“There are an awful lot of people that have put time into making this happen, people who aren't looking at the problem and complaining, but looking for a solution to the problem.”
“The state is focused on cleaning up this huge, historic mess. We don't believe we're asking for anything extravagant (from the federal government) to do it.”
“For a long time, the entire nation depended on coal, limestone, iron ore and steel from Pennsylvania. It helped win the Revolutionary War, it built railroads that opened the West and rebuilt Europe after two world wars. Our take on this is that this is not Pennsylvania's abandoned mine problem, it's America's problem.”
“We're not sitting on our hands waiting for someone to hand us money. With smaller watershed groups and state and local government being open to new ideas, our job is to see that other solutions are being put into practice.”
“If you try to undertake what is a $5 billion problem here on a month-to-month basis, it's going to take a long, long time at that rate to see significant results. It's important to us to know how much we're getting and for how long.”
“We need something that's going to work for the Appalachian states; any place there was mining before the 1970s, there's a real need for reclamation. And that money still only cleans up higher-priority sites; it doesn't even touch on all the non-coal quarries in need of reclamation.”
“What we want is to find a more permanent arrangement, a long-term reauthorization (of the fund) that meets the needs of a state with our mining history.”
