In Luzerne County, in northeast Pennsylvania, the Nanticoke Creek is dry most of the time because unless there’s a major storm, any water that flows into it disappears into underground voids created by coal mines that operated there for decades until the 1960s.
The creek has long been a target for restoration by Earth Conservancy, a local nonprofit that works to repair the harms caused by the area’s past reliance on coal mining. Now, thanks to more federal money for mine reclamation from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the group can afford to line a three-mile section of the creek with an impervious layer of clay so that its water will flow again rather than disappearing into the old mine.
More of the infrastructure money, $244 million for Pennsylvania alone, was announced on April 3 by the Biden administration, boosting existing efforts by the state to remediate the harms left behind by mining such as subsidence, water pollution and the destruction of natural waterways.
Earth Conservancy was already promised $17.5 million of federal infrastructure funds to restore the creek, a sum that it expects will enable it to do the whole job in three to five years, starting this summer, much quicker than would have been possible under earlier funding restrictions.
“Because of this injection of funding from the infrastructure bill, this grant is the largest we have ever received for any type of reclamation project. It’s fully funded now. We’ll be able to complete this project in a much shorter time frame,” said Terry Ostrowski, chief executive of the nonprofit. “The major benefit that we’re seeing from the funding from the infrastructure law is that the grants are larger and we’re able to handle larger projects in a shorter period of time.”
In addition to lining the creek, the money will also be used to remove a stream blockage that was left behind by the mine company when it declared bankruptcy in the 1990s.
An earlier Earth Conservancy restoration of another creek that did not win federal infrastructure money took six years to complete, even though the damaged section was much smaller and required the “stitching together” of multiple funding sources, Ostrowski said.
Pennsylvania’s share of the new money is the largest state allocation in 2023 fiscal year funding under the federal Abandoned Mine Land program.
“Legacy pollution continues to impact far too many communities across the nation,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland in a statement. “Reclaiming and restoring these sites will create jobs, revitalize economic activity, and advance outdoor recreation across the country.”
The infrastructure law includes $11.3 billion in abandoned mine land (AML) funding over 15 years, a sum that’s expected to address “nearly all” of the abandoned mines that are currently inventoried, according to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, a unit of the Department of the Interior.
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