debbie m. price

Red waters run deep in Western Maryland

Once a week, the Midland fire company fills a 2,100-gallon tank next to Thelma Davis' home in Allegany County; her well water, once as pure as mountain snow, is rusty red and too contaminated to use, let alone drink.

The abandoned Kempton mine pours 4 million to 6 million gallons of highly acidic water a day into Laurel Run, a tributary of the Potomac River. The water from Kempton has killed Laurel Run and if not for a successful environmental program, 24 miles of the North Branch of the Potomac River would be dead as well.

Altogether, more than 410 miles of streams and tributaries in Maryland have been affected by acidic drainage from old mines, many so severely that nothing lives in their tumbling waters. It is almost impossible to find a well in the George's Creek basin that has not been sullied by mining. The Youghiogheny River valley in Garrett County, too, has its problems.

Bad water is perhaps the most bitter and enduring legacy of more than 200 years of mining in far Western Maryland.

"I tell you," says George's Creek resident Frank Ross, whose well became contaminated several years ago. "When you don't have water, you don't have nothing."

In recent years — and even more so in recent months — mining companies and state officials have begun joining with environmentalists and community activists — once pronounced adversaries — to repair the damage of the past.

Their tools are revolutionary and experimental — microbes that "eat" the metals in mine drainage, grout made from alkaline power plant ash pumped into mines to reduce or improve the quality of the drainage, and the highly touted lime dosers that for almost four years now have been slowly bringing the North Branch of the Potomac River back to life.

The task is daunting — and critical to the welfare of the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, as well as to the future of a ruggedly beautiful part of the state.

The state "will never get it all cleaned up," says John Carey, director of the state's Bureau of Mines. "No one has even projected a cost. It would be in the hundreds of millions just in Maryland."

Gradually, though, more people are willing to try a sort of "stone soup" approach, and the results have been encouraging. Coal companies have contributed labor and equipment for experiments — such as the project near Friendsville in which a cement-like grout mixture of alkaline ash and slurry has been injected into an abandoned mine in a trial attempt to neutralize acid runoff.

William J. Vail, a Frostburg State University professor, has developed a treatment system in which microorganisms — found growing near acid mine drainage spills — have been combined successfully with lime beds to purify water.

And in one community, activists are forming a watershed association.

"No matter what we say or do or like or dislike, this valley has been coal mining all my life and all my father's life and all my grandfather's life and it's going to keep coal mining," says Bob Miller, a retired principal now organizing the Mill Run Watershed Association in the George's Creek area of Allegany County. "If we can get {the coal companies} to work with us, we can all accomplish something."

Mill Run is contaminated by acidic drainage from several abandoned mines and is responsible, Carey says, for about 20 percent of the acid in George's Creek. Most of the wells of the 20 or so families that live near Mill Run also have been contaminated by mining.

The community group, which is trying to obtain tax-exempt status to qualify for government grants, is working with the Bureau of Mines and has received offers of technical support from area mining companies.

"Most of the people in George's Creek can trace their roots back to someone who worked in the coal mines," says Gary DeShong, once an outspoken critic of mining in George's Creek. "There's no use trying to blame anybody for what happened. What's important is to try to straighten up the problems and improve {the water.}"

Today, DeShong, whose father mined the region, is as much a part of the new face of mining as are the geologists, engineers and chemists who are charged by their companies with finding cleaner and safer ways to extract the coal from the ground. An adversarial stance — "it got us nowhere," DeShong says — has given way to a pragmatic approach with an emphasis on problem-solving.

"The rap on the coal industry was that the old miners took the coal and left nothing," says Scott Rotruck, vice president for public relations for Anker Energy Corp., which also has been active in stream restorations. " but we're doing better."

The `Rolaids fix'

Acid mine drainage occurs when ground water — often from breached aquifers — runs through acidic "overburden" or the rock and mineral material left after the coal is removed. The water, often contaminated with sulfur, iron pyrite and other minerals, spills out of the hillside and into local streams where it lowers the pH level and kills aquatic life.

In recent years, state environmental officials have successfully neutralized this acidic water at a few sites by injecting ground limestone into the water. The lime dosers — dubbed the "Rolaids fix" — turned the North Branch of the Potomac, once dead, into a viable trout stream. The Jennings-Randolph reservoir in Garrett County — which no one expected to support life — is teeming with fish.

The state operates four such dosers, which cost between $50,000 and $100,000 to install. The four together require another $100,000 a year to maintain and operate, according to Carey. They are, officials say, the most successful means of combating acid mine drainage tried so far.

The state seeks to install another lime doser at the site of the Kempton spill that it hopes will have a major impact on the quality of Laurel Run and the Potomac, and serve as a backup if other dosers fail, Carey says.

The dosers, however, address only the symptoms and do not provide a permanent solution.

"If we turned off the dosers," says Carey, "we'd see a definite change within a week, and within a few weeks, all that we have accomplished would be gone. There would be dead fish floating in the North Branch "

Modern mines

Almost all of today's acid mine drainage comes from abandoned deep mines. Strict state and federal regulations and monitoring have all but eliminated acidic runoff from modern active mines, authorities say.

In modern strip mines, runoff water is funneled through treatment ponds and filters before being released. And except for the occasional, inadvertent spill — such as two highly publicized slurry spills by the Mettiki mines in 1995 — modern miners have a good record, according to Carey.

The Mettiki mine, Maryland's largest deep mine, pumps an average of 8 million gallons of acidic water a day from the earth into treatment ponds and filters. The last treatment pond is filled with net pens where Mettiki raises trout fingerlings for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to release into the Potomac River.

The net pens filled with lively, healthy fish offer sharp contrast to the orange, acidic water pouring from the abandoned Kempton mine a few miles away. The Kempton mine, which provided metallurgic coal to make steel during World War I and World War II, now is the single largest source of acid mine drainage in the state.

Before the dosers were installed, more than 24 miles of the North Branch of the Potomac River were devoid of life because of Kempton's water.

Representatives of the mining industry have suggested that the U.S. Defense Department should help fund its cleanup — a request that so far has gone nowhere.

"They just went after {the coal}," says Jerry Duckett, manager of technical services for Buffalo Coal Co. "After the war, the mines were shut down and the damage was done. The coal was used to protect our Constitution. It's a legacy we've all inherited."

Not another Kempton

The Kempton mine is notorious within mining and environmental circles. "Nobody in the state of Maryland wants another Kempton," says Jim Ashby, manager of environmental affairs for Mettiki. "When we applied for our permits, the sole decision was based on making sure there could never be another Kempton."

Even so, some environmentalists worry that the water from the Mettiki mine, if not properly handled, could present a major source of future acid mine drainage.

Once the coal is removed, Mettiki plans to create an underground lake within the mine where the acidic water will be encapsulated with an alkaline barrier. These plans worry environmentalists who note that in West Virginia, major leaks have occurred where companies attempted to seal water within the mine.

"Acid mine drainage is some pretty big-time bad stuff," says Cindy Rank, mine committee chair of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. "No company is going to pump it and treat it forever. Eventually, it's going to break through the ground and contaminate people's wells and the streams, and then the problem is back on the state."

Ashby says that geology of the Mettiki site is more conducive to building an underground lake than that in the now leaking sites in West Virginia, but he notes that if the water leaks, Mettiki will pump and treat it, "in perpetuity," if necessary. The company has been setting aside significant sums every year to be used in case such work is necessary, Ashby said. "It's our baby — forever," Ashby says.

Longtime water woes

The success authorities have had in cleaning up streams has not been shared by private landowners whose wells were contaminated by mining.

"Pre-law mining {before state regulations were enacted, beginning in the 1960s} had a devastating effect on the ground water," says Scott Boylan of the Maryland Department of Environment. "The state replaced wells and then they went bad again. Everything is bad in {George's Creek}."

Although a municipal water line has been extended south from Frostburg — solving water problems for numerous families — some families in George's Creek still have no potable water. Some, such as Davis and Ross, receive water delivered weekly by the local fire department while they wait to be connected to the Frostburg line.

For more than a dozen years, they have bought their drinking water from the supermarket. Davis has lived with 2 inches of standing red water in her basement for the past three years. And Ross — once proud of the frame house and garden where he has lived for 40 years — stopped making even minor repairs, fearing that his property, without good water, is worthless.

"I've gone to bed at night and couldn't sleep," says Ross. "I couldn't believe a thing like this would happen and nothing would be done about it."

Virgil and Diane Hamilton have struggled with water problems off and on for more than 10 years. Every other day, Diane Hamilton makes a 30-mile round trip to fill two dozen jugs of drinking water for her family of seven. The family has continued to bathe and wash clothes with water from their well, which, according to health department reports, has been contaminated with coliform bacteria, off-and-on for at least six years.

The Bureau of Mines replaced an old hand-dug well for the Hamiltons and some time later, that well became contaminated. Allegany County health department authorities determined last fall that the Hamiltons' septic system is failing and found recently that the well casing is cracked. Authorities made some repairs to the Hamiltons' well and have suggested others.

Although the Bureau of Mines says it has found no evidence to link the Hamiltons' water problems to the abandoned mine, the Hamiltons blame heavy runoff from the mine on the hill behind their house for serious soil erosion that they believe has contributed to the failure of their systems.

Families who have lost their wells remember in vivid detail the moment the water went bad.

Ross' wife, Mary, was washing dishes. Everything was fine and then "15 minutes later the water started running red."

Bob Beeman's well first went bad in 1985. His well was replaced twice by the Bureau of Mines before city water lines finally provided a reliable supply.

"Our wells started going bad, one right after another, right down the line," Beeman said.

In almost every case of contamination — whether acid mine drainage or a damaged well — there is a different and now defunct mining company to blame. However, if these companies contaminated the water before laws regulating mines were enacted — and most of them did — they cannot now be held responsible for the cleanup.

Mine companies that damaged wells after state regulations were passed, beginning in the mid-1960s, are required to replace the wells. Funds set aside by the Bureau of Mines also are used to replace wells where possible or to pay for alternate water systems.

Stricter controls

Federal laws passed in 1977 also established stricter controls on active mining and set up funds to be used to pay for land and water reclamation.

"What they did at the time was legal," says Carey. "We couldn't go back on them now — even if they were still in business, which most of them aren't."

Since 1977, miners have been assessed up to 35 cents a ton for the federal Abandoned Mines Land fund, whose funds are to be used to reclaim land and clean up water.

It is a sore point among miners — and frustration for state officials — that for the past several years Congress has not fully appropriated the funds. Instead, Congress has allowed a reserve of more than $1.1 billion to accumulate — largely to offset the federal deficit, federal mining officials acknowledge. The distribution formula also is weighted toward land reclamation projects, leaving a relatively small amount for water projects.

Maryland currently receives $1.5 million from the AML fund, although the state, Carey says, is entitled to $2 million. The additional $500,000, Carey says, would pay for seven or eight water restoration projects a year.

"We are in times of trying to reduce the overall federal deficit and live within certain targets of the overall appropriations," says Gene Krueger of the Office of Surface Mining. "Eventually that money will be spent for the purpose for which it was collected."

Meanwhile, the grass-roots work continues.

"We're cleaning up the legacy of the past," says DeShong. "You can't point fingers at people forever. The problem's been here too long to do that."

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.