Mining Cash / Exclusive Lawmakers Waging Battle Over
By DAVE JANOSKI [email protected]
Sunday, July 17, 2005 Page: 1A
Like many natives of the anthracite coal fields, Jacqueline Bertrand rarely
gave a second thought to the sometimes dangerous mine fires, culm banks and
strip pits that pepper the region.
“You just don’t hear about it until a tragedy happens.”
Tragedy comes often in old strippings, shafts and spoil piles across
Pennsylvania, which leads the nation in deaths on abandoned mine sites. The
victims include Bertrand’s only son, Jim. The 30-year-old, 6-foot-8 volunteer
firefighter she called her “gentle giant” drowned when a Jeep he was riding in
plunged into a strip mine pit a few miles from her home on West Union Street
in April 2004.
Five people had drowned in the same pit in January 1998 when their Jeep
broke through the frozen surface.
“If people are getting hurt in particular areas, or losing their lives in
particular areas, they should make this a priority,” Bertrand said. “How many
lives have to be lost before it’s a priority?”
The Newport Township site is a priority, according to the U.S. Office of
Surface Mining’s list of abandoned mine properties eligible for federal
reclamation funds. But Luzerne County has 799 other sites on the priority
list, too. It would take decades, and more than $450 million, to fix them all,
according to federal data.
And it might take even longer, depending on the outcome of a debate in
Congress regarding extending the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Act, which funds
such projects.
The debate essentially pits Western states, whose modern coal mines pay
most of the per-ton fees that fund the program, against Eastern states, which
have most of the pre-1977 abandoned mine sites the program was designed to
reclaim. Partisans on each side have accused the other of using federal
reclamation funds on projects that do nothing to protect the public from
mining hazards.
With the authorization for the per-ton fees to expire in September, or June
that would revamp the program.
Both Wyoming Republican Barbara Cubin and Pennsylvania Republican John
Peterson say their bills would return the program to its original focus:
reclaiming sites that present a direct danger to the public.
Peterson, whose district encompasses 16 counties in northwest and
north-central Pennsylvania, claims the current program has become “a
multimillion-dollar slush fund for Wyoming,” which has few pre-1977 sites and
so has used $90 million in reclamation funds for roads, water projects and
university construction.
He argues Cubin’s bill would siphon $1 billion to Western states, money
that could be spent in states such as Pennsylvania, which has the largest
number of abandoned mine sites in the country.
Supporters of Cubin’s bill say Western states, which have more active mines
and supply most of the program’s money, deserve a larger share of the
proceeds.
They say Eastern states, and Pennsylvania in particular, have been allowed
to use reclamation funds on mine-related problems that do not present a hazard
to the public or property.
Cubin, whose state provides 40 percent of the per-ton fees that fund the
abandoned mine program, did not respond to interview requests for this story,
but in a recent news release, she said:
“No matter how you look at it, Wyoming money is being used to clean up
Eastern problems. If cleaning up abandoned mines is a national problem, we
ought to have a national solution. One state shouldn’t be asked to pick up
almost half of the check. My bill will get the money where it needs to be –
back to states so they can finish the job in cleaning up abandoned mines.”
Under the current rules, each state receives federal reclamation funds
roughly equal to 50 percent of the per-ton fees collected in that state. The
federal government parcels out the remainder to reclamation projects in the
states with major abandoned-mine problems.
Cubin’s bill would guarantee that Wyoming would receive funding equal to
form of reclamation funds plus a share of the fees mining companies pay to
mine on federal land.
Peterson’s competing bill would stop the funding of non-reclamation
projects in states like Wyoming, direct more money to states with the most
pre-1977 sites and cut the expected timeline for fixing all of Pennsylvania’s
sites from 50 years to 25 years.
“I understand the donor states wanting to get some of their money back,”
Peterson said. “I don’t understand donor states thinking they should get every
nickel back. Their dangerous sites are cleaned up. For them to get all of
their money back defeats the purpose of the program.”
Tom Rathbun, a spokesman for the state Office of Mineral Resources
Management, which administers the federal program, disputed claims from
supporters of Cubin’s bill that Pennsylvania has used reclamation funds for
non-priority projects.
The federal program was designed to fix problems ranked as “priority 1” or
“priority 2” – problems that present a hazard to people or property. He
acknowledged that the federal government has allowed Pennsylvania to address
some problems of lesser priority when those problems are on the same site as a
priority 1 or 2 problem.
“If it has some priority 3 features, it would be ridiculous to leave that
behind. You go in and you do the site. We go in and follow the law,” Rathbun
said.
“If you wait 20 years and then have to re-permit the site and get the
approval from the landowner all over again, you’d increase the cost of
cleaning it up by 50 percent.”
In recent years, Pennsylvania has received an average of $25 million per
year through the federal reclamation program. It has received a total of $460
million since the program began, more than any other state.
“We have a quarter-million acres of abandoned mine land — the most in the
country – and we hope that Congress comes to some sort of resolution to this
and continues funding,” Rathbun said.
U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, said the likely outcome is a
compromise between the two bills.
“I would favor all the money going to Pennsylvania, but that’s not going to
happen. This ends up being a trading situation.
“You have to get 51 votes in the Senate and they have tremendous leverage
in the West.”
Kanjorski noted that Luzerne and Lackawanna counties have sites that will
cost more than $500 million to fix. The total for all Pennsylvania sites is
nearly $5 billion.
“The reality is we have to get an abandoned-mine bill passed. If we don’t
stay working on this, it will take us hundreds of years to fix these
problems.”
Despite the scale of the local problem, some progress has been made. About
$76 million has been spent or allocated to reclaim sites in Luzerne County
since the program began. Luzerne County now has 13 projects in the design
phase and five in construction.
One of those in construction, and one of the largest funded by the program,
is the ongoing reclamation of the Curry Hill-Avondale site on a Plymouth
Township mountaintop, which features a 136-acre pit.
It will take nearly $4 million and 2 1/2 years to fill the pit with 5
million cubic yards of rubble and dirt from the surrounding hillside – five
times the amount of earth that was moved in the 1960s to create the
now-exposed pit beneath the World Trade Center site.
Earth Conservancy, the non-profit that owns the Avondale site and the
Newport site where Bertrand drowned, hopes to study the possibility of
building homes at Avondale, which offers a panoramic view of the southern end
of Wyoming Valley.
Conservancy Executive Director Mike Dziak said a reauthorization of the
federal program that would preserve funding for Pennsylvania projects is
essential to the conservancy’s plans to reclaim, preserve and develop 16,000
acres of former mine lands it acquired through the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in
“It’s huge. We’ve lobbied our senators and congressmen and they’re behind
it. They want to get it resolved.”
Dziak declined comment on the Bertrand drowning because Jacqueline Bertrand
has sued the conservancy, alleging it allowed its land to be used for
recreation without ensuring its safety. But in documents filed in Luzerne
County Court, the conservancy’s attorneys argue the driver of the Jeep in
which Bertrand was riding did not heed posted warnings that vehicles are
barred from the site.
The driver survived the crash. No criminal charges were filed in connection
with Bertrand’s death.
Coming Monday and Tuesday: An Associated Press series on the hazards and
challenges of abandoned mine lands in Pennsylvania entitled “Trouble
Underground.”
