Celebrating over 24 Years of Environmentally Beneficial Alternative Energy Production
CAMP HILL – ARIPPA’s Executive Director, Jeff A McNelly, reported today that ARIPPA plant members have collectively donated over $45,000 to various deserving volunteer watershed and conservancy groups actively battling Pennsylvania’s largest environmental problem.
Audenreid Intake Dam
The Anthracite Region Independent Power Producer’s Association (ARIPPA) awarded $5,000 this year and $40,000 in the past to watershed organizations performing Abandoned Mine Land (AML) and/or Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) remediation improvements. Award recipients have included: Allegheny Valley Land Trust, Altman Watershed, Babb Creek Watershed, Blackleggs Creek Watershed, Chestnut Ridge Chapter Trout Unlimited, Clearfield Creek Watershed, Earth Conservancy, Eastern Middle Anthracite Region Recovery, Evergreen Conservancy, Huber Breaker Preservation Society, Lackawanna River Corridor Assoc., Loyalsock Creek Watershed, Luzerne Conservation District, Mehoopany Creek Watershed Assoc., Plymouth Historical Society, Schuylkill Headwaters, Sewickley Creek Watershed and the Shamokin Creek Restoration Alliance.
Awards are granted under the guidance and administration of Eastern and Western Pennsylvania Coalitions of Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR and WPCAMR respectively). EPCAMR and WPCAMR are non-profit associations organized to encourage the reclamation, remediation, and redevelopment of lands and streams.
Watershed protection is one of the fastest growing areas of community-based collaboration. Throughout the country, watershed groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in environmental management.
Remediation projects are costly and long-term endeavors with costs averaging between $10-20,000 per acre, according to the Pennsylvania Mining Reclamation Advisory Board. The ARIPPA Reclamation Awards are designed to help watershed groups continue their volunteer efforts toward improving our environment.
Organized in 1988, ARIPPA is a non-profit trade association representing alternative energy plants that remove coal refuse from AML areas, convert it into alternative energy, and beneficially utilize the ash by-product to reclaim over 7,200 acres of mine-scarred lands and hundreds of miles of formerly dead streams back to their natural state.…without any expenditure of tax dollars. To date over 201 million tons of coal refuse has been processed and converted into alternative energy by member plants. The technology used to convert coal refuse into electricity, known as Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB), is one of the cleanest energy technologies available today which produces alkaline-rich ash by-products utilized for decades in a highly regulated, safe, and beneficial manner:
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to fill and reclaim unsafe, abandoned mine lands, to remediate streams damaged by acid mine drainage,
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as a soil amendment at mining sites, and as a concrete/asphalt additive for construction and roadways
The unique nature of ARIPPA’s environmental efforts combined with the desire to coordinate these efforts with “hands-on” environmentally oriented groups and governmental agencies symbolizes its commitment to improving our nation’s landscape and environment. Updates and further information on the “coal refuse to alternative energy” industry can be found at:
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