Advancing science-based climate solutions
9.4 Bringing Abandoned Mine Lands Back to Life
Hosted by Daniel Bresette and Hannah Wilson-Black
Guests Matt Hepler and Kevin Zedack
April 8, 2025
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For residents of former and current mining communities (especially in Appalachia, the Midwest, and the Mountain West), abandoned mines are a familiar—and often dangerous—aspect of the local landscape. Unreclaimed abandoned mines and infrastructure can leak acid drainage, pollute groundwater, or collapse unexpectedly. Guests Kevin Zedack and Matt Hepler (both from Appalachian Voices) sit down with Daniel and EESI’s newest communications associate, Hannah Wilson-Black, to explain how cleaning up these sites can safeguard ecosystems and human health while providing new economic development opportunities in coal communities.
Show notes:
- Appalachian Voices resource: Central Appalachian Mine Reforestation Assessment
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Episode Transcript:
Daniel Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette. I'm the president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, and my co host for this episode is first timer Hannah Wilson-Black. Hannah joined the EESI team back in January as our new communications associate. Hannah, welcome to your first podcast episode. This is great.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Thanks so much. I'm really glad to be here, and I'm especially excited because today's topic, abandoned mine lands, is a particular interest of mine. Before coming to EESI, I actually lived in central-southern West Virginia, where active and abandoned coal mines are a fact of everyday life. There are abandoned hard rock, metal and coal mines scattered across the country. The largest concentration is in Appalachia, with additional clusters in the Midwest and the Mountain West. As our guests will explain this episode, when these mines are not properly reclaimed after mining, they pose a threat to the surrounding communities and ecosystems. But because these sites have been flattened, and many have good sunlight exposure, if they're reclaimed properly, they have potential as sites for solar or other productive uses, from shopping centers to farms.
Dan: And don't worry, listeners, Alison will be back on a future episode. But since we wanted to cover this issue, and since Hannah has so much experience with it, it only made sense to give her a spot in the front of the plane. But back to the topic at hand, abandoned mine lands. The process of reclamation of these sites can be very tricky in terms of rebuilding the soil and obtaining funding, which is why today, we'll be talking to scientist Matt Hepler about how these sites can be cleaned up and even repurposed. But first we wanted to get you acquainted with some of the background, like what counts as an abandoned mine and how cleanup is typically paid for. And to get that scoop, we're going to check in with Kevin Zedack. Kevin is a government affairs specialist with Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit advocating for the people land, air and water of central and southern Appalachia.
Kevin Zedack: The definition of abandoned mine lands comes from the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, which established federal standards for mine land reclamation. Before 1977 there was no federal law telling coal companies how to repair the damage caused by mining and mine facilities. So SMCRA, which is how we shorthand the law, established two programs to deal with mine land at the time. Title IV of the bill establishes the abandoned mine lands program for the areas that were abandoned before 1977 when the law was passed, and Title V governs coal mining operations going forward. So those are the two separations of mine lands, modern mines (or Title V) and abandoned mine lands (Title Four). “AML” (abandoned mine lands) broadly includes the mine lands themselves, where you might picture the big surface operations or the facilities associated with an underground mine and its related infrastructure. So tipples, office buildings, the stuff that's used to load the coal in the train cars or trucks or however it's being transported. It also includes coal waste areas. So regionally, there are a couple different names, whether it's boney piles, gob piles, slag piles, those are areas where mining waste from the facility were just left. So for impacts, we're talking about runoff from mine sites as it rains and the water runs off and interacts with different minerals that have been exposed, and that can create some pretty nasty runoff, and that goes into local streams that people use. For surface mines, unsafe areas where the high walls aren't properly reclaimed. For underground mines, a big effort is around sealing mine portals, aging dangerous infrastructure in places that have severely altered the landscape--so again, those offices-- and tipples. Tipples are pretty tall structures and if they've been abandoned for 50 years, 60 years, that just creates really unsafe areas that can be publicly accessible. So you know, whenever we're also looking at how the land has been altered from the mining for areas that were once these big, old mature forests, we now have barren rock lands or highly compacted soils that don't absorb water, which can lead to more flooding in areas and exposed minerals, like I mentioned earlier, creating runoff and really damaging the local nature. We as Appalachians are used to swimming in rivers, fishing, hunting, really being closely tied to nature. I grew up in western Pennsylvania, and these areas are just really attached to those resources of the outdoors. So being able to clean up these areas--I remember in my local town, there was a bony pile that was kind of a local hangout place. Maybe not such a great idea in hindsight, could have used some additional safeguards to keep people out. But that's broadly what we're looking at. As far as the scale of the issue, we're looking at about 850,000 acres is the issue. About 27% have been cleaned up since SMCRA was passed.
Hannah: Who generally is organizing or initiating the cleanup of abandoned mines, and is that different from who is generally cleaning up modern mines?
Kevin: Yeah. So AML cleanup is organized primarily by states that receive federal funding to administer their own programs. It's mostly state agencies that collect project proposals to clean up an area and then award contracts and implement the actual program. There's a little bit of nuance there. Tribes and some states are regulated by the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement (OSMRE) at the federal level, but by and large, it's state agencies doing AML clean up. Clean up for modern mines is a little more complicated. Title V of SMCRA instituted bonding requirements. That was kind of like, “AML is bad. We don't want this to continue.” So SMCRA institutes bonding requirements that say coal companies have to ensure funding for reclamation activities in order to get their mining permits approved by the regulatory agency, again, mostly state regulatory agencies. In a perfect world, the regulatory agency assesses the permit application and tells the coal company, “You have to guarantee X amount of dollars to cover the cost of reclamation for your proposed operations.” The coal company acquires that bond as a promise for the future, but is required to contemporaneously reclaim the site as mining proceeds and recovers the full value of the bond when they've gone through that process, mining is over and the site is restored as close as possible to the original condition.
Hannah: Can you explain what the Abandoned Mine Land fund is, how that works, how that's funded?
Kevin: So SMCRA created the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund to pay for the reclamation of abandoned or inadequately reclaimed mine sites from before when the law was written. That's kind of an important distinction to say — it's not just these sites that were completely left. There was some reclamation done, but if it was inadequate, this also covers it as long as it was pre-1977 which is an important distinction from modern mines. In 1977 those rates were 35 cents per ton for coal that wasn't lignite coal. Small differentiation. Lignite was just lower value, so they didn't want to impose too high of a fee on its extraction. So 35 cents per ton for lignite produced by surface mining, 15 cents per ton of coal other than lignite produced from underground mines and 10 cents for lignite. So for 30 years, the fees were not changed. In 2006 the authorization was extended with reductions to the fee, where the value of the fee was reduced by 10% from 2007 to 2012 and then reduced an additional 10% from 2012 to 2021 so just taking that first number—non lignite coal from a surface mine—the fee for 30 years was 35 cents per ton. When we get to 2021 that fee was reduced to 28 cents per ton. So it may only be seven cents per ton difference, but we also know at the same time, coal extraction is decreasing. The industry is declining. So annual revenue to the AML fund in fiscal year 2004 was $287 million. In fiscal year 2019, it was only $140 million. It's also worth noting that a little bit of the AML fee also makes small contributions to the United Mine Workers of America health and retirement funds and operating expenses for OSMRE, mostly for the part that OSM administers in states that don't have their own programs and tribes. Unfortunately, the fee on mined coal has been woefully inadequate to make serious progress on tackling the issue. In 2021 Eric Dixon at the Ohio River Valley Institute published a really great report that estimated 73% of AML had not been reclaimed as of 2020, with an estimated cost of about $26 billion over the next 30 years. At the time, the federal estimate of AML reclamation cost was about $11 billion. So there's a $15 billion gap there. Dixon's analysis included inflation costs for some of the projects that had old price estimates, plus design and administration costs. Federal inventory only includes construction costs, and he also factors in additional degradation of sites from extreme weather impacts and just the ongoing deterioration factor of the increasing costs of cleaning up older sites. So in 2021, right—this is when the fee expires most recently—Congress extended the authorization but lowered the fee another 20% at the same time, they also obligated $11 billion in the infrastructure investment in JOBS Act, or Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This is money that exists for OSMRE to spend down over time. It's kind of an indefinite pot of money. It's not like a program authorized for five years or anything like that, because the thought is federal inventory says it's an $11 billion problem. Congress appropriates $11 billion plus the AML fee, which continues to be administered, though at a lower rate. In 2022 there was about $2 billion in that account. And the thought is that this will solve the AML issue. Obviously, researchers think that there's a bigger gap here, but we're continuing to monitor that situation and support states as they implement that. As for its distribution, OSMRE disperses funding to states to implement their AML programs based on a formula for how many lands each state has.
Hannah: So mine reclamation, at least, I think when I explain it to other people, especially people who are not from Appalachia, it seems like a no brainer in terms of public health and restoring ecosystems. If it's such sort of a no brainer, I guess why is that funding gap so big?
Kevin: Yeah, I think when we're talking about federal solutions, or really government solutions in general to major problems that we may face, it really all comes down to money. There just hasn't been enough money to address the magnitude of the issue. This is an issue that really, before SMCRA was enacted in 1977 we have like, 200 years of history of mines being abandoned without any strict federal guidelines on how that looks. So as I mentioned, since 2006 Congress has also continued to lower the AML fee, while the industry has also declined. So it's just like compounding factors of decreased revenue. Now that we have this $11 billion from the infrastructure law, it just takes time to complete contract bidding and environmental reviews and construction depending on the project. The enforcement mechanisms and staff are operating with minimal staff on a shoestring budget to do really important work, because lawmakers have always been kind of reluctant to aggressively tackle the environmental impacts of the coal industry. The point of the language in SMCRA was to say that whether it's AML or ongoing mining sites that need reclamation, this is not a taxpayer problem. These were problems created by the coal industry. And you know, we're assessing this fee on coal to pay for AML because the coal industry should clean it up. We're instituting these bonding requirements on modern mines because the coal industry should clean up what is enriching them and what they're profiting from and leaving behind for communities and it should be their responsibility, not the taxpayers themselves. Unfortunately the industry is in a really difficult place, and that's kind of where the conversation enters of “what is the real solution?” Is it additional fees on the industry? There are plenty of lawmakers in Congress who would argue against that, because they're concerned about forcing that decline in the industry even further in their districts, costing jobs, those kinds of things. The Ohio River Valley Institute report also did an analysis that found over the next 30 years the fee collection was projected to only rate to raise less than a billion dollars in revenue. So at the end of the day, the money is just not going to be there from the fees. There's opposition to any stricter fees, stronger reliance on the industry to pay for it themselves, and I think all of those things will eventually lead to stronger federal intervention. There just is not much of an appetite at the moment by lawmakers to jump to those conclusions.
Hannah: Tell me about the policy options at the state level or at the congressional level that you're seeing right now that could help address abandoned mine lands.
Kevin: This is a classic example when we're talking about mining regulation—some states have more community protections and stronger reclamation standards than other states, which is where we say the federal government has a role in ensuring people's protection from unreclaimed mines is important. The $11 billion in the infrastructure law really presents an amazing opportunity to make significant progress on the issue. As I said before, we're not sure it will be enough to fully handle the issue, but we're currently seeing the results build out, and can always come back to advocate for additional funding. 10 years down the road, the industry will be in a different position, things will just look much different for coal and coal mining. So that could be another opportunity in the future. As far as AML, I'll point to three other policy opportunities. First is the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program, or what we call AMLER. This is a program that's been around since 2016 which provides funding for AML projects that are focused on economic development. That economic development can be reclaiming a site to be used for an industrial park or an outdoor recreation facility. ATV parks are a pretty good example of the end use of this funding. Fiscal year 24 and 25 each provided $130 million for the program, and this is a program that lives in the annual appropriations bills and has enjoyed really strong support by Representative Hal Rogers from eastern Kentucky. The second program I would mention is the clean energy demonstration program on current and former mine lands that was created in the infrastructure law. The infrastructure law provided $500 million to deploy innovative use of AML sites for clean energy from fiscal year 22 through 26 which we're obviously approaching. The Department of Energy quickly awarded this unding to five projects in Arizona, Kentucky, Nevada, Pennsylvania and West Virginia for things like pump storage hydropower between reservoirs on a mine site, which was a really cool renewable energy program, and building solar arrays on reclaimed land. Representatives Morgan McGarvey and Hal Rogers of Kentucky introduced a bill at the end of last Congress to extend the authorization for the program beyond fiscal year 26 so no additional money, just extending the authorization for funds through fiscal year 2030 so grantees who already have the money just have this longer on-ramp of environmental reviews, permitting, getting things online. We're continuing to engage with them on this effort, because we're really hoping that this can build results for a greater push on renewable energy on mine lands. Lastly, we've been working to fund the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative through the appropriations process. This effort, which we shorten to ARRI, is a cooperative effort between the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, state agencies across Appalachia, coal industry partners, environmental organizations, academia and landowners to plant trees on mine sites. It's really that simple. Research has shown that reclaim mine sites that have been properly reforested operate more closely to the original terrain, more water infiltration, less runoff, less compaction, so the forest can regenerate, etc. Up until now, the program has been funded through contributing partners and kind of a patchwork of philanthropy that's kept it as kind of a pilot program. For the last 20 years, we've been trying to get $5 million for the program so it could, like, really amp up its work. Last year in the appropriations process, for the first time, the House bill included $500,000 for it, which we were really excited about, not $5 million but we were excited for it to finally get funding. Unfortunately, that was not included in the continuing resolution for fiscal year 25 so we plan to go back and look at funding for that again this year. So I mentioned earlier that Title V mines, or modern mines, that were in operation since 1977 have a more complicated process for reclamation. I talked about how the process is supposed to work, where a coal company secures a bond to promise reclamation funding, they get the value of the bond back and ride off into the sunset and land as close to original as possible because they did all the reclamation they were supposed to. Unfortunately, the process doesn't go this smoothly in practice. The first issue that we've seen is the bond values are underestimated by the regulatory authority. So we have research that suggests there are 633,000 acres in need of some degree of reclamation across the country, representing total reclamation costs between seven and a half and almost $10 billion. Unfortunately the total available bonds currently amount to approximately $3.8 billion so there is a gap of five to $7 billion on the need for reclamation on modern mines. But if coal companies are using the bonds as collateral to their promise of reclaiming the mine site it shouldn't matter, right? But, and that could be true, like the coal operators are reclaiming the sites as they go, and then when that's all completed, they get the value of the bond back. But we're seeing as the coal industry continues to decline because of market forces moving toward cheaper renewable energy, cheaper methane gas, coal companies will dodge their reclamation responsibilities through bankruptcy proceedings that shed their liability to the regulatory authority or the surety holding bond. So now it's their responsibility to complete reclamation, and now they don't have enough money to go through the thorough process. Also, in many cases, lengthy litigation just pauses the reclamation timelines so it's sitting, not operating, for years. The coal companies can also put mines into idle status. Totally legal. It allows coal companies to idle in mind to allow market conditions to adjust before bringing it back online. Reasonable practice. However, there are no rules to say how long mines can be idle for. So we also see companies saying that mines are idled with the potential to start producing coal again for years. There's a mine site near our office in Norton, Virginia, actually, that hasn't been reclaimed for 10 years, with that thought of “it could start operations at any day.” Meanwhile, it's a safety risk and increasing runoff with the potential for water pollution. So this is the ecosystem creating what we call our zombie mine problem, or Title V mines that are functionally abandoned, but aren't technically abandoned because SMCRA stopped new AML from being created after 1977. Yet there's still a serious need to reclaim these sites, and we can't use AML funding to do so. So we are working with multiple offices across Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, to address some of these issues with how bonds are assessed and making sure the value isn't underestimated, putting an end to self-bonding, which is a practice that essentially allows coal companies to promise reclamation without actually securing a standard bond. So when they go bankrupt, there is no additional funding to recover. It's really like the adage of getting blood from a stone. Like they are a bankrupt company, there was no funding, and now the regulatory authority is stuck with that reclamation need. So we're looking at federal policy to make sure that the bonds are enough to cover reclamation, coal companies are reclaiming the mine sites as they go to increase those protections on local communities from impacts of unreclaimed sites, and really, as SMCRA originally attended, keep the onus on the coal industry for cleaning up these areas to try and minimize the impact on taxpayers.
Hannah: Now that we have the basics down, let's meet Matt to get familiar with the science behind reclamation and how these sites can be transformed.
Dan: Matt Hepler is an environmental scientist and geographic information systems expert, also with the nonprofit Appalachian Voices. Much of Matt's work focuses on helping communities that have been negatively impacted by surface mining, engaging them in citizen science and teaching them about water quality. Matt, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you.
Matt Hepler: Thanks for having me.
Dan: Matt, in our earlier conversation with Kevin, he explained why abandoned mines can be so dangerous for communities, and he specifically called out the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, and that is the law that defines what an abandoned mine actually is. What does the law actually say? How does it nail down what counts as a proper mine reclamation activity, and is there any wiggle room around the work that needs to be done?
Matt: Within the context of AML, there is a little bit of wiggle room. So that is largely looking at cleaning up problems that before the law was passed, it was often doing so in the context of a limited funding so there is a tax on every ton of coal that is mined to clean up these sites, but the amount of money that is available to clean up these sites compared to amount of the cost, large cost of the issues that are available, means there had to be a lot of prioritization. So very often this prioritization was done in the context of safety, and so safety tended to be prioritized over other environmental factors. Now, with the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law there has been some more money coming into the pot so that can, in effect, maybe reach some more of those environmental type problems. But also worth noting that there are many different kinds of AML features. So within the context of abandoned mine lands, you might have a burning gob pile, you might be looking at closing an abandoned mine portal. You might be looking at something like an emergency mine blow out, just to name a few examples. So OSMRE has standardized some of these things. They have a priority ranking system listed as priority one, two, and three, those are kind of prioritized in terms of safety. And they also have these different categories for these different kinds of features. So like gob piles, like vertical mine openings, mine fires, each of those has a different category. And like the reclamation for that will look different depending on what the issue at hand is, but it's, I mean, all of the work is important in terms of getting it cleaned up and cleaned up well.
Dan: I feel like that's a pretty common story when we're talking about these sorts of cleanup activities where the need for the funding for the cleanup is far outstripped by the demand. There's just no, no shortage of projects that demand and it's, I'm sure, very difficult to make those prioritization decisions. But for someone who's coming at this as from a scientific perspective, what does proper reclamation look like to you, and why is it so important that we're thorough when we're undertaking these sorts of processes?
Matt: That’s a great question. So again, with the caveat that, like, many of the kinds of reclamation will look different with the issue at hand, generally speaking, I think proper reclamation of abandoned mine land involves restoring to the site the to a condition that is stable and non-polluting and compatible with the surrounding landscapes and ecosystems. That's addressing things like the long-term functionality of the soils, the hydrology, the vegetation, the water quality and the kind of the aquatic ecosystems, the existing ecosystems. That could look like eliminating dangers to the community. It could look like stabilizing specific landforms and places that are prone to landslide. It could look like revegetating certain sites, treating water, if it were, say, an acid mine drainage issue, restoring the hydrology and also doing proper monitoring to make sure that the sites that have been fixed don't present a hazard in the future. When you are dealing with limited funding sources and prioritizing the safety stuff, sometimes some of the more kind of environmental concerns would be left unaddressed, and hopefully with this new kind of influx of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law money, we can go back and get to some of those priority three environmental sites. One example comes to mind. I happen to know this one site that's a mine portal that is also discharging high sulfate-laden water. Now they've closed up the mine portal, so like the public cannot enter in, because that's a that's a safety hazard, but the polluted water is still discharging directly into Looney Creek, which was back behind the house where I used to live. And so now hopefully they can go back and do some of the restoration there, address the water quality issue in addition to the safety issue, yeah, just help restore the ecology of that particular stream.
Hannah: Thank you for that. Also, just a note for our listeners. You mentioned OSMRE earlier. There's a lot of alphabet soup going on whenever you talk about federal policy, and that is the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation, and Enforcement. You and your colleagues at Appalachian Voices, along with a few other organizations, created the Central Appalachian Mine Reforestation Assessment Tool. We can link to that data set in the show notes. You created that in 2021 to understand the progress made on mine land reclamation and how much work is still to be done. What is the most important or surprising thing you learned in creating that tool?
Matt: Yeah, so I will note that that particular tool was built more for Title V, like post-law mines. So mines that were permitted after the passage of the surface mining law in 1977. It was built to kind of assess the health of the reclamation of released mines. So according to the surface mining law, every mine is supposed to designate a post-mining land use, and very often that post mining land use is forest. And so that tool is built to specifically monitor how well are these mines returning to forest. And it does so by using a remote sensing tool called Google Earth Engine, and assesses the vegetation from 1984 all the way up to the present, kind of plotting what is called the NDVI. It's a vegetation index score which is used in remote sensing. There's no doubt that surface mining is a major driver of land use change across central Appalachia. And that tool is just sort of another tool in our pocket to assess, like, well, how well are these sites reforesting? And as I recall, I mean, most of the sites have not returned to pre-forested conditions. So one of the great promises of SMCRA made very often within coal companies’ own narrative is that they will restore the land, restore the ecological productivity. And many of those sites have not returned to a post-forested state that was the same as their pre-forested state. So that was the use of that tool.
Hannah: What purposes can reclaimed abandoned mines be used for safely after their reclamation? And what successful examples have you seen in terms of those post-restoration projects benefiting the surrounding community, whether economically or health wise, and then benefiting the ecosystem?
Matt: So in addition to this AML money, there's also another program that they call AMLER, which is another abandoned mine land restoration project fund, but it also has a specific economic development component. Now I've been involved in some AMLER projects in the past, for example, like the one I'm probably most excited to talk about is one that I worked on called the Dayton Miners Trail System. So using that AMLER funding, we closed several mine portals on old logging roads and mining roads along an old mining bench, but we then also turned that into a recreational trail system for mountain bikes and ATVs and hikers. We were able to do that, and like, gaining a net benefit to the that community of Dayton, and like, we got massive community support for that project, and as I understand it now, like the trails are open, but along the way now our state agency, Virginia Energy, is now using our trail system to close additional portals that they found, that were found like due to the fact that we had opened up the trail system. So, I mean, just kind of an interesting, kind of cyclical thing that has happened there, which we've, we've cleaned up a couple of mine portals and opened up the site up to economic development, but also through that process, found more portals to close. And so it's, it's kind of been a virtuous cycle there. There have been several other examples, like, through that AMLER money, like there's this, I know of a mountain bike system in Ohio. I believe it's called Bailey's Trail System. There have also been several other economic development projects. I think there's several with aquaculture in West Virginia. There's also been a few museums that have been recipients of that money to clean up things related to, like, old mining infrastructure and equipment and in return we're able to, like, get develop these museums for coal mining. I also know in terms of like ecological uses, like up in northern West Virginia there's bad acid mine drainage issues, and Friends of the Cheat River were able to clean up that acid mine drainage using money from the Office of Surface Mining, and now those streams are supporting trout habitat. And thus you get a fishing economy, a trout fishing economy. Many of these communities are interested in eco-tourism because they see coal is in its decline, and so they're looking for the next major thing in their community to kind of offset some of that loss of tax base and income. So, yeah, I mean, I, I see environmental restoration really as a win-win there. It’s in the restoration work itself, you can put to work many former local miners. But also, like, if you do it well, you can also find these additionalities, these additional economic benefits for the community, if you do so in a way that engages the community and, like, incorporates communities’ feedback and input like it turns into this nice, virtuous system that helps support the economy.
Dan: Matt, you mentioned the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That passed in 2021 which is a long time ago in Capitol Hill terms, and a lot of folks—and well, we've covered it in our resources over the intervening years—a lot of folks who are working on some of these issues, or maybe are thinking about these issues, you know, weren't in their boss's office when that bill was passed. Anything else that you would like to leave our congressional audience, our congressional staff audience, with about what they should know about abandoned mine lands or any other related issues around reclamation or restoration or community impacts?
Matt: Reclamation is not just about safety. It really is an opportunity to invest in these communities, these communities’ economic health, their personal health. I mean, policymakers should really see AML reclamation as a critical part of like helping shore up the economy particularly in Appalachia, for many, many of these communities. And I mean, I think it is an excellent tool. And I mean, many of these small coal towns are thinking long term about, well, “what's coming next for our community? Is like, is coal mining going to go away? Like, how do we diversify our economy?” So I would just say that the AML Fund should be thought about in kind of that broader economic development context.
Hannah: I have also seen former abandoned mine lands after their restoration, used as farms, for instance, lavender farms or sort of regenerative grazing sites. Is that safe, are there issues with toxins? Is farmland a potential use for these sites, or is that not really an ideal use?
Matt: It's a fine land use most of the time. The only time you really have to worry about toxins is, I mean, a lot depends on local geology, that's, I mean, that's kind of my go to answer for everything. But it's kind of true. If there were, say, a particularly toxic seam, it's often just a couple of metals or like, if it's a high pyrite seam, it might release acid mine drainage, and those are supposed to be covered with x feet of material. And then if you cover them and store them properly, it's still not an issue. But so most of the time those farms are on formal former strip jobs. And as long as the top layer is not absolutely toxic, it's going to be all right. The real issue with a lot of that stuff is you're going to run into compaction. So that's like, that will hurt certain kinds of reclamation efforts. So like when you're doing ecological restoration, some of your trees might not take but usually grasses will still grow fairly well in a compacted soil. And then, then, I mean, also, if you're on a fill you can have water quality issues from that, but that's more of a ecological downstream thing. Very often that that is not so much about toxicity as it is changing the water's overall salinity so that is in thus impacting the ecosystem. But in terms of actual human health, not so much. But there are impacts from mining to human health too, but they tend to occur during the active mining phase, not the reclamation phases.
Hannah: Okay, great. So no problem with eating carrots from an abandoned mine?
Matt: I would do it.
Hannah: [Laughs] Okay, great.
Dan: Well, Matt, that is a great place to leave the conversation. Thank you very, very much for joining us today. Good luck with everything. It was really a great chance to really, really great to meet you, and it has been a really interesting conversation. Certainly learned a lot.
Hannah: Thanks, Matt.
Dan: Well Hannah, I thought that was a really great episode. Really interesting to hear from Kevin and so interesting to talk with Matt. I know you've got lots and lots of wrap up thoughts, so we'll save most of the time for you, but I really like the point that Matt made about how this is not just a cleanup activity, it's a community development activity. It's an economic development activity, and that's something that we talk a lot about, going all the way back to, you know, the days before the infrastructure bill or the IIJA, certainly well before the days of the Inflation Reduction Act or IRA. You know, lots of talk about, you know, this sort of just transition concept, you know, how do we, how do we, you know, transition the economy in a in a way that's decarbonized, in a way that, you know, results in lower greenhouse gas emissions, and how do you do that in a way that doesn't leave anyone behind or any communities behind? And there is a lot of really active work, a lot of it's being done by Appalachian Voices but there's certainly lots of other organizations. And I think it really is important to remember that it's not just an academic exercise, you know, these are communities that are really impacted, and, you know, providing funding like the IIJA did, and providing, you know, the policy support, and ensuring that these things are done in a responsible way, yes, there are certainly environmental benefits. Yes, there are definitely ecological benefits. But there are also really, really powerful community development and economic development benefits, and I'm glad Matt was sure to include that in one of his responses.
Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. Just to add on to that, abandoned mines also have, obviously, a labor dimension to them, because reclamation work means jobs. When I knew we were going to talk about mine lands, I reached out to Eric Dixon, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, an organization which Kevin mentioned in his segment. Eric has written about reclamation jobs, which are sort of a subcategory, I would argue, of good green jobs. They can be, at least. And this is what Eric Dixon had to say about the labor aspect of this conversation: “When people talk of the next economy, they often talk about the clean energy economy, but the restoration economy, the work cleaning up historic environmental damage, is a key part of the economic future, especially in areas that have historically relied on fossil fuels. AML reclamation is part of this growing restoration sector, which has the advantage of creating many jobs in the construction trades that don't require a college degree and can pay wages and benefits that can support a family.” I thought that was a really great addition to this conversation, too. Thank you so much to everyone who's contributed their thoughts to this episode, and thank you for listening. If you want to learn more about EESI work on climate solutions, head to our website at eesi.org. Also follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The climate conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
