Abandoned Mine Lands Funding

Transcript

OPEN: Pennsylvania's US Senators have been working to get more than a billion dollars to clean up the state's abandoned mine sites. To do that, they've introduced a bill to reauthorize and amend the federal Abandoned Mine Lands program. The Allegheny Front's Ann Murray looks at why state agencies, environmentalists and scientists say the passage of Senate bill 2616 is imperative to the health of Pennsylvania's land and water.

NAT SOUND: High School band.

MURRAY: While Freedom Area high school band members practice musical drills, (BACKHOE BEEPS AND DRILLING)across campus a construction crew is drilling bore holes deep underground. They'll eventually fill the holes with concrete to support the surface. The school was built on top of a mine that was last worked in 1925. The operation left behind big holes underground where coal and clay were extracted.

SOFO:I can show you pictures back in 1969 when they put cameras down into the actual mine areas and it looked like there were rooms down there with 40 foot ceilings.

MURRAY: That's Freedom school district superintendent Ron Sofo. He says the school grounds subsided in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. Two years ago, a section of the baseball field dropped about four feet. Walking over to the drilling site, Sofo shakes his head. He says this scenario didn't show up anywhere in the handbook of school safety.

SOFO: You never think about having to worry about keeping the buildings literarily above ground.

MURRAY: Freedom Area High School is one about 5000 abandoned mine sites in Pennsylvania. Most of the 1.4 million dollars to stabilize the school property came from The Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund. Since 1977, the coal industry has paid into the fund and the US Interior Department has doled out some of the money to coal producing states. Pennsylvania gets between 20 and 25 million dollars a year. Tom Rathbun is a spokesperson for the state Department of Environmental Protection. He says that amount barely touches what his agency calls the "worst environmental problem" in Pennsylvania.

RATHBUN.We know there are 6200 miles of streams that are polluted or degraded by acid mine runoff, 5000 seeps and acid discharges and several trillion gallons of water in our abandoned mine pools.It's been said that we have an estimated 250 thousand acres of abandoned coal and noncoal lands.

MURRAY: To deal with all this damage, US Senator Rick Santorum introduced Senate bill 2616 this past spring. The bill would reauthorize the Abandoned Mine Lands Trust Fund for another 15 years and change its distribution formula. Eastern coal states like Pennsylvania with a long history of abandoned coal mines would get a lot more money than western states that now mine the most US coal but have few abandoned mines. Western mines would get other concessions.

SANTORUM: The win for the west is the phasing out of the tax.

MURRAY: US Senator Rick Santorum.

SANTORUM: They also get some of the money that's sitting in the trust fund. That money gets spent out to which the west actually does better than they would under current law.

MURRAY: John Dawes is the Administrator of the Western PennsylvaniaWatershed Program and Chair of the Pennsylvania Abandoned Mine Lands Campaign. He says these concessions have created an unprecedented group of supporters for Santorum's bill.

DAWES: S2616 has the endorsement of the whole conservation community in the state of PA. They have the endorsement of the-Bituminous Coal Operators Association,the United Mine Workers and now the western states are on board.

MURRAY: But even with this first- of- its- kind coalition and 14 co-sponsors, Santorum's bill hasn't gotten anywhere. Last Congressional term it was defeated as part of a legislative package. Senator Santorum says S2616 remains at the top of his list but he hasn't yet found the right piece of legislation to attach his abandoned mine lands bill. This term
ends in just a few days to let Congress prepare for elections in November.

SANTORUM: This is an important issue. One that has been bogged done for a decade by regional controversies. I've been able to work those out...but I've got to tell you, it's a very delicate balance and with the shifting sands of politics it very well may come apart.I'm very nervous that if we do not get something done before the election that all the impetuous to get this done will be lost.

MURRAY: Other supporters of the bill are nervous, too. Pennsylvania agencies claim it will take 60 years to clean up just the worst mine sites. That's if funding remains at the current level. The trust fund in its present form is set to expire in September 2007. But more land and waterways are damaged each year. NAT SOUND: MAPS BEING DUPLICATED The Mon Mine Pools project has shown an increasing number of abandoned mines in the Monongahela River Basin are filling up with ground and rain water. That water can turn acidic in the mines and discharge into nearby streams when it floods. Hydrologist Bruce Leavitt makes this case with chronological flood maps.

LEAVITT As we move forward to 1990 we can see that the number of active mines has decreased and the flooding levels have increased.We go forward again to the year 2002, even a larger area is showing up flooded and there are fewer operating mines.

MURRAY: So far the project has identified 61 square miles of flooded mines in the Mon River Basin. The DEP's Tom Rathbun says the state and local watershed groups are doing what they can with these and other abandoned mine sites but this legacy of mine damage isn't just Pennsylvania's responsibility.

RATHBUN:We don't want to call it Pennsylvania's mine problem because we're not the ones who benefited from these minerals. The whole country benefited and so the country bears a responsibility to clean up this damage.

MURRAY: For The Allegheny Front, this is Ann Murray.