Published Wednesday, March 23, 2022 in E&E Daily.
All posts by Manuel Quinones
‘Trash public lands’? Republicans take fraught border hike
Published Thursday, August 5, 2021 in E&E Daily
32 House races to watch
E&E Daily, Oct. 11, 2022
Greens see Chamber support of renewables as ‘window dressing’
Published Tuesday, March 21, 2017 in E&E Daily.
This year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has released statements favoring the repeal of the Interior Department’s coal mining Stream Protection Rule, and praising the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines.
When it comes to renewable energy, a recent Chamber blog post about solar energy touts its growth but criticizes state policies that encourage people to install photovoltaic panels by allowing them to sell utilities their excess power.
“While the proponents of rooftop solar may get all the attention, it is really America’s utilities that are leading the way with the proliferation of solar use,” the blog said.
Even though the Chamber — and its Institute for 21st Century Energy — has been talking more about cleaner power sources, critics and even some business leaders say the group appears to be more in sync with the interests of fossil fuels and utilities.
“We have been very disappointed in some of the rhetoric that has gone into some of the blogs,” Dan Whitten, spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, said during a recent interview.
Chamber leaders say they don’t believe it’s an “either-or” issue “whether referring to specific sources of energy, or the question of improving the environment versus utilizing energy sources,” said the business group’s spokesman, Matt Letourneau.
But Dan Dudis, head of left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen’s Chamber Watch, dismisses the group’s talk of resource impartiality.
“They now have some window dressing about renewables,” he said. “But then you actually look at what they are doing, and they have never supported anything that would be helpful to the renewable industry.”
Letourneau rebutted that statement, pointing to Chamber actions over the years that have benefited renewables, including backing the production tax credit. The American Wind Energy Association cheered the move in 2012.
Still, the Chamber is among many groups that sued U.S. EPA over power plant greenhouse gas limits, which would have encouraged the growth of renewables.
Several companies have quit the Chamber because of its stance on climate action, including one of the world’s largest, Apple Inc., in 2009.
Last year, Greenpeace noted that electronic giant Intel Corp. criticized the “negative position on federal climate legislation” from the Chamber and the National Association of Manufacturers.
Also last year, several Democratic senators, including climate hawk Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, released a report accusing the Chamber of being out of step with its members.
“I guess it must reflect an overwhelming balance in their membership toward traditional fossil fuels,” said Whitten, who used to be a top communications aide for America’s Natural Gas Alliance. The Chamber has been bullish on the growth of gas production.
‘Show me the money’
Chamber of Commerce board members, according to the group’s website, include executives for oil company ConocoPhillips Co., coal company Alliance Resource Partners LP, gas company Sempra Energy and coal company Peabody Energy Corp.
Other board members include executives of nuclear company NuScale Power LLC; utility Southern Co.; Entergy Louisiana LLC; Florida Power and Light Co., which owns solar energy production; and Virginia contractor Bay Electric Co. Inc., which handles large-scale solar projects.
Dudis described the chamber, under current CEO Thomas Donohue, as staking out strategies and political positions that can help the organization’s cash flow.
“Tom Donohue has been very clear that the Chamber goes where the money is,” said Dudis, noting a plaque on Donohue’s desk that, according to a New York Times profile, says, “Show me the money.”
“We have to raise $5 million a week to run this place,” Donohue told the Times in 2013. The article noted the Chamber’s precarious finances before Donohue took over in 1997.
Renewable sources of energy have been growing exponentially. But Dudis said, “The Exxons and Chevrons still have more money to throw around.”
The Chamber, like the fossil fuel industry, has become more reliably Republican, critics argue, turning away from more bipartisan outreach.
The group went from supporting the Clinton administration’s health care reform effort during the early 1990s to now giving its backing mostly to GOP candidates, according to a review of campaign finance records.
The Center for Responsive Politics said the Chamber spent more than $100 million on lobbying in 2016, more than $300,000 in campaign contributions — only roughly $10,000 of which went for Democrats — and more than $29 million in outside political spending.
The Times profile said Donohue was a registered independent. His repeated commitment to free enterprise and fewer regulations, however, puts him closer to the Republican mainstream.
Karen Harbert, CEO of the Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, worked as Department of Energy assistant secretary for policy and international affairs during the George W. Bush administration.
A rival chamber
When the U.S. Green Chamber of Commerce launched in 2011, founders saw it as a chance to capitalize on what they saw as the other chamber’s reluctance to fully embrace the green agenda.
“At one time, businesses that focused on sustainability and clean energy did not have a voice in traditional/mainstream business organizations and chambers,” CEO Michelle Thatcher wrote in an email.
“And those traditional organizations certainly do not represent the sustainability-focused economy and the companies that are driving it,” she said.
The U.S. Green Chamber, which grew out of the Green Chamber of San Diego County in California, has more than 1,000 members, Thatcher said. They include companies that focus on clean energy and large diversified corporations.
A 2011 article in Fast Company identified firms like Toyota Motor Corp. and the Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group Inc. as being involved.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce remains much larger, claiming to represent the interests of more than 3 million businesses, according to the group’s website. Thatcher doesn’t think many of their affiliates overlap.
She said the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s agenda is not sustainable and will cripple the economy, “in addition to the devastating effects they will have on our natural environment and our population’s health and well-being.”
She added: “We are NOT in alignment with their energy and environmental platform and are very grateful to be able to provide a different option for the business community.”
‘Energy agnostic’
The Solar Energy Industries Association, which supports both Republicans and Democrats and benefits from some U.S. Chamber policies but chafes at others, is remaining a member.
“We are a proud member of the business community. We are increasingly becoming a part of the energy mainstream,” Whitten said.
Letourneau said the Chamber’s fight for less regulation and free enterprise benefits all its members, not just fossil fuel developers.
“One of the areas that is particularly relevant today is our focus on the inability to site and permit facilities of all kinds, including renewable projects, which we see as a major impediment to economic growth,” he said.
Letourneau said that the Chamber’s focus on rolling back regulations affecting coal, oil and gas — the latter of which, he points out, has helped reduce carbon emissions — is because of the past administration’s anti-fossil-fuel agenda.
“Over the past eight years, traditional energy sources have been under assault and seen their potential limited through federal regulations and executive orders,” he said.
“The U.S. Chamber is an advocate for market-driven solutions that provide affordable and reliable energy, which is why we’ve pushed back on some of these economically harmful rules.”
Still, Whitten would rather not see the Chamber take such a negative view of policies like net metering, which allows people to make money from installing solar power.
Regarding claims the practice hurts consumers, Whitten said, “We have considerable consumer protection materials that we would happily share with them.”
He said, “There is some sense you can force positive change through engagement. We would just like them to be energy agnostic.”
Dudis doesn’t see it happening — yet. “I do think Donohue leaving is a big piece of that,” he said. “I can’t see it changing while he’s still there.”
Discussing Coal On C-Span
Discussing Fracking On C-Span
Discussing Energy Policy On C-Span
As Cold War abuses linger, Navajo Nation faces new mining push
Published Tuesday, December 13, 2011 in Greenwire.
SHIPROCK, N.M. — This Navajo Nation town of 8,000 people — named for the towering rock formation that looms in the distance — is a living monument to uranium mining’s deadly legacy.
At the end of Uranium Boulevard here is a 100-acre waste dump overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy. This former uranium mill — which helped build the atomic bombs that ended World War II and fueled the United States in its arms race against the Soviet Union — has dealt the Navajo homeland, or Dinétah, a particularly hard blow.
Navajo mine workers and others on the reservation have suffered high rates of disease linked to contamination.
“That legacy that we relied on has had a big burden on this nation, the Navajo Nation,” U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld told a conference last month in Farmington, N.M., that focused on uranium cleanups.
Despite an ongoing five-year plan to coordinate cleanup efforts among federal and tribal agencies, one high-priority site is now clean and more than 500 polluted mine sites remain. In northeast New Mexico, the Navajo tribe must grapple with dirty water, contaminated land and even radioactive homes, some of which were built with uranium mining waste.
“It’s an untold story,” said Blumenfeld, who leads the Region 9 office in San Francisco. “The biggest hurdle is the sheer number of sites. We’re diligently going down our list.”
Miners extracted almost 4 million tons of uranium ore from Navajo lands between 1944 and 1986, EPA says. While military demand for uranium for bomb manufacturing shrank by the 1960s, nuclear power plants quickly picked up the slack. In 1971, the federal government allowed uranium to be sold on the open market for the first time.
“We need to put our heads together and get rid of those holes that are still open,” Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly told the cleanup conference. “We need to do that right away.”
EPA, which has been helping coordinate the five-year plan, is moving forward with cleaning up the largest abandoned uranium mine on the Dinétah. Decontaminating the Northeast Church Rock Mine will require the removal of 1.4 million tons of dirty soil, an effort expected to take several years.
“This is where the milling took place, right here,” said Navajo anti-uranium activist Larry King, as he stood beside an isolated highway in Church Rock, a town of about 1,000 people near Gallup, N.M.
King, a former uranium miner, talks about the 1979 waste spill from the United Nuclear Corp. site that polluted Rio Puerco — the largest release of radioactive waste in U.S. history.
The spill happened just a few minutes’ drive from King’s home. There, in a rugged landscape with stunning rock formations, one can see hills made from mining waste.
“Just to warn you,” King said, “there are high readings in this area.”
‘Polluters should pay’
General Electric Co., United Nuclear’s parent company, has tentatively agreed to pay $44 million for the Northeast Church Rock Mine cleanup.
“There are others that we have not found yet,” EPA’s Blumenfeld said. “The polluters should pay. The polluter pay principle is something that is going to have to come to the fore here.”
In her book “Yellow Dirt,” journalist Judy Pasternak, perhaps the most well-known chronicler of the Navajo fight with uranium mining pollution, describes how companies walked away from mining operations and left liability behind.
With the United States desperate for uranium to build atomic weapons to compete with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, she wrote, executives and government officials — including regulators at the former Atomic Energy Commission — paid little attention to environmental damage and radiation exposure.
Navajo President Shelley said a joke here goes like this: “Don’t turn the light off, we’ll glow in the dark.”
In 1978 Congress passed the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act to give DOE authority over uranium mill waste sites like the Shiprock facility. The 1980 Superfund law and the Interior Department mine-reclamation program helped address some sites. And in 1990, lawmakers created a program to compensate people affected by radiation at mines and from nuclear weapons tests.
But it wasn’t until 2007 that tribal and federal agencies got together to really tackle the lasting problems of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation. Pasternak’s articles in the Los Angeles Times prompted Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), then chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to press for immediate action.
“We’re on track to make all the commitments we made in the five year plan,” Clancy Tenley, EPA’s regional tribal coordinator, told the cleanup conference. Tenley was among several federal and tribal leaders touting the achievements of the last several years.
EPA and tribal authorities say they have inspected more than 600 homes and other buildings for uranium contamination. The agency has already torn down 34 of those structures. Displaced Navajo families are eligible for financial compensation and temporary housing. EPA says it has participated in rebuilding 17 residences.
Federal and tribal leaders admit that evicting people can be traumatic. But they say they try to make up for it by making sure Navajos get construction jobs and following traditions. Homes, for example, must face east.
“They are so happy,” Darryl Jimson, planner with the Navajo Nation Community Housing and Infrastructure Department, said of the people given new homes. “Some of them cry.”
‘Tough sell’
It has taken decades for the Navajo to learn about the risk of living on contaminated land.
In the 1970s, workers were using the Shiprock dump to practice with heavy machinery. And to this day, it is hard to convince tribal residents to not drink contaminated water.
Many elderly Navajo don’t speak English and have grown used to living off their land. “They just don’t understand or they don’t believe it,” said Chris Mike, an officer with the Navajo Department of Water Resources. “It’s a tough sell.”
Thirty percent of Navajo residents do not have treated water, and numerous water sources have been deemed too dangerous to drink. One alternative is to truck water to thousands of people around the reservation. Residents meet the trucks at designated locations because many homes are too remote.
“We are 60, almost 70 years into this legacy,” Chris Shuey, uranium program director at the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center, said in an interview. “And we have left it to the children and the grandchildren of the original miners. And we are going to end up leaving it to our children and our grandchildren.”
Not only does Shuey lament the time it has taken the federal government to realize the severity of the problem, he is also upset that officials do not yet know the full scope of the health problems the Navajo people face. Researchers next year will begin a federally funded study to determine the impact uranium waste has on pregnancy.
“We’ve essentially just started the human health studies in the last 10 years,” Shuey said. “We’re 30 years behind.”
And there is a long way to go. Cleaning up all the contaminated sites will likely take decades. Federal and tribal agency leaders have already began talking about another five-year plan.
“A lot of community people get exhausted and deflated,” Shuey said. At the same time, they want to fight until the Navajo Nation is clean: “They’re hoping that it’s the next 10- to 20-year plan.”
The current cleanup framework has turned decades of haphazard response into a coordinated effort. Still, it is not hard to spot fissures. Many Navajo, for example, say DOE should be playing a larger role — and spending more money — in the cleanup effort.
“There’s a major gap in the response because they don’t have the authority to deal with mines,” Shuey said. “And they’re right now the biggest problem.”
‘Unacceptable’
Stephen Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation EPA, which has dozens of workers participating in the cleanup, has called on DOE to close the Shiprock site and move waste off the reservation. Tribal leaders say waste is seeping off the dump.
But that proposal is expensive and complicated. It is being resisted by the government.
“People would be swearing,” a Navajo Nation EPA official said at a cleanup-conference session, referring to how non-American Indians would react if the government handled a cleanup in their community as they have here. “You treat tribes and other communities off the Nation differently. For me that’s unacceptable.”
The Shiprock disposal cell is bordered by 77 acres of a large-rock barrier called riprap. The site is on a terrace overlooking the floodplain of the San Juan River, a major tributary of the Colorado River.
Water from the site seeps into Many Devils Wash nearby. Experts cannot say whether the puddle of reddish-brown water is contaminated, but DOE officials concede they worry about pollutants like manganese, selenium and, of course, uranium.
“We are trying to trace back the sources of those seeps,” said David Schafer, team leader and manager at DOE’s Office of Legacy Management. “The groundwater at Shiprock is a very, very important issue for us.”
Federal and tribal officials say they take pains to consult with the Navajo people, but that is not a simple task. The Navajo Nation sprawls over more than 24,000 square miles, an area larger than some states.
“We have concerns and we should be the ones to have an input. We are the ones living there,” Bess Tsosie of Mariano Lake, N.M., said in an interview. “It’s our land that’s impacted. It’s our health, our animals, our plants.”
Tsosie leads a community group in her area, one of several that have sprung up to give residents a voice. “It’s not for us,” she said. “It’s for our children and our grandchildren.”
Amid anger and a host of unresolved issues, companies are moving forward with plans to mine for uranium again near the reservation. Navajo President Shelly said executives are reaching out to him with what has become a taboo subject — new mining inside the Navajo Nation.
Shelly stressed the tribe’s uranium mining ban, “The Navajo Nation set a mandate, a no-uranium mandate.”
But, he acknowledged, the pressure won’t easily go away. “The Navajo Nation,” he said, “is sitting on the finest uranium there is.”
Old mining states get creative as cleanup funds grow scarce
Published Monday, May 7, 2012 in Greenwire.
CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa. — A pipe is spewing toxic water into Topper Run from the old Maryland No. 1 coal mine here.Take a deep breath, and gag on the stench of rotten eggs.
The mine has been belching acid water since it was abandoned in the 1960s. No fish swim where this water flows, and iron in discharges has stained the streambed orange, while aluminum has tinted rocks white.
Several dirty discharges are contributing to the degradation of the Little Conemaugh River Watershed, one of the most polluted in Pennsylvania. The contamination is evident where the discolored Little Conemaugh joins clear-running Stonycreek in Johnstown.
The Topper Run discharge pipe is not the only source of mine pollution here. Another dumps into Sulfur Creek, surrounded by a mound of bright orange.
“We’re standing on probably 3 or 4 feet of iron,” said Robb Piper, manager of the Cambria County Conservation District, a government agency. Two geese are swimming in an adjacent pond.
Acid mine drainage is highly acidic and loaded with heavy metals. The acid forms as surface water and shallow groundwater come in contact with sulfur-bearing minerals, creating sulfuric acid. Heavy metals then leach from rocks that come in contact with the acid, creating what can be toxic to people, animals and plants.
From a bird’s-eye view, one can see miles of orange streams polluted with acid mine drainage flowing from abandoned mine shafts. In all, mine wastes have fouled more than 5,000 miles of Pennsylvania streams, many of which drain into the Chesapeake Bay.
“I question whether they should be allowed to pollute waters of the commonwealth,” said John Dawes, head of the environmental group Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds.
His group, which has ties to the Heinz Endowments, distributes more than $1 million in grants every year to fund cleanup efforts statewide. Dozens of the projects have involved remediation of streams polluted by mine dumps.
But efforts to stem acid mine discharges remain in legal limbo.
Many of those pollution sources belong to mines that pre-date the 1972 Clean Water Act and the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
And government funding for reclaiming abandoned mines has fallen far short of what’s needed.
Moreover, political fights in Washington, D.C., have ensnared cleanup cash as lawmakers from the West and their counterparts from the East squabble over where money should be directed.
Dangerous and ugly
Acid water dumps are not the only problem polluting land and streams in Pennsylvania’s coal-mining areas.
Towering black-gray waste coal piles in the Cambria County borough of Nanty Glo drain into Blacklick Creek and have for decades been a part of the landscape along with old mining equipment.
The name Nanty Glo, which translates to “coal ravine” in Welsh, is the sister village of Nantyglo in Wales.
The waste piles “and water are the worst thing, the worst thing we got,” Piper said. “There’s complacency. People feel that’s the way it is.”
Said Dawes of another waste pile: “This is an eyesore. This has got to be [cleaned up]. And those people seeing this from the town!”
The waste piles also catch fire and are a magnet for all-terrain vehicle daredevils whose machines ride up and down the mountainous piles’ steep faces.
Pennsylvania has about 29,000 acres of abandoned mine sites, including 30 or so underground mine fires.
“Those are very expensive to deal with. And we have been monitoring a number for several years,” said Eric Cavazza, acting director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation.
And new problems continue to emerge — from fires to cave-ins.
“In essence, probably at the end of the [abandoned-mine program], Pennsylvania will have some hazard features that will not be addressed,” Cavazza said.
The federal Office of Surface Mining’s Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) program taxes the coal industry to fund cleanup efforts nationwide, with some money set aside for restoring water quality.
OSM handed out almost $500 million in fiscal 2012, including $67.2 million for Pennsylvania.
Yet some of the money goes to so-called certified states and tribes like Wyoming and the Navajo Nation that have already finished cleaning up their abandoned coal mines. And noncertified states like New Mexico are lobbying to use the coal money to clean up abandoned gold and uranium mine sites.
The issue came to a head with recent reports that Wyoming — which got more than $150 million from AML this fiscal year — has used its reclamation money for road construction and medical facilities. Wyoming has also reclaimed more than 1,051 mine sites.
At a recent congressional hearing on AML, Thomas Baker, board chairman for the Appalachian Wildlife Foundation, said the program’s cash “should be directed to where the greatest needs are for the cleanup and restoration of habitat on pre-law coal mines, and not be tied so heavily to where coal is mined currently.”
But efforts to distribute money based on need, including proposals by President Obama, have been trashed. Even states like Pennsylvania are skeptical of disturbing a landmark AML agreement crafted in 2006 when the program came up for reauthorization.
Greg Conrad, executive director of the Interstate Mining Compact Commission, an association of mining states, chafes at proposals to eliminate funding to certified states and tribes. “It’s pretty much a half-baked argument,” he said. “That’s pretty much the way the amendments were structured.”
Complicated compromise
The 2006 amendments to the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act passed just a few days before Christmas.
Environmentalists considered it a gift to industry and coal in their stockings.
Dawes of Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds recalled cringing at a provision that reduced how much the coal industry paid in reclamation fees.
The National Mining Association says the industry has paid more than $7 billion into the AML fund. Federal and state laws require new mines to limit pollution releases, clean up after they’re done and post bonds in case they go bust.
But much of the debate was not about cleaning up old mines.
“The 2006 amendments were about shoring up the combined benefits fund for the United Mine Workers,” Conrad said.
By Congress’ continuing to collect taxes on the coal industry for reclamation of old abandoned mines, the UMW could continue using interest from the AML to fund health and pension benefits.
Regional disputes also dominated the debate.
Certified Western states like Montana and Wyoming, which is now the nation’s top coal producer, chafed at having companies in their backyards pay for problems east of the Mississippi River. They are still not willing to give up money they say belongs to them.
The grand bargain gave states whatever money was left in the AML fund, but from the U.S. Treasury in a series of payments ending in 2014.
Lawmakers couldn’t deplete the fund without jeopardizing miner benefits. The fund’s balance stands at about $2.4 billion.
The amendments established a complex scheme for distributing funds based on need and past and present coal production. States follow guidelines for using the money, with health and safety hazards taking priority. They can set aside up to 30 percent of their grants for acid mine drainage.
“It was all of those interests across the board that were a part of grand compromise that was reached in those amendments,” Conrad said. “There are webs within webs and loops within loops here that are fairly complex. This was not a simple compromise.”
Cavazza of the state DEP said state leaders decided to invest the maximum on water improvements. “The consensus from all those stakeholder meetings favored us setting aside our full 30 percent every year to deal with mine drainage,” he said.
‘This money belongs to my state’
Madeline Roanhorse, AML manager for the Navajo Nation and president of the National Association of Abandoned Mine Land Programs, defends certified jurisdictions like hers getting AML dollars despite the large number of problem mine sites in Eastern states.
“Again, these are funds that are collected from states and tribes,” she said. “And it should go back to the states and tribes.”
Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) in a hearing last year was more blunt: “That money belongs to my state, not the federal government.”
Without a similar funding stream for hardrock cleanups, certified states and tribes often use that money to close old hardrock mine shafts or get rid of up radioactive pollution from long-abandoned uranium mines, a pervasive problem in the Navajo homeland.
Plus, she said, many mining problems linger. “We do find new sites,” she said. “We do get reports from the communities, and some are coal sites, and we do go back and do out assessment.”
Despite the delicate politics around the 2006 amendments, a new compromise is moving through Congress.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman’s bill (S. 987) has passed in the Senate and has bipartisan support in the House.
The New Mexico Democrat’s bill gives noncertified states like New Mexico more leeway in using coal AML funds for cleaning up non-coal sites.
“It’s so awful,” Pennsylvania environmentalist Dawes said about the bill, worried about the thousands of coal AML sites pending in his state. At least, advocates say, the bill lets states deposit more money into their accounts for acid mine drainage.
The White House has said it would rather enact a new fee on hardrock mining to pay for cleanups of those mines and create a competitive grant program to distribute AML coal dollars to priority sites. It has proposed the idea in recent budget blueprints.
“If you’re diverting money to non-coal reclamation and we already are going to have a shortfall of funds to clean up the problems that exist, we’re just going to leave a larger inventory of unreclaimed [coal sites],” said Al Whitehouse, a federal mine reclamation specialist.
But Obama’s proposal, supported by many Democrats, has failed to get traction amid opposition to increasing industry taxes and with states wary of losing control of reclamation funding.
Proposal could clean up Maryland No. 1 mine
With the AML funding shortfall, Cambria County relies on a mix of federal, state and private cash for its programs. It has cleanup partnerships with businesses and environmental groups.
Environmentalists have pressed Pennsylvania power plants to use the coal-waste heaps for fuel. Piper said three plants around Ebensburg, the Cambria County seat, have helped wipe out 25 million tons of waste coal and reclaim more than 500 acres of abandoned mine land.
Piper of the Cambria County Conservation District laments efforts by anti-coal environmentalists and the Obama administration that could force the plants to close.
“To people who don’t understand much about this,” he said, “that’s another [coal plant] off the grid.”
Piper also hopes U.S. EPA allows Rosebud Mining Inc. to expand its Cambria County mine, which would include a water treatment facility for the old Maryland No. 1 and potentially others in the county. It would be a dream come true for Piper with the company agreeing to foot the bill.
But state regulators and the company are in talks with EPA about what level of treatment to require. Piper worries that EPA’s asking the company to treat the dump to drinking water standards would kill the entire effort.
“The goal is to actually restore waters to some usable level, aquatic life fishable-type level,” Cavazza said. He added that money designated for acid-mine drainage efforts often go to high-priority cleanups, with others having to wait.
Using $35,000 in federal funds from OSM and grants from the state’s Growing Greener program, the conservation district is building a “passive treatment” facility. A series of limestone ponds would help cleanse tainted water and lower its acidity before flowing back into Trout Run.
“There’s a tremendous need in Pennsylvania for restoration of streams impacted by mine drainage,” said Cavazza. “I’m sure the commonwealth would welcome more money to deal with the problems.”