Abandoned Mine Posts

As most of you know by now, we have won a huge victory — working with the PA AML Campaign — to secure reauthorization of the AML Program after an exhausting, resilient 3½ year legislative campaign in Congress.

Despite great odds against winning this year and against conventional wisdom in Washington that the AML Program would not get reauthorized in the Lameduck session of Congress after the November elections, our AML Campaign succeeded in getting our legislation attached to a giant 500 plus page bill, called “The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006″ in the final hours before Congress adjourned at 4:30 am on Saturday, December 9th.

The AML Reauthorization, which amends the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), extends the AML Program for at least 15 years and will triple AML funds PA receives from reclamation fees collected from every ton of coal produced. PA is expected to receive at least $1.5 billion over the next 15 years to clean up the worst Priority 1 and 2 AML sites. For the first time, there will be guaranteed funding for AML clean-up from fees collected from the coal companies, stopping the practice of Congressional Appropriations Committees creating annual tug-of-wars over AML distribution as well as diversion of AML funds to unrelated Federal projects.

This legislation represents an unprecedented consensus among watershed, conservation and coalfield community groups as well as the United Mine Workers of America, the coal industry, and eastern and western coal producing states.

Pennsylvania has had the most at stake in this long debate with the most AML acreage in the nation (250,000 acres), 44 out of 67 PA counties blighted and 4,600 miles of biologically dead streams and rivers. DEP has estimated the total PA AML clean-up price tag at $15 billion.

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With a sizable increase in federal mine reclamation funding, Christmas came early for coalfield communities throughout the country who have long suffered the aftermath of a century of unregulated coal mining. As one of the 109th Congress’s final acts before adjourning, both the House and Senate passed legislation extending and revamping a federal law that mandates a reclamation fee on each ton of coal produced in the country. The new law will do a much better job of directing reclamation fees to abandoned mine lands (AML) problem areas, where funding is needed the most.

Pennsylvania will see somewhere between a doubling and tripling of AML funding over the next fifteen years, or roughly one billion dollars. Bruce Golden, Regional Coordinator of WPCAMR, proclaimed, “This is huge! Finally, thankfully, we now have common sense legislation that will go a very long way to fixing the long-standing problems of abandoned mine lands and waters in our country, and particularly in Pennsylvania, where the scope of the problem is most severe.”

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As Congress reconvenes this month, the Pennsylvania AML Campaign is calling on the House and Senate to reauthorize funding for cleanup of abandoned mine lands. The program that funds reclamation of abandoned mine sites is scheduled to expire next year, unless Congress passes S.2616, a bill with astonishing support from mine workers, environmentalists, coal companies, and hunting and fishing groups.

• AML Coalition Tells Congress: Your Job’s Not Done – Reauthorize, This Year, Legislation to Clean Up Dangerous Abandoned Mine Land (Business Wire)

A recent newspaper article from the Altoona Mirror spotlights the role that AML Fund Reauthorization would have in cleaning up abandoned mine sites in Blair County, Pennsylvania.

• Abandoned mine sites endangering Blair (Altoona Mirror)

Earlier this week, you probably received an issue of Abandoned Mine Posts in which I asked you to urge Pennsylvania Senators Santorum and Specter to incorporate abandoned mine reclamation reauthorization language into a bill that can be passed, and to do so quickly. Congress will be in session until September 29, when they will recess until a post-election lame duck session. If the political will exists, this period is enough time to reauthorize AML funding. Our senators need to hear that this is an extremely important issue for us, their constituents, so they can properly set their priorities. Specifically, they immediately need to hear:

“Passing a law incorporating the language of S.2616 is vital to the reclamation of Pennsylvania’s lands and waters decimated by a century of unregulated coal mining. This can and must be done before the September 29 Congressional recess. Time is short: use your leadership position to deliver the legislation to our citizens now.”

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