{"id":416522,"date":"2026-01-19T10:07:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/416522\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T10:07:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T10:07:24","slug":"coal-communities-accuse-congress-of-breaking-its-promise-to-clean-up-abandoned-mine-lands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/416522\/","title":{"rendered":"Coal Communities Accuse Congress of Breaking Its Promise to Clean Up Abandoned Mine Lands"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law in 2021, authorizing more than $11 billion in new funding<\/a> to reclaim lands and waterways damaged by abandoned coal mines, the people who lead this work on the ground were ecstatic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were to the moon,\u201d said Amanda Pitzer, the executive director at Friends of the Cheat, a nonprofit organization in West Virginia that works to restore the Cheat River watershed. \u201cOnce that big influx of money was announced, with West Virginia on track to receive $2.1 billion over those 15 years, we thought, \u2018Now\u2019s the time. Now\u2019s the time to invest in water treatment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But Congress wants to claw back some of that funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that would withdraw $500 million<\/a> of the money allocated in 2021 for abandoned mine cleanup projects. The states that stand to lose the most are Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and Kentucky, according to an analysis by Appalachian Voices<\/a>, an environmental organization that works on conservation issues in central and southern Appalachia. The bill must still pass the Senate, which plans to take it up this week, and be signed by the president before it becomes law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re horribly disappointed,\u201d Pitzer said. \u201cLess money means less reclamation, period.\u201d Among the projects that Pitzer\u2019s organization champions are the building and maintenance of treatment systems that clean up acid mine drainage, a type of pollution that harms aquatic wildlife.<\/p>\n

In West Virginia, she said, Abandoned Mine Land funding has also been used to help build public water lines in communities where pollution has affected drinking water supplies. Although significant progress has been made in cleaning up the Cheat River since the 1990s, much more work remains to be done, Pitzer said.<\/p>\n

The House bill proposes using the siphoned funding to pay for wildland fire management and U.S. Forest Service operations. \u201cI think it\u2019s highly inappropriate of Congress to rob Peter to pay Paul,\u201d said Andy McAllister, the regional coordinator of the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McAllister was particularly upset about the \u201cyes\u201d votes from Pennsylvania\u2019s congressional delegation in the House. All but one member voted for the bill<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania has the most abandoned mines of any state, McAllister said. Decades of coal mining in Pennsylvania have created a range of environmental and public safety problems<\/a>, from underground fires and subsidence to sinkholes and pollution affecting more than 5,500 miles<\/a> of waterways.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection estimated it would need $5 billion<\/a> to fully remediate abandoned mine lands and the waterways they contaminated. Forty-five of Pennsylvania\u2019s 67 counties are impacted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottom line is, just like it always is, we got more problems than we got money,\u201d McAllister said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts are worried that this \u201crepurposing\u201d of the fund could continue beyond this year, with Congress dipping into the money for other reasons. \u201cThe AML fund is not a slush fund,\u201d Pitzer said. \u201cIt just feels very shortsighted.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"DecadesDecades of remediation work in West Virginia\u2019s Cheat River watershed has brought wildlife back to the river. \u201cA river that was dead as a doornail now has fish from headwaters to mouth,\u201d said Amanda Pitzer, the executive director at the Friends of the Cheat. Credit: Courtesy of Friends of the Cheat<\/p>\n

Kevin Zedack, government affairs specialist at Appalachian Voices, said his group assumes that passing this bill will lead to an annual reduction in funding. Zedack and McAllister said they have not heard back from legislators they\u2019ve reached out to with their concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The offices of Pennsylvania\u2019s senators, Republican Dave McCormick and Democrat John Fetterman, did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Climate News.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zedack and McAllister both pointed out that the loss of funding will harm local economies. Unremediated mine land can\u2019t be used for development, for example.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cProjects that are funded through this provide jobs in historically depressed areas,\u201d McAllister said. Those opportunities can help to offset job losses from the declining coal industry.<\/p>\n

Joe Pizarchik, the former head of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which oversees AML funding, grew up in western Pennsylvania. The region is also losing out on huge amounts of tourism revenue, he said. Many waterways are so impaired by mining pollution that they can\u2019t be used for fishing or recreation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pizarchik said this isn\u2019t the first time the federal government has reduced the funding available to help communities in coal country since the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was first passed in 1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a fee put in place on every ton of coal produced to help clean up the messes of the past,\u201d he said. Over time, the fees have shrunk<\/a>. \u201cCongress is taking back money again to continue to punish the impoverished communities that have been suffering for a century,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the federal government, it\u2019s a drop in the bucket,\u201d said Bobby Hughes, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. \u201cTo us here in Pennsylvania, it\u2019s a vital and essential lifeline to doing more projects in our local communities. We are living the impacts of this legacy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pitzer agreed. \u201cThe program was initially structured to collect a fee to pay for sins of the past, and that money should stay in coal country. It should not be redirected to other needs and other places,\u201d Pitzer said. \u201cThis was a promise made to these communities and raiding the fund is breaking that promise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n

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Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.<\/p>\n

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Thank you,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKiley Bense\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tReporter, Pennsylvania<\/p>\n

Kiley Bense covers climate change and the environment with a focus on Pennsylvania, politics, energy, and public health. She has reported on the effects of the\u00a0fracking boom in\u00a0Pennsylvania, the expansion of the American plastics industry, and the intersection of climate change and culture. Her previous work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, the Believer, and Sierra Magazine, and she holds master\u2019s degrees in journalism and creative writing from Columbia University. She is based in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law in 2021, authorizing more than $11 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[199361,58638,199362,16410,27982,199363,199364,167248,1340,192,42283,5649,26834,79,7943],"class_list":["post-416522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-abandoned-mine-land","tag-appalachia","tag-appalachian-coal","tag-cleanup","tag-coal","tag-coal-mine","tag-coal-mines","tag-coal-mining","tag-congress","tag-environment","tag-environmental-justice","tag-house-of-representatives","tag-infrastructure-investment-and-jobs-act","tag-science","tag-west-virginia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}