Pennsylvania will be receiving $244 million to help pay for cleaning up legacy pollution sites and abandoned mines.
The U.S. Department of the Interior made the announcement to help commemorate Legacy Pollution Week, according to an Oct. 21 news release. The $244,904,081 going to Pennsylvania is the the largest abandoned mine lands investment this year.
“I know first-hand what it looks like to live near a toxic, abandoned mine,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in the release. "In communities like my Pueblo of Laguna, people deal with the serious risks to our environment and our health that these legacy pollution sites pose.”
In February, the DOI announced nearly $725 million would be distributed to 22 states and the Navajo Nation for such projects, the release reported. This funding was made possible after the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed earlier this year.
One focus of the AML program is to clean up legacy pollution. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, there are 40 active underground coal mines and 5,000 or more abandoned underground mines in the state.
Mines can leak methane into the environment, but that’s not the only risk. A more serious example of the problems they pose occurred in Centralia, Pa., in 1962, when a fire spread through the underground mining passages and turned the community into a ghost town, according to a history.com report. Because there were so many abandoned mine tunnels in the community, it was almost impossible to figure out which tunnel or tunnels were fueling the fire.
In 1981, a boy fell into a sinkhole the fire created. Consequently, Congress paid community residents to move. By 1992, seven holdouts remained and it was ordered that they could not pass their property on to others or sell it. The community’s ZIP code has even been eliminated. The fire is continuing to burn in the desolate town today, history.com reported.
“We have a once-in-a-generation investment to address these sites with an eye toward marginalized communities,” Haaland said in the release. “Thanks to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, I believe the reclamation landscape of tomorrow presents endless opportunities for innovation, efficiency and partnership.”
Allocations for the AML projects are determined bytons of coal historically produced in the states before Aug. 3, 1977, when the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 was enacted, the news release reported. States are guaranteed at least $20 million during the 15-year life of the program if it is shown that it would cost at least that much to address the related environmental concerns.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law disbursements are in addition to "traditional annual AML grants, which are funded by coal operators and ensured to be provided through 2034,” the DOI release said.
