Pennsylvania has, for years, played a huge role in coal mining. In fact, the mining done in PA helped fuel the Industrial Revolution, but it left behind a lot of coal waste.
Another new project aims to fix that.
There is a huge pile of coal mine waste in Ehrenfeld, Cambria County. The pile is right in the community’s backyard. The acid mine drainage coming off the pile is impacting the community.
The Department of Environmental Protection has a plan and teamed up with the U.S. Department of the Interior Thursday to kick off the beginning of work to remediate and reclaim the abandoned mine site. Work on the 62-acre site will help solve water quality issues, take the refuse pile and move it to a mine site that needs to be reclaimed, and it will help create 40 jobs for laid-off coal workers in the community.
More than $25 million will go into the Ehrenfeld Reclamation Project at no cost to the community.
Disposing material from the coal pile alone costs a little over $12,700,000. All of that is funded through grant money.
Around $13,400,000 is coming from a grant specifically designed for a project like this one; the grant is called the Abandoned Mine Lands Economic Revitalization Pilot Program Grant in PA. The state was one of three to receive $30 million in the initial federal grant program.
The project in Ehrenfeld will get $3.5 million from the pilot program grant.
“What we’re doing here is taking some of that hard-earned money that was put into reclamation funding and using it to reclaim these lands so that the community of Ehrenfeld and other communities like it in Pennsylvania and surrounding states can look to the future,” said U.S Dept. of Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
The project will also help in reforesting the area and help reconnect a trail from Ehrenfeld all the way down to Johnstown and the Flood Memorial.