Abandoned Mine Posts

by Bruce Golden, Regional Coordinator and Andy McAllister, Watershed Coordinator

On behalf of the Pennsylvania Abandoned Mine Reclamation Conference Planning Committee, we invite you to attend the 10th PA Abandoned Mine Reclamation Conference to be held at the Ramada Inn and Conference Center in State College August 12 - 14, 2008.

This year, in addition to providing learning, sharing, and networking opportunities for those involved in Abandoned Mine Reclamation work, we’re proud to be doing something special to commemorate our 10th anniversary. We’ve added a new component focusing on Coal Mining Heritage and its preservation. We’ve noticed time and again that many of the same people who are committed to restoring the environment from the legacy problems from old coal mining are equally interested and involved in the history and culture of coal mining, especially as it involves their own communities.

The conference organizing committee, comprised of individuals personally committed to the reclamation of abandoned minelands and water– some professionals, some working at the grassroots level, welcomes seasoned reclamationists, preservationists, and interested newcomers to the 2008 Conference. The committee invites you to explore all of the opportunites afforded by the 2008 Conference including the chance to learn about what others are doing to preserve our Coal Mining Heritage.

To find out more about this year’s conference and to register online, go to the conference website, www.treatminewater.com. The registration process is a bit different than in years past in that you now have a suite of attendance options to choose from, in an a-la-carte manner, to match your individual need and budget.

For those needing financial assistance to attend the Conference, we have limited funding available to help. If you are a watershed group member, representing a community organization, an employee of a non-profit organization or academic institution, or other qualifying designation, you will have the option to apply for financial aid to attend the conference. With only a limited amount of financial aid funds available, the Conference Committee will do its best to ensure as many people as possible are able to obtain the financial assistance they need to attend. To help us with this goal, we only ask that those who are truly in need of financial aid ask for it.

The Ramada Inn and Conference Center in State College has set aside a block of rooms at a special Conference room rate of $81.38/night (with tax) for single or double rooms. This flat room rate is available until July 14, 2008. We suspect that guest rooms will fill up fast, so make your reservations early. Additional lodging and Ramada contact information is available on the Conference website.

Incidentally, for those who are interested in viewing Abandoned Mine Drainage (AMD) and Abandoned Mine Land (AML) sites and can never get enough, there will be an optional bus tour to AMD/AML sites in the State College/Philipsburg area to be held Monday August 11, 2008 at an additional cost. The bus tour will last from approximately Noon until 5:00pm.

We’re still hammering out the final details on speakers, etc. so, check back to the Conference website regularly.

Click here to go to the 2008 Conference website and register online.

Click on the “Play” button on the Player below to see an advertisement for the PA Abandoned Mine Reclamation Conference.

by Andy McAllister, Watershed Coordinator

Remining can be an effective tool for abandoned mine drainage (AMD) abatement. This process includes the extraction of remaining coal reserves from previously mined lands. Through remining, these areas are reclaimed to today’s standards and polluted discharges can either be eliminated or at least, improved.

Existing waste coal piles can be prolific producers of acids and metals which run off into our streams and find their way into our groundwater. Removal of this waste coal is one way of returning the land to productive use while eliminating a source of water pollution. 

While not always appropriate as a reclamation tool for every site, remining remains a viable option in Pennsylvania’s tool kit for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. Financed partially or entirely by the removal of the coal, little or no public funds are required. An important tool that facilitates remining is known as a Government-Financed Construction Contract or GFCC. The Government-Financed Construction Contracts program is for contracted operations that will reclaim abandoned mine land sites at little or no cost to the public. The Government-Financed Construction Contracts program allows incidental coal removal as part of abandoned mine land reclamation contracts, authorizes no cost reclamation contracts and allows reclamation of abandoned mine land adjacent to active mining operations using excess spoil.

With Pennsylvania’s huge inventory of abandoned mine problems, having industry help with the reclamation burden saves taxpayers millions of dollars while fostering more land reclamation and water quality improvements.

Brochure from WPCAMR:  “Remining for Abandoned Mine Reclamation”

To find out if remining is appropriate for your reclamation/remediation site, contact your local PA DEP District Mining Office:

The Knox District Mining Office
White Memorial Building P.O. Box 669 Knox, PA 16232-0669
Phone: (814) 797-1191 Fax (814) 797-2706

The Moshannon District Office
186 Enterprise Drive, Philipsburg PA 16866
Phone: (814) 342-8200 Fax (814) 342-8216

The Cambria District Mining Office
Cambria Office 286 Industrial Park Road Ebensburg, PA 15931
Phone: (814) 472-1900 Fax (814) 472-1898

The Greensburg District Mining Office
Greensburg District Mining Office
Armbrust Professional Center, 8205 Route 819, Greensburg, PA 15601
Phone: (724) 925-5500 Fax (724) 925-5557

California District Office
25 Technology Drive
California Technology Park
Coal Center, PA 15423
Phone: (724) 769-1100 Fax: (724) 769-1102

by Andy McAllister, Watershed Coordinator

Resource recovery, extracting and utilizing what had been considered “waste” or “by-product” material, has been the buzz word in AMD treatment for a few years now. Historically, the iron sludge that settles in an AMD treatment system’s settling ponds, the stuff we want to keep out of the creeks, has been seen as a waste product with no use. However, Bob Hedin of Hedin Environmental had been thinking outside of the box and spent several years looking for a way to make lemonade out of lemons. Or in this case, paint pigment out of iron oxide sludge. In the Sewickley Creek Watershed in Eastern Westmoreland County, the concept of resource recovery is becoming a reality.

The Marchand treatment system near the town of Lowber has been designed and built with resource recovery, specifically iron oxide recovery, in mind and in October 2007 Hedin and the Sewickley Creek Watershed Association celebrated the system’s first birthday. At the Marchand treatment system first anniversary celebration , Hedin recalled the very beginnings of the resource recovery process at the Marchand system,”This water is very treatable and it’s a good site. We were able to work with the watershed association to get a modest Growing Greener Grant to determine whether we could indeed, treat this water on the site”, Hedin recalled.. “That ended up leading into a full scale proposal to DEP to design, permit, and build the treatment system. We’re confident we could make good iron sludge here,” Hedin stated. “We were finished in October 2006 and the water was turned on and it’s been running for one year now”, Hedin explained. “It’s working like a charm”.

In seven years, when the settling ponds have about a foot and a half of iron sludge in them, Hedin will return with his trucks and pumps to remove the accumulated sludge, dry it out, and take it away to be processed into pigment. In traditional systems, the accumulated iron sludge waste product has to be removed from the settling ponds and disposed of. With resource recovery guiding the process, the watershed association gets long term maintenance and the sludge gets used rather than dumped into a landfill.

Unfortunately, not all iron oxide sludge coming from Abandoned Mine Drainage is appropriate for use as pigment. The quality of the irox oxide must be appropriate for its destined use as pigment for paints and stains. Also, how the mine drainage is treated plays a vital role in determining whether or not a particular sludge is suitable to be used for pigment.

Marchand treatment system ponds at Lowber.  Photo:  WPCAMR 

For more information:

The Sewickley Creek Watershed Association

Environoxide pigments

Hedin Environmental

By: Bruce Golden, Regional Coordinator

Did you ever wonder why there’s such a wide range in the chemical make-up of coal mine drainage discharges? It’s because there’s a great diversity in the mining environments in which mine drainage is formed. This multipart series of AMP will explore, on an introductory level, the connection of mine drainage characteristics with the mining environments that created it. It’s not meant to rigorous, but to mainly get you thinking about the kinds of things that happen can underground that are influential in the making of polluted water.

Part 3.  The Chemical Action Continues.

In the last installment of AMD and Mining Environments, I talked in some detail about the first act of several in the formation of AMD.  To review, the chemical reaction that starts the whole AMD pollution ball rolling is the oxidation of pyrite in the presence of oxygen and water

which results in a complete chemical makeover with the chemical species of ferrous ions, sulfate ions, and hydrogen ions being dissolved in water.  This installment picks up from there.

I’d like to zero in on one detail of this reaction.  Notice that for every 4 molecules of pyrite consumed, there are 8 hydrogen ions produced.

In other words, 2 hydrogen ions are produced for every pyrite molecule that reacts.  This can result in high concentrations of dissolved hydrogen ions.  When a group of these hooligans of the chemical world get together, expect trouble.  They’re perfectly happy going around electron-less, flaunting their positive charges.  It’s what gets them in trouble.  You may have heard about them already.   They call themselves “Acidz”.  The more they crowd together, the nastier they get.  (For more detail on this subject, seehttp://amrclearinghouse.org/Sub/AMDbasics/Acids-Bases-ph.htm .)   Bottom line, the pyrite oxidation reaction can be a prolific acid producer.

Hydrogen ions are so prominent in aqueous chemistry that a special way of indicating their concentration is commonly used: the pH scale.  You were probably taught something like the following in high school science class.

• pH is a number from 0 to 14 indicating how acidic or basic water is.  A pH lower than 7 is acidic, above 7 is basic, and exactly 7 is neutral.  A unit change in pH represents a 10 fold change in concentration.  Lower numbers represent a higher concentration of hydrogen ions.  Examples: pH=5 is 10 times more concentrated in hydrogen ions than pH=6.  pH=5 has 1/100th  the concentration of hydrogen ions at pH=3.

I’m not much of a fan of this description. (This explanation coupled with the contrived invention of pH is actually number 7 on “Bruce’s All-Time Pet Peeve Countdown.”)   Yet since it’s so commonly taught this way, I’ll reluctantly perpetuate it… because it’s short.  My description would go on and on and on.  If you’re so inclined, check out http://amrclearinghouse.org/Sub/AMDbasics/Acids-Bases-ph.htm for my rambling explanation. The pH scale is to hydrogen ion concentration as the Richter scale is to the power of an earthquake… almost.  A decreasing pH implies increasing hydrogen ion concentration.  Mathematically speaking, both are logarithmic functions.

One of the most common classes of AMD has a pH in the vicinity of  3, which makes hydrogen ions in the neighborhood of 1,000 times more concentrated than pure water.  That’s moderately acidic which can really put the hurts to the critters living in streams.  It’s common to see streams impacted with this sort of water to be crystal clear, as well as clear of practically all life.

Well, let’s draw the curtain of the first and very crucial act of AMD formation, the oxidation of pyrite.

Act 2:   Next Stop…  Ferric Iron City

A product of the pyrite oxidation reaction is ferrous ions (Fe2+), a charged form of the element iron.  These ferrous ions are able to react with hydrogen ions (also produced by the pyrite oxidation reaction) and oxygen for the next important reaction on the road to AMD formation

One reaction product is water.  No big deal there since this reaction occurs in water.  The other reaction product is ferric ion (Fe3+), also a charged form of the element iron, having lost a (negative) electron in its transformation from the ferrous form.   There are several notable points of this reaction:

• This reaction requires oxygen (O2).  If oxygen is in short supply, as is a very common occurrence in some mining environments, it will limit the amount of ferrous ions that react, and thus the amount of ferric ion that is formed.  To put it another way, if the lack of oxygen limits this reaction in one place, a change of conditions where oxygen is more readily available will allow it to continue elsewhere.  Many mine discharges are like this.  This reaction has stalled until the mine water breaks out into the open where more oxygen is available.
• This, too, is an oxidation reaction.  Ferrous iron is oxidized to ferric iron.  In fact, let’s just call this the ferrous to ferric oxidation reaction.
• Optional stuff: The element iron has three preferred (nay, allowed) oxidation states: 0 (elemental), +2 (ferrous) and +3 (ferric).  An iron oxidation reaction results in an increase of its oxidation state, i.e. from 0 to 2, or from 2 to 3 as is the case here.  The terms ferrous and ferric apply only to iron. Each element has its own rules about what oxidation states are allowed.  Example: aluminum only has 0 and +3 oxidation states and doesn’t have a similar reaction to the ferrous to ferric oxidation reaction.  That has some significance later on. 
• This reaction consumes hydrogen ions on a one to one basis with the ferrous ions that react.  Look at the equation and see if you can figure out that one to one thing.  Because hydrogen ions are consumed, this tends to lower H+ concentration, with a corresponding increase in the pH.   We really aren’t that fond of the Acidz’ actions and anything that diminishes their numbers is something I’d call a good thing.

To sum up the ferrous to ferric oxidation reaction, ferrous ions are converted to ferric ions with a reduction in the numbers of hydrogen ions. That’s it.  I suppose I could have just said that in the beginning, but then we wouldn’t have been able to spend all this time together, would we?

You may have noticed I haven’t editorialized about ferric ion’s character.  That’s because ferric ions aren’t really into the wild ionic life of some other ions.  They’re more interested in getting into a permanent relationship and settling down, as we’ll see in the next installment of AMD and Mining Environments.