With rolling hills, forests and hiking trails, Southeast Ohio is an outdoor lover’s paradise. However, running through the landscape are countless orange-stained streams, colored by the iron oxide pollution that seeped into them from abandoned coal mines.
These streams are contaminated with a toxic sludge known as acid mine drainage (AMD) — the overflow of highly acidic wastewater from underground mines, created when water comes in contact with exposed mining rocks.
The UN has described AMD as one of the most serious environmental consequences of long-term mining and affects coal mining regions across the world, from South Africa to the UK.
Pollution can be so toxic to fish and other creatures that it leaves some waterways devoid of aquatic life.
Rivers can be cleaned by neutralizing AMD acidity, but it is an expensive process. But two Ohio University professors have found a way to finance the cleanup of polluted rivers by extracting iron oxide — a substance commonly used to make pigments — and turning it into artists’ paint.
“A disgrace to the people”
Coal was once an important part of Ohio’s economy and the state produced approximately 2.35 billion tons from its underground mines between 1800 and 2010.
But before 1977, when the US introduced the Surface Mining Control and Recovery Act, mines that were no longer needed were often simply abandoned.
As a result, many of the mines have become polluting, with AMD affecting 2,092 kilometers of Ohio streams, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Guy Riefler, an environmental engineer and professor at Ohio University, has been working to solve the problem for the past 15 years.
“It is a nuisance, a monstrosity and an embarrassment for the population. And because it’s a poor area, it really doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” explains Riefler.
Riefler came up with the idea of extracting iron oxide from polluted water and turning it into colored pigments, which could be sold to further fund AMD’s cleanup. But he didn’t know enough about inks to determine what made them good quality.
Coincidentally, a decade ago, Ohio University art professor John Sabraw took a college tour of acid mine discharge sites and experimented with making paint from a bottle of polluted water — without much success.
The duo began working together to turn the extracted iron oxide into artistic quality paint. Their collaboration helped take the idea of “an interesting little science project” into something bigger, as Riefler developed a small-scale process to neutralize the acidity of contaminated streams and extract particles of iron oxide — which he says is the polluting metal. predominant in the Ohio acid mine.
“The modern artist is very good at engineering solutions to problems,” he says. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come to a block and I dodged John… he came up with something I didn’t think of and just took us one level higher.”
In 2018, along with local non-profit Rural Action, they partnered with paint company Gamblin to create a limited run of 500 oil paints.
They were offered as a reward to backers of the Kickstarter campaign that funded their research-scale pilot installation. Called the “Reclaimed Earth Colors” set, the paints were popular with artists, says Sabraw, allowing them to incorporate an environmentally conscious aspect into their work.
Through their social venture called True Pigments, they are now testing their cleaning model by building their first large-scale treatment facility, which is expected to come on stream in 2024. Southeast Ohio location heavily impacted by AMD, according to Riefler.
“Every minute, 1,000 gallons of water are pouring out of this abandoned mine. It has a lot of iron and is acidic,” says Michelle Shively MacIver, director of project development at True Pigments. “Very little life can live in an area that looks like this.”
Once the treatment facility is operational, True Pigments intends to extract approximately 907 tonnes of iron oxide a year and clean 11 kilometers of stream — from Sunday Creek to the Hocking River opening — according to MacIver.
A previous Rural Action AMD remediation project that neutralized the acidity of stream water in the west arm of Sunday Creek saw 17 species of native fish return after two years, according to the NGO. True Pigments is confident that its installations will lead to a similar result in the Sunday Creek basin.
“Our hope is that once the chemistry is fixed there, they (fish) continue swimming upstream. This will be good for the entire watershed,” says MacIver.
“It’s an expensive issue”
True Pigments is not the first to extract iron oxide pigments from pollution. The EnvironOxide line of pigments has been made at AMD in neighboring Pennsylvania for two decades, but Riefler says True Pigments uses a different method that needs less space and is better suited to Truetown conditions.
True Pigments received funding from a number of donors, including the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which awarded the project $3.5 million through its Federal Abandoned Mine Recovery program. The money will be used for the first phase of construction of the treatment plant.
Ben McCament, ODNR’s Abandoned Mines Program Manager, says that between 1999 and 2018, the department spent approximately $32 million on 67 projects to address AMD.
“It’s an expensive issue,” McCament told CNN . “I think this has always been one of the main challenges. Each location is unique, each location is difficult and requires long-term funding to address it.”
By funding True Pigments, ODNR hopes to illustrate that through a public-private venture, “we can create a product out of these waste streams and also address an environmental issue and recover and improve the quality of water that has been affected by the AMD for a long period of time,” says McCament.
In addition to helping the environment, the hope is that the Truetown facility will generate jobs for the local community and create a supply of iron oxide for other uses — such as the construction industry, where it is used in bricks, colored concrete and shingles.
McCament believes the True Pigments model could be a solution for AMD’s US sites, as long as they have “the right conditions that would make this particular approach viable, sustainable and cost-effective.”
Riefler echoes that sentiment. “With a little more work, it could be adapted to many different places,” he says. “So it’s a first step, and it’s a big step. It holds promise for pollution around the world.”
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
