Book Description

The Land Reclamation Program was initiated at Argonne National Lab. in June, 1975, to address the need for coordinated applied and basic research into the environmental problems associated with utilization of coal, one of the nation's most abundant energy forms. It is anticipated that the current national coal production of 648 million tons will double by 2000. The major share of this projected increase is expected to be from surface mines, especially because surface mining is more economically advantageous than deep mining. However, surface mining of coal is more disruptive environmentally, and has greater potential to destroy existing ecosystems, impact water quality, and alter land usage. There is, therefore, a great need to better understand and evaluate the feasibility, costs, and potential effectiveness of alternative reclamation technologies as applied to surface mining. Integrated methods to reclaim surface-mined land in the U.S. have only been recently undertaken, and their effectiveness is either undetermined or poorly understood and not known over a long-term period. A well-structured, long-range nationally coordinated program is needed to develop, test, and deploy the most cost-effective techniques and technologies for land reclamation that are currently available. The goal of the Land Reclamation Program is therefore to conduct coordinated field and laboratory R and D programs focused on near- and long-term land reclamation problems and land use in the four major U.S. coal-resource regions.