Air monitoring

A $1.1 million reclamation project at a former underground coal mine in Carlisle, Fayette County, has been completed using Abandoned Mine Lands grant money.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection awarded the project to Green Mountain Construction, out of Charleston. Work began on Dec. 16, 2008.
Dave Beal, southern regional engineer for the Department of Environmental Protection’s AML program, said three old buildings on the site were demolished and disposed of; three refuse piles were seeded and grassed over; and an old mine shaft was filled. Workers also put in a drainage system that should alleviate some minor flooding problems in the area.
“It was an eyesore, especially in the winter,” Beal said of the site, where a mine owned by the now-defunct New River Mining Co. once operated.
The DEP’s Office of Abandoned Mine Lands and Reclamation was created in 1981 to manage the reclamation of lands and waters affected by mining prior to passage of the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977.
The AML program is funded by a fee placed on coal, currently set at 35 cents per ton for surface-mined coal, and 15 cents per ton for coal mined underground. Allocations from the AML fund are made to state