(WASHINGTON) - Interior Secretary Gale Norton today announced that the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining has awarded Ohio's annual $8,326,099 grant to help reclaim dangerous abandoned mine lands.

The Office of Surface Mining estimated last year that 169,198 Ohioans are living less than a mile from a dangerous abandoned mine site. Ohio has about $109.8 million worth of unreclaimed high-priority Abandoned Mine Land problems.

High-priority AML problems threaten public health and safety and could cause substantial physical harm to persons or property. They include clogged streams and stream lands, dangerous highwalls, impoundments, piles, embankments and slides, hazardous or explosive gases, hazardous water bodies, underground mine fires, surface burning, portals and vertical openings, subsidence and polluted drinking water.

"The Abandoned Mine Land program has made thousands of Americans living in the coalfields safer, but the job is not finished," said Norton. "Even after 25 years of extraordinary national effort, we still have almost $3 billion worth of high-priority hazards to health and safety waiting to be cleaned up. The President has proposed legislation that will let us get more Americans out of danger and do so more quickly." The Office of Surface Mining (OSM) collects fees on current coal mining to fund reclamation of coal mine sites abandoned before 1977. However, OSM's authority to collect the fee is scheduled to expire on September 30. President Bush's has proposed legislation that would continue the program and accelerate the rate of reclamation for the most dangerous sites. Today only 52 percent of the funds the Department of the Interior disburses under the Abandoned Mine Land (AML) program actually goes to high-priority coal mine reclamations. The Administration's proposal would direct more funds to where problems remain and eliminate all significant health and safety problems within 25 years. The same job would take almost 50 years if the current system were continued. "By targeting more of our money and speeding up the rate at which we can remove hazards, we will be able to remove 142,000 Americans per year from danger nationwide-- or 66,000 more people every year," said Norton. "In Ohio it would enable us to get 8,140 more people out of danger each year than we can under the current law." Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) has introduced the Administration's proposal as S. 2049 and Rep. John Peterson (PA) has introduced the legislation in the House as H.R. 3778.

"The grant we've just awarded will give Ohio's reclamation program some of what it needs to continue working on this enormous problem," said Norton. "But we aren't yet doing the best we can do. With the President's proposed legislation, we can get serious about this cleanup, put our money where the problems are, better protect the people of Ohio and eliminate these unnecessary dangers to life and limb decades sooner."

EDITORS NOTE: A 700-word op/ed piece by Secretary Norton on the subject of Ohio and the AML program is available from OSM. High resolution photos of AML problems are available online at www.osmre.gov.