Political bickering stalls efforts to clean abandoned mines

About 3.6 million people live within a mile of potentially dangerous sites.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) -- Freida Williams doesn't sleep much at night, worrying that a wall of water could roar down the neighboring mountain and destroy the Whitesville home she has lived in since 1954.
Two coal mines abandoned about 50 years ago are located about 1,000 yards away. Through the years, they have filled with water from rain and melted snow.
Another coal company is using dynamite to build a new mine, and Williams worries that the tremors from blasting could cause the old mines to crumble, sending untold gallons of water her way.
Like Williams, about 3.6 million people in 24 states live within a mile of potentially dangerous former coal mines or land that was damaged in mining activity, according to the federal Office of Surface Mining.
About 2.7 million of them live in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
In 1977, the federal government promised to clean up the sites, but a lot more work remains to be done. For political reasons, Congress isn't distributing $1.6 billion in a fund created to clean up former mines and correct mining-related problems in 24 states and on the land of four Indian tribes.
Authority set to expire
If lawmakers don't act soon, their authority to collect money from coal companies to put into the Abandoned Mine Land Fund will expire Sept. 30. The Bush administration wants the fund extended to 2014 because about $3 billion worth of reclamation work is still unfinished.
West Virginia has a backlog of at least $733 million worth of reclamation work to do on sites listed as top priorities, according to officials with the state Division of Environmental Protection.
Companies pay either 35 cents or 15 cents per ton of coal they extract, depending on how it was mined, and 10 cents per ton of lignite, a type of coal used to generate electricity largely in the Southwest.
The National Mining Association, a lobbying group, said coal companies have paid about $6.5 billion into the fund since 1977 but less than half that money has been spent to reclaim mine sites.
The rest is sitting in the fund or states and Indian tribes are using it for programs that aren't related to mine reclamation, critics say, suggesting that mismanagement is why hundreds of former mines still are awaiting cleanup. Critics also question why Congress is not parting with the $1.6 billion in the fund.
Angered by bickering
Williams and others who live in coal country are furious at the political bickering among states, members of Congress and Indian tribes over retooling the funds distribution formula.
"What's happening here in the coalfields should not be happening to the people within the borders of the United States," she said. "We have any number of mining sites that need to be reclaimed for the protection of the people and the wildlife."
Meg Moore of the Citizens Coal Council, a grass-roots coalition of coalfield residents, said Congress should set aside partisanship to protect poor and politically voiceless people from potential harm. How the fund is retooled doesn't interest her as long as coal companies are required to continue paying to clean up.
"All we really care about is getting the money to fix the problems next to so-and-so's house," she said.
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., whose district includes West Virginia's southern coalfields, has co-authored a fund-extending bill with Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., but he warns it will be "a very steep, uphill battle."
"There are those who would rather just see it die," Rahall said.
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