A Fund for Cleaning Up Coal Mining’s Toxic Legacy Dries Up

Ten of thousands of abandoned mine lands (AMLs) are scattered across the country—and there are many more that state and federal datasets don’t currently account for. The restoration along the Susquehanna is just one among many efforts to clean them up. Such projects, from Washington to Missouri to Pennsylvania, received a big boost from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), one of the most significant federal investments toward revitalizing U.S. cities, states, and Tribal lands. Through BIL, Congress set aside $11.3 billion over 15 years to address abandoned coal mines.

The advantages of remediating these lands go far beyond reducing contamination. A 2021 report published by Eric Dixon of the Ohio River Valley Institute found that if the country could reclaim and reforest just a quarter of abandoned mine lands, the additional trees would sequester 232,000 metric tons of carbon, the emissions equivalent of about 40,000 households. Cleaning up half of those lands, the report calculates, could create nearly 7,000 jobs over the next decade.

“Now is the time to get it cleaned up and move on to something cleaner and better for the environment and communities,” says Amanda Pankau, director of energy and community resiliency for the Prairie Rivers Network, an Illinois environmental group. “Anything we can do to clean up sites and create jobs in the process is really important.”

Despite these benefits, advocates now worry AML funds may be in jeopardy.

When the BIL was passed, rural areas welcomed the opportunity to address the scars of the mining industry in their midst—including piles of toxic waste and deteriorating infrastructure, along with employment holes that coal companies also left behind. Funding under BIL was a huge step toward helping communities add more jobs and transition to more sustainable economies.

Yet a mere five years later, Congress has just approved a budget that depletes the mining cleanup fund by $500 million. The money will instead go to the Bureau of Land Management’s wildland fire management account. The new allocations result in a decrease of $169 million for Pennsylvania, $97 million in West Virginia, and $52 million in Illinois, the three states that need it most.

Funding is also being yanked away from efforts to overcome another vestige of the fossil fuel industry: orphaned oil and gas wells. Many of the millions of unplugged wells leak methane, which contributes greatly to climate change. Congress pulled $285 million from a $4.7 billion program to seal these wells, also diverting the funds to fire management. 

“Orphaned wells are not providing an economic benefit to anyone,” says Josh Axelrod, a senior program advocate for NRDC. “They’re literally just sitting out there on the landscape emitting greenhouse gases and often polluting groundwater. They can be found, and they can be plugged.”

Though this was the first time Congress diverted AML and well funds, environmentalists worry that the move could lead to more such diversions in coming years.

While coal mining in the United States began in earnest in the early 1800s, it wasn’t until 1977 that Congress passed a law requiring coal-mining companies to clean up their messes. A tax on the amount of coal stripped from seams helped pay for some reclamation, but because companies mine less coal than they used to, states no longer collect enough revenue to adequately address the problem. 

BIL funding gave states a much-needed cash infusion to assess and reclaim a larger number of polluted sites. 

“Finally, the federal government was providing resources/funding to communities to do what they have decided is important to do,” says Sharon Buccino, a former NRDC attorney who headed the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement during the Biden administration. “And now the government’s just going to pull the rug out from under these communities.” 

But even the full amount of BIL’s funds may fall short, and the longer that mines are left to fester, the more expensive the problem grows. Restoring former mines becomes pricier as construction costs rise, as old shafts and pits cave in, and as climate change complicates acid mine waste remediation. 

And as time goes on, funding from BIL is also helping states identify more mining sites that need attention (and money). The law allotted funds for state agencies to update their records, which would in turn help the federal government maintain a national inventory that leaders could turn to for more accurate estimates of future remediation costs. 

The Ohio River Valley Institute estimates the actual cost of assessing, evaluating, and remediating abandoned coal mines to be upward of $26 billion, more than twice the $11 billion set aside by the BIL. 

But such an investment, advocates say, is well worth it. Prior to BIL, the amount of money Pennsylvania received for AMLs was $25 million a year, a pittance when considering that it cost more than half of that to build the water treatment facility at only one site near Zedack’s childhood home. 

Nonetheless, even just $2.5 million can go a long way in the right place. That’s how much was spent in Gillespie, Illinois, to turn a former mine site into a place where local children can play—but on soccer fields instead of gob piles. Solar panels may go in soon too.  

“If these sites aren’t cleaned up, they’re unproductive lands that this community cannot use, whether it’s for community development, economic development, or whatever the next best use might be,” says Pankau. “It limits potential.”