Program Monday
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Tuesday 9:15 Brent Means, Hydrologist, OSM Overview of Passive Treatment in Pennsylvania Author(s) Brent
Means, Hydrologist
During the past decade, Pennsylvania has experienced a strong growth in the formation of watershed groups that use public money to build treatment systems on abandoned mine discharges. The Office of Surface Mining, Harrisburg Field Office, recently completed a database that records spatial, financial, and project information for these treatment projects. The database shows over $60 million dollars of public money have been spent on treating mine drainage since 1995. The State of Pennsylvania’s Growing Greener initiative has contributed to the most projects followed by the EPA 319 program, OSM Watershed Cooperative Agreement program, OSM Clean Stream program, USDA PL566, OSM 10% set aside program, EPA Watershed Assistance program, and the USCOE. Querying the database shows that Schuylkill County contains the most projects, but Elk County received the most funding. Over 74% of the treatment projects are constructed on deep mine discharges while 21% have been built on surface mine discharges and the remaining on refuse discharges. Biography Mr. Means holds a MS degree in Hydrogeology from Wright State University. He previously worked for USGS and was in coal consulting before joining OSM 6 years ago in the Harrisburg Field Office. Brent has made mine water treatment his passion; acting as a leader within the agency for the development of new and improved treatment technologies; Brent is the technical lead in development of AMDTreat, software developed to cost out treatment options and determine financial forecasting of future expenditures. Also Brent has been a lead developer and instructor of the OSM Passive Treatment Course and has been instrumental in developing the technical program for the Mine Water Treatment Conference. |