EPRI is demonstrating a market-based approach to abandoned mine land (AML) reclamation by creating marketable water quality and carbon emission credits. Many years of coal mining in the Appalachian region has resulted in large areas of environmentally degraded land. Of special concern are the AML sites that were mined prior to any Federal or State regulations requiring post-mining land remediation. Many of these AML sites contain poor quality soils and release acidic discharges, which often limit vegetation to ground shrubbery and grass cover.

Sufficient funds are often not available to remediate AML sites. One possible solution is the institution of market incentives in the form of environmental commodity trading markets, which could facilitate ecosystem improvements more quickly and at less cost to the public than current approaches. Potential market incentives for landowner-funded restoration include carbon credits, water quality credits, wetland mitigation credits, and species conservation credits. This project is investigating the use of such market incentives.

Project objectives include: improving an AML site by remediating acidic discharge with a passive treatment system (see figure); determining the amount of ecological improvements created by the AML site improvement; assigning a value to the ecological improvements; and developing a guide for use by landowners and third-party investors for evaluating the economic benefits of developing multiple environmental market credits on surface mined lands.

Passive treatment includes the installation of a limestone channel (shown with construction in-progress) for pH treatment.