it’s easier to get away with bad ideas and inefficiency.

And in too many Texas communities, rural electric co-ops are trying to get away with mining and burning coal…