Reclamation

A new report from the Western Organization of Resource Councils estimates that reclamation activities could create over 6,000 full-time jobs in Western states and provides recommendations for policymakers.

As coal companies struggle to transfer their mining permits during bankruptcy, environmental liabilities are unaccounted for.

“The simple reality is that the proposed carbon capture retrofit at the San Juan Generating Station is not financially viable,” said a co-author of a study dismantling the promoter’s pitch.

Research around post-coal reclamation possibilities at Colstrip Power Plant sees more than 200 jobs year in and year out, a sizeable number for the town of Colstrip, population 2,100.

Community activists in Colstrip, Mont., are urging the corporate owner of Colstrip Power Plant to invest in the excavation and removal of its coal-ash ponds once two of the plant’s three electricity-generating units shut down in 2022. A report by the Northern Plains Resource Council concludes that such a reclamation initiative would help sustain the town’s declining economy. “Doing a thorough cleanup now will employ more people, make the land more attractive to businesses and industries looking to come to Colstrip and potentially will keep taxpayers from footing the bill.”

Researchers at Duke University have published a visually-rich study showing how surface mining has spread over the years in Central Appalachia, leaving behind a deeply-scarred 32,000-square-mile landscape across Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Virginia. The study notes the growing difficulties facing coal companies as coal seams are tapped out and as they have to move three times as much earth as they did 30 years ago to produce a ton of coal. The researchers want to make their findings available to local and state governments to help identify sites that qualify for federal reclamation money, including through the Abandoned Mine Lands pilot program and the RECLAIM Act.

In a pilot project to reclaim land left mostly barren from the closure of Kentucky’s first mountaintop removal coal mine, nonprofit developers plan to open the 12,500-acre Appalachian Wildlife Center by 2020. The idea is to “kick off economic diversity based on conservation instead of coal mining,” says a wildlife biologist leading the initiative. Construction began in June with $35 million raised from donors and the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement. Plans include expectations that the center will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.