NRCS: Richard Mine Project Lacks Design Funding
Morgantown Dominion Post
23 May 2011
By David Beard
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) told The Dominion
Post that the Richard Mine acid mine drainage project on Deckers Creek
is on hold for lack of funding.
Pam Yost, an NRCS agricultural economist working out of the Sabraton
state office, said the federal Small Watershed program, administered by
the NRCS, received no fiscal year 2011 funding.
The Dominion Post previously reported that Friends of Deckers Creek had
hoped the construction of a mine drainage treatment plant — somewhere
near where the mine drains into the creek outside Richard, no site has
been chosen yet — would begin by 2015 and the plant begin operations by
2016. Yost said that timeline will have to be revised when future
funding is determined.
“We’re in a real state of uncertainty about what we’re going to be able
to do; we’re sort of on hold right now,” Yost said. They won’t close
down or deauthorize the project, they’ll just wait and see.
Yost said NRCS has about $2.9 million to build a treatment facility,
but no money for design. She expects that $2.9 million won’t be enough
to build a facility. If design funding comes along and they get a
design, they’ll get a better handle on construction costs.
“Richard Mine is going to be very complicated,” she said. NRCS has to
hire out the design job; it doesn’t have the in-house expertise.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about Richard mine,” and a lot of good
ideas on how to approach the job.
The late Sen. Robert C. Byrd had been instrumental in securing funds
for the NRCS, Yost said. “We don’t have that anymore. We don’t know
where that’s going to leave us.”
The Dominion Post sent questions to Rep. David McKinley and Sen. Joe
Manchin, but neither was able to answer in time for this report.
If a facility is built, the state Department of Environmental
Protection has committed to provide 80 percent of the operation and
maintenance funds for 20 years. The city of Morgantown and Monongalia
County have teamed to be the sponsoring local organization, meaning
they will work together with the NRCS to secure sponsorship for the
site and the remaining 20 percent of the operations and maintenance
funds — a good-faith commitment with no financial pledge.
Yost said NRCS will continue dialog with Friends of Deckers Creek, the
city and county about the project’s future.
“We’ve got to get through this issue of not having federal funding, not
having a design, not having land,” she said. “We need to do some
additional environmental planning.” The job may beyond the scope of the
plan as it originated in 2000. “There are a lot of unknowns but we’re
still going to work toward that.”
Martin Christ, water remediation director for Friends of Deckers Creek,
was disappointed by the news.
“This news about the budget cuts is terrible,” he said. “It could delay
the restoration of Deckers Creek for a very long time or stop it
entirely. That’s bad for Morgantown, bad for community pride, bad for
property values and bad for business.”