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Louisiana teachers' union concerned about educators' future; Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump immunity case; court issues restraining order against fracking waste-storage facility; landmark NE agreement takes a proactive approach to CO2 pipeline risks.

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Speaker Johnson accuses demonstrating students of getting support from Hamas. TikTok says it'll challenge the ban. And the Supreme Court dives into the gray area between abortion and pregnancy healthcare, and into former President Trump's broad immunity claims.

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The urban-rural death divide is widening for working-age Americans, many home internet connections established for rural students during COVID have been broken, and a new federal rule aims to put the "public" back in public lands.

WV Communities Await Abandoned Coal Mine Lands Program Funds

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Thursday, December 9, 2021   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The Biden administration's recently passed infrastructure law provides $11.3 billion in abandoned mine land clean-up funding for 25 states and three tribes.

Advocates in the Appalachian region say the funding is needed to eliminate environmental hazards in coal communities and spur economic development. Legislative Coordinator for Appalachian Voices Dana Kuhnline said cash-strapped agencies have had to triage environmental clean-up.

"State agencies and local reclamation partners have all been pretty strapped," said Kuhnline. "They've been doing a lot of what I've heard described as chasing landslides. So they're only able to address the most severe or dangerous incidences of abandoned mine lands that are in communities."

In West Virgina alone, the infrastructure law is expected to help create at least 1,900 new jobs through reclamation projects over the next fifteen years.

Ongoing projects include remediating a pair of abandoned coal mine portals into an aquaponics facility in Kermit that will sustainably grow fish and produce for regional food markets.

Kuhnline added that environmental groups have been working hard to keep the state's waterways free from coal-mine pollution, but said more resources are needed.

"The Friends of Cheat have done wonderful in West Virginia on the Cheat River," said Kuhnline. "But you always have the danger of a mine blowout, increased rainfall and increased flooding, releasing acid mine drainage and other pollutants into West Virginia's rivers."

She added that coal production's ongoing decline in the region has left West Virginia and neighboring states with less and less money for abandoned mine land cleanup.

"And so the hope is with this large influx of more money," said Kuhnline, "that we'll be able to address more of these burdens that really are holding communities back and creating environment hazards."

The full cost of reclaiming all remaining abandoned mine land nationwide is expected to exceed $20 billion, according to the Ohio River Valley Institute.




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