Published: August 10, 2016 |

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. (Photo: Joel Bouopda, Associated Press)
[Click image to enlarge]

Mayor Ray Plummer was all smiles Thursday morning as bulldozers, front-loaders and massive trucks dug into the mountain of coal waste that towers over his home and this tiny Cambria County town of 200 along the stone-cold-dead Little Conemaugh River.

“It’s a good day for our residents,” he said, shortly after a flock of local, state and federal officials gathered to turn ceremonial shovels and signal the official start of the $26 million Ehrenfeld Abandoned Mine Reclamation Project. “Once the coal refuse piles are moved out, it will stop drainage into the river and open up a lot of development opportunities for us.”

And if this project is successful, those environmental, economic development and employment benefits could eventually extend throughout the state and nation.

That’s because the Ehrenfeld project is the first of 14 in the state funded by a $90 million federal pilot program that aims to fix dangerous mining legacy problems in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky, while also providing work for unemployed miners.

If the pilot project’s formula proves successful, it could persuade Congress to support the RECLAIM Act, a proposal introduced by Rep. Hal Rogers, R- Kentucky, that would make an additional $1 billion available from the Abandoned Mine Lands Fund over the next five years to accelerate mine land reclamation and employ out-of-work miners.

The AML Fund, created by Congress in 1977 to reclaim abandoned mine lands and remediate polluted waterways, is supported by a per-ton royalty paid by mining companies. It has a balance of more than $2.5 billion.

The Ehrenfeld project, done under a contract with Rosebud Mining Co., will take three years to complete and employ 48 miners who would have been furloughed from the company’s mines in Cambria, Clearfield and Somerset counties.

When it’s done, they will have extinguished a smoldering five-acre waste coal fire and removed more than 3.2 million tons of coal refuse dumped on the 62-acre site by several mines from 1903 to 1971.

“I hope Congress gets that $1 billion released so our miners can continue to work,’’ said Rosebud president Cliff Forest.

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the Obama administration fully supports and recognizes a moral obligation to clean up scarred mine lands and assist unemployed miners.

“The Ehrenfeld project is an example of how we can work together to make strong and smart investments in coal communities that not only put people back to work but restore our lands and waters to benefit the health and well-being of these communities,” Ms. Jewell said at the groundbreaking Thursday.

Patrick McDonnell, the state Department of Environmental Protection’s acting secretary, said Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is looking for projects such as Ehrenfeld, where environmental and economic benefits overlap. And Joe Pizarchik, director of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, said Ehrenfeld represents a new direction for mine land reclamation.

“Congress will be looking at this place to decide whether to expand the AML program and spend that $1 billion to allow people who have been suffering so long to play a role in restoring their economies and communities,” he said.

The RECLAIM Act has bipartisan support and 14 co-sponsors, including three Pennsylvania congressmen who represent districts with abandoned mine land problems — Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, Charles Dent, R-Allentown, and Matt Cartwright, D-Lackawanna.

The Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, which advocates for mine land cleanup and has provided local matching funding for Ehrenfeld, has been critical of seven other Pennsylvania congressmen who have not signed on as co-sponsors or indicated they support the bill.

That list includes Glenn Thompson, R-Centre, Bill Shuster, R-Bedford, and Keith Rothfus, R-Sewickley, who represent the three congressional districts in the nation with the most abandoned mine land problems, plus Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair.

Pennsylvania has 5,172 documented abandoned mine sites, more than any other state, and 250,000 acres and 5,300 miles of streams damaged by mining.

“I can’t think of a single reason why we should not free up the $1 billion from the AML Fund and get it to these people now,” said Mr. Pizarchik, who grew up in Pennsylvania’s coalfields.

Source: (August 5, 2016) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Be in-the-know when you’re on-the-go!