The Growing Greener II grant awarded to Jefferson County Conservation District will use an engineering firm for the feasibility study into collecting and treating the discharges for use as a municipal water supply to help offset the cost of operating a treatment facility.

The study is expected to take two years, exploring possible designs for the facility, costs for construction and operation, and potential customers and uses for the water.

“We can turn this liability into a resource that creates jobs, helps us improve our waterways and reduces the cost of cleaning up our $5 billion abandoned mine problem in Pennsylvania," Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell said.

Discharges from abandoned deep mines in the Soldier Coal Field area flow at approximately 3000 gallons per minute and dump about 750 pounds of dissolved iron each day into Sugar Camp Run. Although the water is near neutral levels for pH, the iron in the discharge kills all aquatic life.

Treatment of the discharge is prohibitively expensive due to the high iron content and high flow rate. Space limitations at the site also present logistical problems for the design and placement of a treatment facility.

Pennsylvania has the largest abandoned mine problem in the country, with more than 180,000 acres of unmarked shafts, unstable cliffs, water-filled pits and abandoned equipment and explosives left over from when mining was largely unregulated prior to 1977.