Federal funding freeze stalls Iowa's mine restorations

Several excavation companies are scrambling to find other work and have laid off employees because a federal funding freeze recently halted 11 mine reclamation projects in Iowa.

"It's a pretty big impact to our employees," said Bill Holland, president of JB Holland Construction, of Decorah. "They want to work, and we want to be working, too."

Holland's company was tasked with rehabilitating about 160 acres in Marion County that had been a coal mine — one of more than 300 sites in Iowa that were mined as early as the 1840s. The last active mine closed in 1994.

The site near Pella that JB Holland has been working since August is the largest mine reclamation project the state has tackled to date with the help of federal funding.

Holland typically has had between 15 and 20 workers there at a time. Some were transferred to other job sites and the rest were laid off, Holland said.

Work at the site near Pella was expected to include the movement of about 1.3 million cubic yards of soil and the addition of about 14 million pounds of lime to neutralize acidic soil.

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It's located in the Pella Wildlife Area. Weeds, pit ponds and steep banks had limited public use of the area for decades. About half of the site has been remediated.

"It's all bare dirt now, but you can just look at it and imagine a prairie — something that isn't choked with invasive species," said Todd Gosselink, a wildlife biologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The project was among seven the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship announced late last year that were expected to cost about $10 million. Five other reclamation projects were in process at the time, one of which has finished.

Contracts for the most-recent work were awarded to four excavation companies, which were directed to stop work about three weeks ago.

President Donald Trump has made it a priority to cut federal spending and has implemented wide-reaching layoffs and funding freezes.

"I'm all about cutting the waste and understand why they had to do what they did," said BJ Miller, of Cornerstone Excavating in Washington, which has three mine reclamation contracts. "We're hopeful they'll sort it out and do what still legitimately needs to be done."

The timing of the work halts is troublesome for the companies. There is less demand for earth work in winter months, and the companies have scheduled their future jobs around the mammoth reclamation projects.

"I had set up for these to be over half of my year's worth of work," said Adam Hammes, of Hammes Bulldozing of Sigourney. "These last three weeks have been a stressor."

The companies have been periodically paid for their work, and state officials last week were able to prod the federal government into covering the outstanding costs for work that was completed but not yet been billed. That totaled about $1.4 million, said Don McDowell, a spokesperson for the state ag department.

It's unclear when the work might resume. The 11 ongoing projects are located at former mine sites in Marion, Van Buren and Wapello counties.

About 140 sites still await reclamation under the program that began in 1983. The projects are funded by the federal Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, with fees paid by active coal mining companies. There were no federal requirements for mining companies to repair damage to the land when they closed a site until the 1970s.

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