Tennessee has more than 14,000 acres of abandoned coal fields, but the cost of remediation – such as replanting trees and improving water quality – far outweigh the federal funding available to the state, a new report shows.
The report by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a think tank dedicated to examining Appalachia, concluded that the total cost of reclaiming old coal mines across the country is $26 billion. The federal government’s budget: $11 billion.
The vast majority of the nation’s abandoned coal mines lie in the seven Appalachia states of Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
The former coal mines can cause a host of environmental problems, including water pollution and acid mine drainage, and present physical dangers to people in nearby communities from rockslides and flooding.
More than 75,000 Tennesseans live within a mile of an abandoned mine, in an area that encompasses two dozen counties in east Tennessee, according to the report.