From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):
A lot of people aren’t familiar with Pennsylvania’s dirty little secret: the decades-old legacy of toxic pollution from coal mining that scars communities all across Pennsylvania.
We often hear about illegal polluters in the news or imagine industrial pollution being spewed from a pipe. But many Pennsylvanians aren’t aware that the single largest source of contamination for our state’s rivers and streams is actually old mining pollution—a whopping 5,500 miles of streams are continually polluted by legacy coal mining.1
Ask your Congressperson to support the effort to clean up this pollution today at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=32050.
Pennsylvania is Ground Zero for legacy mining pollution: an incredible 1/3 of the nation’s total abandoned mine land problems are found right here in Pennsylvania. And it will costs billions of dollars to clean them up and protect the public.2
This pollution is more than an eyesore. It puts the health of our environment and local residents at risk and it’s a massive drag on local economies trying to bring in new families and businesses.
But there’s hope: a bipartisan group of congresspeople led by Pennsylvania Congressman Matt Cartwright from the Scranton area and Congressman Glenn Thompson from State College have introduced legislation to fund the cleanup of these blighted sites here in Pennsylvania and across the nation.3 It’s called the RECLAIM Act (HR 2156).
Email your Congressperson and ask them to support this legislation today.
The legislation being put forth by Congressman Cartwright and others would allocate $300 million to Pennsylvania’s struggling coal-country communities to clean up pollution from abandoned mines. This funding can be used to treat water pollution created by coal mine drainage, sell and fill abandoned mines, and restore land contaminated by mine waste.
This legislation is good for our planet, good for our health, and good for improving the quality of life for many Pennsylvania communities, so I hope you’ll help build support for this legislation by emailing your congressperson today.
Then, share this alert with friends and family and ask them to do the same.
If you don’t live in a community that’s experienced pollution from abandoned coal mines, this pollution may feel far away and out of sight. But it can’t be out of mind. Help me make sure we can protect all Pennsylvanians from pollution that puts our health and communities at risk.
- “Draft 2018 Pennsylvania Integrated Water Quality Monitoring and Assessment Report,” Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, 2019.
- Reid Frazier. “Abandoned mines across state to get $55M in cleanup money,” State Impact, May 8, 2018.
- Rep. Cartwright Introduces Bipartisan Bill to Invest in Coal Country,” Congressman Matt Cartwright, 8th District of Pennsylvania, April 10, 2019.
Image: Acid mine contamination by Nicholas A Tonelli via Flickr
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