Federal Funds Drive Tennessee Coal Cleanup
By Matthew S.L. Cate
Chattanooga Times Free Press
May 16, 2004

Coalmont, Tenn.- Steve Hayes and his crew have moved a lot of dirt around here, trying to return 172 acres of hillside to what it was like before mine workers in the 1960s gutted it, took out the coal and left.

"It was just a mess," said Mr. Hayes, who works for McMinnville-based Custom Construction C., the firm contracted to reclaim the old Grundy County mine off Lockheart Road. "It was useless the way it was. And dangerous."

When Mr. Hayes' crew completes the work here around Thanksgiving, there will be plenty of similar jobs for his company to bid on, according to state officials.

"There are thousands of separate mine sites, and I'm talking thousands," said Tim Eagle, program manager of the state's abandoned Lands Section. "And there are so many out there we don't know about."

Environmentalists and state officials said Congress must renew by Sept. 30 the federal fee program that provides money to clean up abandoned mines. They said they hope Congress restructures the way the money is distributed.

Under the current structure, just over half of a state's allocation comes from current mining operations and the rest is based on historic coal production.

States where coal mining boomed after the law was enacted in 1977, like Wyoming, usually receive more for cleanup than states such as Tennessee, where the coal production heydays are mostly over.

Carolyn Johnson, staff director for Citizens Coal Council, said reauthorizing the fee and reworking the rate structure for Tennessee to receive more money will "really take some energetic activity" by Tennessee's congressional delegation.

If Congress does not reauthorize the Abandoned Mine Lang Program fee, there will be little or no further reclamation work in Tennessee, Mr. Eagle and state officials said.

Tennessee gets about $1 million to $1.5 million a year for reclamation work, he said, although about 11,000 acres of Tennessee mining sites are in "critical shape."

The estimated cost to clean up Tennessee's abandoned sites is about $33.7 million, according to the U.S. Office of Surface Mining.

Most of Tennessee's cleanup needs are along the Cumberland Plateau. Thirteen counties represented by U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, D-Pall Mall, need nearly $25 million in reclamation work.

"At (the current) rate, it's going to be 30 years before this is all done," said Rep. Davis' spokesman, Tom Hayden. "We need to increase the authorization level."

Rep. Davis and seven other Tennessee congressmen wrote a letter last fall to the House Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee urging reauthorization and a rate structure change.

Mr. Eagle said the most common problems in Tennnessee's abandoned mines are the high clifflike walls left when a strip mine removes a hillside to expose a coal seam. Other concerns include deep water pits, usually around the high walls, as well as old hazardous equipment left to rust in underground mine shafts.

Mr. Hayes said his work in Grundy County mostly includes fixing high walls and moving about 1 million pounds of dirt from where it was dumped back to where it came from. His crew then will spread about 1,000 pounds of fertilizer, 12 tons of lime and 170 pounds of grass seed for every acre.

Mr. Eagle said the state had a mining regulatory program between 1982-84 under then-Gov. Lamar Alexander. When the state rescinded its program, he said, the abandoned lands section did nothing but add sites to the increasingly growing list of areas needing reclamation.