Harrisburg – Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger announced today that dangerous abandoned mine lands featuring steep cliffs, waste coal that pollutes streams, and exposed coal seams that can ignite will be cleaned up under nine contracts awarded during the third quarter of 2009.
DEP awarded the contracts under programs that address the most dangerous mine sites and, in some cases, allow modern coal mining companies to clean up historic messes at no cost to taxpayers.
The nine contracts were for projects in Allegheny, Cambria, Clarion, Jefferson, Mercer and Somerset counties.
“We have begun several significant abandoned mine reclamation projects in the past three months that clean up mine drainage, restore aquatic life to severely degraded streams, and reclaim dangerous minelands where it’s apparent people have been trespassing and dumping trash,” Hanger said. “These projects address a wide assortment of problems ranging from filling in abandoned mine shafts to exposing old abandoned underground mines and correcting subsidence problems. At many locations, this work is being done at no cost to the taxpayers.”
The federal Abandoned Mine Lands Fund is the largest source of funding for the mine reclamation work in Pennsylvania. The fund is overseen by the U. S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement and is supported by a fee on the modern mining industry. The funding is distributed to states as annual grants to reclaim mine sites that were abandoned prior to passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.
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