Coal cleanup
A $2.8 million federal grant will allow state officials to continue their efforts to clean up abandoned coal mines in eastern Oklahoma.
A $2.8 million federal grant will allow state officials to continue their efforts to clean up abandoned coal mines in eastern Oklahoma.
The U.S. Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement this week announced the reclamation grant, part of $300 million collected from a surcharge on the sale of coal throughout the country and distributed to states and tribes for abandoned mine cleanup.
The grant is the only source of funding for the Oklahoma Conservation Commission's Abandoned Mine Land Program.
“Our primary purpose is to eliminate hazards to public health,” Program Director Robert Toole said.
The effort includes removing dangerous high walls left over from surface mining, clearing hazardous water bodies and cleaning waste dumps and facilities. When the sites are cleaned, the program reseeds the area, allowing grass and other plants to grow again.
The Abandoned Mine Land Program oversees the sites until they are approved by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.
“We want to make sure when we are released from them that they are in the best shape they can possible get in so the landowners do not have any significant maintenance issues,” Toole said.
Oklahoma is considered a minimum program state because of its relatively small number of mines shut in before 1977, when federal law required reclamation before mines close. As a minimum program state, Oklahoma is eligible for up to $3 million each year in reclamation grants. The 2018 grant is up from $2.7 million last year, and $2.6 million in 2016.
“Restoring the usability of abandoned mine lands is an example of the Department of the Interior's multiple-use mission of conservation in action,” U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said in a statement. “AML (abandoned mine land) grants keep Americans working and making a difference in their communities ... AML reclamation makes life better in our nation's coal communities.”
Cleanup costs vary widely by site and contamination level. Easier projects can cost about $100,000, Toole said. The program last month began work on its most expensive and difficult effort to date — an estimated $2.7 million abandoned surface mine cleanup in Rogers County, northeast of Tulsa
“That will be an overa-year-long project,” Toole said.
The state's surface and underground coal mines are concentrated in 16 counties in eastern Oklahoma, with 42 percent of the state's abandoned surface mines in Rogers County.