Athens’ rolling landscape is beautiful on the surface, but a history of unregulated resource extraction has left a much grimmer reality in what lies beneath.
Southeast Ohio’s landscape blankets an intricate and vast system of corridors and tunnels that reveals the areas that were heavily mined in the past. Abandoned and sealed off, Athens County coal mines are causing the hills to “bleed.”
Acid mine drainage, the major pollutant of underground abandoned mines, is water that has been exposed to high levels of sulfuric acid and iron as it runs through the old mines, said Guy Riefler, an environmental engineering professor at Ohio University whose research is focused on acid mine drainage reclamation.
In Ohio, there are 6,000 abandoned underground coal mines that exist beneath 600,000 acres of land, the majority of which are in Eastern and Southeast Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website. By 1972, decades of poorly regulated mining caused problems, including 1,300 miles of streams polluted by acid mine drainage, 500 miles of streams affected by sediment deposition and almost 119,000 acres of land in need of major reclamation efforts.
When the coal mines were built, large pillars of coal were left to prevent the roofs of the mines from caving in, Riefler said. Pipes ran throughout to drain water so the mines stayed dry, but when they were abandoned, those caverns filled up with water.
“(The coal miners) would just follow the seam as far as it goes and take as much coal as they can and then, at the time, there was no regulation for what to do after they were done, so they just walked away,” Riefler said.
The polluted water, which has a high acidity level, drains out at the lowest point of the mine, Riefler said. At several locations throughout the county, an orange-red slurry seeps from the hillside and creates large deposits of acid mine drainage.
When the sulfuric acid, iron and other heavy metals reach aquatic ecosystems, the environment often becomes uninhabitable, Riefler said.
“In the streams, fish and aquatic wildlife species are really sensitive to pH,” he said. “So the sulfuric acid drops the pH in the stream, and it doesn’t take much to really kill fish at a low pH.”
Though most aquatic life can survive in water with low acidic content, most acid mine drainage seeps can create acidity levels that are too high to inhabit, said Nate Schlater, watershed coordinator for the Monday Creek Restoration Project, a nonprofit program of Rural Action Inc. working to foster social, economic and environmental justice in Appalachian Ohio.
In addition to pH reductions, acid mine drainage metals such as iron and aluminum tend to concentrate in streambeds, Schlater said.
“Besides the metals in the water affecting aquatic life, as the metals settle out on the streambed, they cause sedimentation to occur, decreasing habitat quality,” he said.
The ODNR is the primary agency that cleans up mines in the area, Riefler said.
In addition, groups of residents have formed to help the ODNR with acid mine drainage reclamation efforts such as the Monday Creek Restoration Project.
Raccoon Creek, Monday Creek and parts of Sunday Creek ecosystems, which all run through Athens County, have been significantly improved because of ODNR and watershed groups efforts during the past 30 years, Riefler said.
One of the easiest ways to reduce acid mine drainage is to prevent water from getting into the mines in the first place, Riefler said. This can be achieved by finding and sealing off old mine entries.
If there’s still acid mine drainage after entries are sealed off, the pollution must be treated as it comes out, Riefler said. This can be done through the use of constructed wetlands, vertical flow wetlands, steal slag leach beds, limestone leach beds or “dosers,” which “dose” alkali directly into the acid mine drainage.
The primary objective of these technologies is to raise the pH level, Riefler added.
The ODNR has carried out about 160 reclamation projects in Athens County, which are both state and federally funded “Abandoned Mine Land” projects, said Lanny Erdos, chief of the ODNR Division of Mineral Resources Management.
Raccoon Creek, Monday Creek and Sunday Creek watersheds have all been given Acid Mine Drainage Abatement and Treatment plans that guide reclamation efforts, Erdos said.
According to the 2011 Stream Health Report generated by the Non-Point Source Monitoring System, between 2005 and 2009, 158 out of 192 monitored stream miles in Raccoon Creek, Monday Creek and Sunday Creek watersheds met their pH target. During this time period, 35 reclamation projects were completed in the three watersheds, totaling a cost of more than $17.5 million dollars.
Riefler said the ODNR and watershed groups are continually trying to find new ways to improve acid mine drainage problems, but there is still a lot of work to do.
“They’ve really improved water quality in those streams, but these mines continue to seep acid mine drainage and will probably (continue to do so) for the next 100 or 200 years,” he said.
ls114509@ohiou.edu
