Sycamore Trails Resource Conservation

 and Development Council, Inc.

Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) Reclamation  

    Sycamore Trails RC&D is working with landowners to reclaim deteriorating sites where coal mining operations caused damage years ago, but have been declared "abandoned" because no one is legally responsible to reclaim the land. The RC&D will be working to correct water quality, erosion, and subsidence problems. 

The Council has received funding agreements from IDNR Division of Reclamation and Indiana Department of Agriculture to implement this project.  Citizens in Clay, Fountain, Montgomery, Owen, Parke, Putnam, Sullivan, Vermillion, and Vigo Counties are eligible for funding under this program.  For more information, download an information brochure, call the RC&D office at (765) 653-9785, or email us.

A word from our Project Coordinator, Mike Wilkinson --

     When making changes or improvements to our property, we need to think of the consequences of our actions. If someone decides to remove a ridge of soil that lies at the top of a high wall, in order to level a plot for a garden or a flowerbed at the lake, serious consequences could occur.  That ridge may have been enough to divert the water away from the highwall during a rain event. By cutting that ridge of soil away, the water flowing over the highwall would take the path of least resistance gouging out an area of the wall that deepens each time it rains. This in turn compromises the integrity of the highwall letting water permeate the soil, and down it goes.  The nice lake below would become a body of water filled with mud, dirt, rocks and silt that would play havoc with the critters that live there.

    People want to gain easy access to their lakes by building decks and steps. When you and your bride decide to build that expensive deck down that gob and shale covered slope, what do you do? You bring home the posts and dig holes in ground that is already unstable, allowing water to penetrate.  Bam! There go the steps along with the bank to the bottom of the lake. The slope failure you just caused will have a real impact on the water in your lake--depending on how much of what ended up in the lake. Guess what?  It is not over yet; the slope continues to slide with every rain event. You now have a nice lake with a lot of silt and possibly lumber in it, adversely affecting the water quality of your pristine getaway.

      As the Project Coordinator for the Sycamore Trails RC&D AML Steering Committee, these past few months I have seen a number of problems caused by us humans.  All I can ask is that before you disturb the ground, by plowing or chiseling in order to plant one more row of corn along an old poorly vegetated gob area, ground that has coal fines, or ground lying near or along a creek channel, please think where the water will flow in a rain event.  Before you bulldoze the side of a gob pile off, leaving a steep embankment next to a lake, please think where the water will flow in a rain event.   Before you push or cut all the trees off an extremely steep highwall or embankment or drill holes behind and along the top of a highwall (for whatever reason, be it fence, deck or your bride told you to), please think where the water will flow in a rain event. Are you endangering a stream, building, or dwelling? Do not think that a small amount of gob, soil or coal fines that eroded into the water does not matter!  They all add up. When you discarded some old concrete slabs over the bank, the water seeks a new path causing bank erosion. The flow direction does count.

      Clean water will be everyone’s problem; it is just a matter of time until it becomes your problem. That time will be when you run out, my friend. To help prevent these issues from becoming a problem, when you begin working with the soil this spring, please just think.

 CLEAN WATER IS OUR BUSINESS

PLEASE MAKE IT YOURS

       If you have abandoned mine ground with issues you think might be a problem, please call.  We will be glad to see if we can help solve the problem.

Mike Wilkinson/Project Coordinator

Sycamore Trails RC&D AML Steering Committee

(812) 239-5207 or e-mail wwdirtworks@verizon.net

IDNR-Division of Reclamation

Restoration Program

RR 2 Box 129 Jasonville, In 47438

1-800-772-6463

Sycamore Trails RC&D Council

1007 Mill Pond Lane, Suite B

Greencastle , IN 46135

(765)653-9785

Your local Soil & Water Conservation District

See photos of successful AML reclamation!

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Last modified:08/06/08