Over 11,000 coal mines abandoned before 1977 have not been cleaned up or reclaimed, according to an official inventory by the Office of Surface Mining. These sites are gaping scars on the land that cause landslides, sinkholes, blow-outs and floods. The majority of sites are in the coal fields of Appalachia - Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, Alabama, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The clean-up will cost, conservatively, an estimated $4.2 billion.

When the federal law regulating coal mining, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, was enacted in 1977, it contained a section requiring clean-up and reclamation of old mines. Every year, OSM collects more than $350 million in fees from coal operators for this work; these funds are deposited into the Abandoned Mine Land (AML) Trust Fund. However, only a portion of the funds collected are released for mine clean-up. Today, over $1.2 billion collected and earmarked for this work sits unspent in the US Treasury.

Taking OSM's cost estimate to finish clean-up and dividing by the annual federal grant OSM pays each state or tribe for clean-up, the states that will take the longest time to clean-up are: Alabama - 111 years to complete; Oklahoma - 93 years; Virginia - 88 years; Missouri - 69 years; Pennsylvania - 55 years; Kansas - 46 years; West Virginia - 39 years; Alaska - 31 years; Iowa - 25 years and Kentucky - 24 years.

By contrast, some states and tribes get federal AML money when they either have no need for it or can complete clean-up with less. Wyoming, for example, has one site left to clean at an estimated $100,000, but the state got $22 million in fiscal year 1997. Louisiana has never had any sites at all on the AML inventory but gets an annual clean-up grant of $94,703. (Louisiana Representative Bob Livingston chairs the House Appropriations Committee.)

The Abandoned Mine Land Trust Fund fee-collection authority will come up for re-authorization by Congress within six years. Although the need is great, it will be difficult for Congress to justify continuing the program if the federal government won't spend the money it collects. Pressure needs to be put on Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt to increase the annual funding request from Congress for abandoned mine land reclamation. Please contact Babbitt at 18th and "C" Streets NW, Washington, DC 20240. For more information, contact the Citizens Coal Council, 110 Maryland NE, #408, Washington DC 20002; (202) 544-6210.