Congress Could Move to Restore Coal Reclamation Funds

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

September 12, 2012 | 2:55 PM

There may be hope on the horizon to restore Pennsylvania’s portion of federal money used to clean up abandoned coal mines. In August, StateImpact wrote about how Congress took money from a fund used for mine reclamation, in order to help fund the surface transportation bill. The state stands to lose $178 million dollars.
The House Rules Committee will vote on a continuing resolution this afternoon, which includes language that could restore that funding.
Andy McAllister helps run the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. McAllister says he’s hopeful that at least money designated for states with serious problems, like Pennsylvania and West Virginia, may get restored, even if states like Wyoming lose their funding. But McAllister worries about the longterm impact on funding for the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act, which Congress guaranteed in 2006.
“i’m hoping we can go back to having SMCRA to the way it was,” said McAllister. “To use it to cover other bills makes me very nervous for the future.”
Of course, if the funding gets restored, Congress will have to find some other way to fund the transportation bill. Bills in both the House and Senate would restore all funding to SMCRA.