Paying to Clean Up Mining Mess
By Larry Bivins
Tennessean Washington Bureau
March 21, 2004

WASHINGTON — Ask Donnie Partin why he was in Washington a couple of weeks ago, and he might point to the red water pooling on part of his 300-acre Scott County property, making the area unfit for farming.

He might cite the dangerous stretch of Jelico Creek Road that is blamed for several vehicle accidents because of debris spilling over from an abandoned mine site. Or he might talk about the general health, safety and environmental dangers in communities of the Cumberland Plateau.

That's why Partin came to the nation's capital to lobby for more federal funding for Tennessee to clean up abandoned mine land areas. The state has 283 problem sites, mostly in the Cumberland Plateau, among the thousands abandoned since the boom days of coal mining. Thousands of Tennesseans live near these sites.

''For the last 30 years, they've just been sitting there making a mess,'' Partin said.

Environmental groups say silt and acid drainage from abandoned mines destroy waterways. The sites become illegal dumping grounds for residential and industrial waste. They cause landslides, flooding and sink holes. The sites also detract from the economic viability of the community.

The 47-year-old facility technician for BellSouth said he has been working on the issue for about 30 months as a member of Save Our Cumberland Mountains, a citizens group that organized the recent lobbying trip.

The group wants Congress to reauthorize the Abandoned Mine Land program, created under a 1977 law to address the cleanup of damage caused by unregulated mining. The program is set to expire in September.

The group also wants Congress to make Tennessee eligible for the minimum $2 million grant available to states with abandoned mines. Currently, the state applies for these grants on a case-by-case emergency basis. It also wants the grant to be raised to $4 million.

With that amount of money, advocates say, Tennessee would be able to complete $33 million in reclamation projects in about 10 years, instead of the 25 years it would take at the current funding level.

''Mining lands can be a serious health and environmental threat,'' Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said at a Senate hearing on extending the abandoned mine program. ''It keeps some of the poorest counties in Tennessee from cleaning up their land and water and getting themselves in a position to attract and create good new jobs.''

Money for cleaning up abandoned mine land comes from a fund created by a 35-cents-per-ton tax on mining companies. The fund has about $1.5 billion available, but citizens groups and some lawmakers worry that money could be used to pay down the national debt if Congress fails to extend the program's authority.

''When these taxes are collected for a purpose, they should be spent for that purpose,'' said David Beaty, another member of the Cumberland group. ''There are strip mines all around me. It's a huge problem, but it's hard to get these folks to recognize it.''

The Senate is considering two bills, both of which would extend the program 15 years and cut the fees paid by mining companies by 20%. One proposal pushed by the Bush administration would provide money from the abandoned mine fund to coal companies to use for the performance bond they must post to ensure they clean up after mining.

The other proposal would automatically give Tennessee the minimum annual cleanup grant of $2 million for its reclamation efforts. The state at one time had ''minimum program'' status but lost it after 1984 when it abandoned its regulatory program, a requirement for receiving the funding.

Tim Eagle, land reclamation manager for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said regaining minimum program status would enhance the state's annual planning and accelerate its reclamation effort.

''The beauty of it is I would know what my funding level is going to be every year,'' Eagle said. ''Right now, it's sort of piecemeal, and we would like stable funding.''

The state recently won a $250,000 grant to clean up the site at Jelico Creek Road, he said.

Through July of last year, the state had reclaimed 900 acres of abandoned mine land at a cost of $7.7 million in state funding, officials said. Another 1,500 acres were cleaned up using $17.2 million in federal dollars.

Eagle said the state has targeted 9,500 acres in 22 counties that remain to be reclaimed, with 1,800 acres considered high priority sites.

''Tennessee is the only non-program state that has a significant number of coal mines,'' Eagle said. ''It has a number of health and safety problems that aren't being funded.''

Alexander and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Pall Mall, are supporting the push for increased funding.

''We've got some of the most pristine streams in the Cumberland Plateau,'' Davis said. ''We've got wonderful places, and I just want to be sure they don't get polluted by something that happened 40, 50 years ago.''

Scott County's Partin wants to be sure that the streams and ponds that already are polluted get cleaned up. The money is available, he said, so he has turned to Washington lawmakers for answers.

''If this money was being collected, why can't we get it?'' Partin asked. ''Why do we have to keep putting up with red water, high walls and ponds full of mosquitos? That's why I came to Washington.''