Underground fires, toxins in unfunded cleanup of old mines
Underground fires, toxins in unfunded cleanup of old mines
28 January 2017
published by http://finance.yahoo.com
USA PRESTON COUNTY, W.Va. (AP) An underground coal mine fire burns beneath a sprawling hillside in West Virginia, the pale, acrid smoke rising from gashes in the scarred, muddy earth only a stone’s throw from some houses.
The fire, which may have started with arson, lightning or a forest fire, smoldered for several years before bursting into flames last July in rural Preston County. The growing blaze moved the mine to the top of a list of thousands of problem decades-old coal sites in West Virginia awaiting cleanup and vying for limited federal funds.
State officials say $4.5 billion worth of work remains at more than 3,300 sites abandoned by coal companies before 1977, when Congress passed a law establishing a national fund for old cleanups. That program was part of an effort to heal the state from the ravages of an industry that once dominated its economy but has fallen on hard times.
“West Virginia is right at the top for needs,” said Chuck Williams, head of Alabama’s efforts and past president of the National Association of Abandoned Mine Lands Programs. He said Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia all states with a mining history that extends back two centuries account for the lion’s share of unfinished work among the 28 states and Indian tribes in the program.
Despite being one of the most affected, federal officials have only one-third of West Virginia’s proposed cleanup costs on their $7 billion national list of high-priority work. The sites include old mines that leak acidic water into streams and kill wildlife and dangerous holes that attract children. Tunnels and caverns beneath homes also need to be shored up and new water lines are needed where wells are polluted.
“Our program exists to abate health and safety hazards,” said Rob Rice, chief of the West Virginia Office of Abandoned Mine Lands and Reclamation, which is handling the mine fire. “We have so much need. It’s frustrating for us.”
Environmental improvements are a secondary but major benefit, he said.
“This whole area has been extensively mined,” said Jonathan Knight, riding recently through the exurbs east of Morgantown. A planner for the state office, he said housing developments have been built above old mines that many homeowners don’t even know about.
The state will get $23.3 million from the federal reclamation fund this year, which is replenished by fees on mining companies. The mines pay 12 cents per ton of underground coal mined and 28 cents per ton from surface mining, but the funding has dropped the past three years with a downturn in coal production.
It will cost about $1 billion just to extinguish all of West Virginia’s 43 fires in abandoned mines, according to the state office. They could have been caused by forest fires, arson, lightning strikes or even old underground explosions that never went completely out.
About $5 million will be spent to extinguish the Preston County fire, smoldering a stone’s throw from houses in a mostly rural area near the hamlet of Newburg. In October, the office spent $209,400 to cut trees and plug holes feeding the fire with oxygen.
The state office, with about 50 staff, is paid from the federal Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fund along with the contractors it hires. Together they close mine portals, extinguish fires, support collapsing hillsides and sinking houses, and treat acidic water leaking out along with dissolved metals. The need for drainage work won’t end for centuries. The grants also fund water lines to replace polluted wells.
“There’s more water within mine pools in West Virginia than there is in the lakes of West Virginia,” Rice said. “More than 2,500 miles of streams are severely degraded because of mine drainage in West Virginia.”
The state program has brought several back to life with new treatment systems.
The federal program is scheduled by law to expire in 2021, leaving behind about $2.5 billion in a trust fund expected to pay for any ongoing work needed by 25 states and three Indian tribes to address problems from pre-1977 abandoned coal mines. West Virginia has set aside about $55 million of its grant money received already for continuing water treatment funded by the interest.
The federal program has collected more than $10.5 billion in fees from coal production and distributed more than $8 billion in grants to states and tribes, according to the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. It will provide nearly $181 million in fiscal 2017.
“We continue to discover threats from left-behind mine pits, dangerous highwalls, acid mine drainage that pollutes our water supplies, and hazardous mine openings,” federal director Joe Pizarchik said earlier this year. An Obama administration appointee, he resigned effective last week.
Pollution and lurking underground dangers from mining since 1977 fall into a different category because the federal government made them the responsibility of the companies. They were required to post bonds before opening mines, with the state taking over if they default.
El capitán del primer batallón de la Unidad Militar de Emergencias (UME), Emilio Arias, ha descrito como “dantescos” los efectos del incendio forestal en el paraje natural de la Sierra de Gata (Cáceres), aunque ha sido optimista en cuanto a su extinción al darse una situación “bastante favorable” en estos momentos. Fotogalería ALCALDE 11 Fotos La Sierra de Gata, tras el incendio “El incendio se dio por estabilizado y ahora mismo sólo hay pequeños focos que se reactivan por lo que la situación es bastante adecuada para intentar extinguir el fuego”, ha explicado Arias en una entrevista en COPE. Arias ha descrito como “dantesco” el efecto del fuego en una zona “donde el terreno era precioso”. El mando único del Plan Director del Infoex decidía este lunes mantener activo el Nivel 2 de peligrosidad en el incendio de Sierra de Gata ante las previsiones de viento y altas temperaturas. Las mismas predicciones indican que habrá una mejoría a partir de las primeras horas de la noche del lunes, según ha informado la Junta de Extremadura. Más de 200 efectivos se mantienen en la zona. Intentar llegar a la normalidad es “un tanto difícil”, y que ahora hay que hacer valoraciones de los daños El incendio declarado el pasado jueves ha arrasado unas 7.500 hectáreas de alto valor agrícola, ambiental y paisajístico, de ahí que el Gobierno regional haya iniciado ya la evaluación de los daños y comenzado a preparar la recuperación de la zona. El director general de Medio Ambiente, Pedro Muñoz, ha afirmado que el incendio ha causado un “desastre” desde el punto de vista medioambiental ya que ha arrasado miles de hectáreas de pinar, olivar y pastos, además de haber producido cuantiosos daños materiales en algunas poblaciones. La asociación conservacionista SEO/Birdlife ha denunciado que el incendio afectó gravemente a especies amenazadas y a espacios protegidos de la Red Natura 2000, incluidos robledales, madroñales y castañares centenarios. Todo el área afectada es una zona ornitólogica de interés mundial. Por su parte, el alcalde de la localidad cacereña de Hoyos, Óscar Antúnez, ha alabado la participación ciudadana en el municipio para ayudar a los operarios del plan Infoex como “lo bonito dentro de la tragedia” y ha añadido que el “sentir general” de los ciudadanos de Sierra de Gata es de “frustración e indignación” tras el incendio forestal. El alcalde ha señalado que ha podido hablar con los vecinos de la localidad y que los “más afectados” son los que han perdido fincas o casas de campo, sobre todo una familia que ha perdido su domicilio de vacaciones habitual, que era una casa “recién reformada”. Asimismo, Óscar Antúnez ha indicado que intentar llegar a la normalidad es “un tanto difícil”, y que ahora hay que hacer valoraciones de los daños, tanto la Mancomunidad de Municipios de Sierra de Gata como la Junta de Extremadura, para ver qué ayudas se pueden proporcionar y de qué modo, además de cuáles serán los medios disponibles. Por último, el primer edil de Hoyos ha explicado que los vecinos, “más allá de la lamentación”, deben intentar hacer “una vida normal”, aunque ha considerado que es muy difícil “dado el paisaje que tenemos”, ya que casi el 90% del término municipal está calcinado, ha indicado.
Ver más en: http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/2532392/0/fuego/gata/dantesco/#xtor=AD-15&xts=467263
