Coal Communities Accuse Congress of Breaking Its Promise to Clean Up Abandoned Mine Lands

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law in 2021, authorizing more than $11 billion in new funding to reclaim lands and waterways damaged by abandoned coal mines, the people who lead this work on the ground were ecstatic. 

“We were to the moon,” said Amanda Pitzer, the executive director at Friends of the Cheat, a nonprofit organization in West Virginia that works to restore the Cheat River watershed. “Once that big influx of money was announced, with West Virginia on track to receive $2.1 billion over those 15 years, we thought, ‘Now’s the time. Now’s the time to invest in water treatment.’”

But Congress wants to claw back some of that funding. 

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that would withdraw $500 million of the money allocated in 2021 for abandoned mine cleanup projects. The states that stand to lose the most are Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and Kentucky, according to an analysis by Appalachian Voices, an environmental organization that works on conservation issues in central and southern Appalachia. The bill must still pass the Senate, which plans to take it up this week, and be signed by the president before it becomes law. 

“We’re horribly disappointed,” Pitzer said. “Less money means less reclamation, period.” Among the projects that Pitzer’s organization champions are the building and maintenance of treatment systems that clean up acid mine drainage, a type of pollution that harms aquatic wildlife.

In West Virginia, she said, Abandoned Mine Land funding has also been used to help build public water lines in communities where pollution has affected drinking water supplies. Although significant progress has been made in cleaning up the Cheat River since the 1990s, much more work remains to be done, Pitzer said.

The House bill proposes using the siphoned funding to pay for wildland fire management and U.S. Forest Service operations. “I think it’s highly inappropriate of Congress to rob Peter to pay Paul,” said Andy McAllister, the regional coordinator of the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. 

McAllister was particularly upset about the “yes” votes from Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation in the House. All but one member voted for the bill. 

Pennsylvania has the most abandoned mines of any state, McAllister said. Decades of coal mining in Pennsylvania have created a range of environmental and public safety problems, from underground fires and subsidence to sinkholes and pollution affecting more than 5,500 miles of waterways.

Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection estimated it would need $5 billion to fully remediate abandoned mine lands and the waterways they contaminated. Forty-five of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties are impacted. 

“The bottom line is, just like it always is, we got more problems than we got money,” McAllister said. 

Experts are worried that this “repurposing” of the fund could continue beyond this year, with Congress dipping into the money for other reasons. “The AML fund is not a slush fund,” Pitzer said. “It just feels very shortsighted.” 

Kevin Zedack, government affairs specialist at Appalachian Voices, said his group assumes that passing this bill will lead to an annual reduction in funding. Zedack and McAllister said they have not heard back from legislators they’ve reached out to with their concerns. 

The offices of Pennsylvania’s senators, Republican Dave McCormick and Democrat John Fetterman, did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Climate News. 

Zedack and McAllister both pointed out that the loss of funding will harm local economies. Unremediated mine land can’t be used for development, for example. 

“Projects that are funded through this provide jobs in historically depressed areas,” McAllister said. Those opportunities can help to offset job losses from the declining coal industry.

Joe Pizarchik, the former head of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which oversees AML funding, grew up in western Pennsylvania. The region is also losing out on huge amounts of tourism revenue, he said. Many waterways are so impaired by mining pollution that they can’t be used for fishing or recreation. 

Pizarchik said this isn’t the first time the federal government has reduced the funding available to help communities in coal country since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was first passed in 1977. 

“There was a fee put in place on every ton of coal produced to help clean up the messes of the past,” he said. Over time, the fees have shrunk. “Congress is taking back money again to continue to punish the impoverished communities that have been suffering for a century,” he said.

“To the federal government, it’s a drop in the bucket,” said Bobby Hughes, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. “To us here in Pennsylvania, it’s a vital and essential lifeline to doing more projects in our local communities. We are living the impacts of this legacy.” 

Pitzer agreed. “The program was initially structured to collect a fee to pay for sins of the past, and that money should stay in coal country. It should not be redirected to other needs and other places,” Pitzer said. “This was a promise made to these communities and raiding the fund is breaking that promise.”