Coal mine | AWS
Coal mine | AWS
Do you know if you're living near a coal mine with the risk of your water getting polluted?
According to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, millions of Americans could give a sound "yes" as they live less that a mile away from an abandoned mine.
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship wants to clean up the mines, but that feat could cost it approximately $25,000 an acre, KTVO reported.
While Sen. Joni Ernst traveled around southeastern Iowa this month, she visited abandoned mines. She saw how the department is trying to renovate a Davis County mine for livestock grazing.
Now, she's helping to get funding for this effort of mine restoration.
"A lot of this funding is coming through federal grants to the state, and it is important," Ernst said on KTVO. "Iowa did have a lot of coal mining activity back at the turn of the 19th going into the 20th century, and it's just important that we're able to restore the land back into what it was originally."
Iowa has over 300 abandoned mine sites, and 13,000-plus acres of abandoned coal mines call southeastern Iowa home. These mines pose dangers to humans and animals like deadly gas leaks and mine spoil piles — waste material removed during mining, according to the agriculture department's website.
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