"The funds support regions and workers grappling firsthand with the transition to clean energy."
"The transition to clean energy won’t be complete without cleaning up the messes left behind by dirty energy. The federal government took a new step toward that goal this week.
The U.S. Department of the Interior announced the release of nearly $725 million in funding for cleaning up old coal-mining facilities. It’s the first tranche of a record $11.3 billion dedicated to coal cleanup in last year’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to be disbursed over the next 15 years. States and tribes with abandoned coal mines will be able to apply for a portion of the funding in the coming weeks.
This is a historic investment in mine cleanup, which up until now has been funded by fees on coal mining imposed under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. That fee program has raised a total of $8 billion, targeted at sites that were mined before the law passed, but that’s not nearly enough to tackle the many polluted sites left behind by the coal industry. The infrastructure law extended the fee collection program through 2034 and invested still more in coal cleanup."
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