Buried streams, ripple of hope

Breathitt County project could help re-create streams after mountaintop mining

By Bill Estep - bestep@herald-leader.com

GUY COVE — A shallow, winding stream in Breathitt County could play a role in the future of Appalachian surface mining, showing a different way to reclaim watersheds than the approach coal companies have used for three decades.

That's because until just over a year ago, there was no stream at the site in Robinson Forest — just a flat of crushed, compacted rock.

It was a hollow fill, where a company had dumped millions of tons of rock blasted from a hill while uncovering coal. The fill buried headwater channels that had carried water down to a stream called Laurel Fork.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky built a new stream and wetlands atop the fill and planted vegetation and trees to figure out how to restore a headwater stream system after surface mining.

The project at Guy Cove is still in the early stages, but the results have been promising so far, researchers said.

The stream is stable, vegetation such as bulrush and sedge has taken root and trees planted nearby are doing well. Frogs, salamanders and lots of tiny bugs such as mayflies — whose presence is an indicator of stream health — use the stream and wetlands.

And tests have shown the quality of the water in the engineered creek is better than in the water draining out of the fill elsewhere, said Christopher D. Barton, one of the UK professors involved in the research.

"From the water quality perspective ... the results are very encouraging," said Barton, a forest hydrologist.

Researchers recently presented information about the project to federal and state regulators. There was a great deal of interest, said Carmen Agouridis, a UK professor involved in the project with Barton and Richard C. Warner.

That is significant because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has begun taking a closer look at how proposed surface mines affect streams. The agency has held up dozens of permit applications in Appalachia, including Eastern Kentucky, for more review.

One area of concern for the EPA is restoring stream functions after mining, said Mary Anne Hitt, an official with the Sierra Club, which opposes mountaintop mining.

"This is a very timely study," Hitt said of the Guy Cove project.

Regulators could use lessons from the project in recommending the best ways to protect water quality and restore stream functions after mining.

The research also could point the way to go back and re-create streams across Appalachia where natural waterways have been buried by mining.

"It's showing a lot of possibilities," Agouridis said.

Hundreds of miles buried

The project touches on a key issue in the escalating protests and legal and regulatory battles over surface mining in the last decade — the impact on streams.

Coal companies can't put all the rock dislodged in surface mining back on the mined area because it swells. They deposit the extra rock and dirt — called spoil — into fills in valleys and hollows, compacting it with heavy equipment to keep it stable.

That often means burying parts of streams.

Environmentalists argue that regulators failed for decades to properly enforce rules to limit the impact of mining on streams.

Between 1992 and 2002, 1,200 miles of streams in Central Appalachia were wiped out by surface-mining activities, a 2003 federal study estimated.

Eastern Kentucky saw the most impact, with 730 stream miles directly affected by mining, according to the report — the most comprehensive federal study of mountaintop mining impacts in Appalachia.

But that estimate counted only a particular class of stream, Greg Pond, then a biologist with the Kentucky Division of Water, said in a 2004 research paper.

It's likely that mining has buried hundreds more miles of headwater areas in Kentucky, Pond said.

The coal industry says it would be impossible to mine coal without creating fills.

To many associated with the industry, the areas high on the side of a hill where water begins to collect are not streams at all, but merely drainage ditches that only flow with water when it rains or when snow melts.