Current reclamation practices are an outgrowth of the 1972 Ohio Surface Mine Law and the 1977 Federal Surface Mining control and Reclamation Act. The 1972 Ohio reclamation law required topsoiling, extensive grading back to the approximate original contour, and an immediate cover of grass and legumes, with the objective of eliminating erosion and protecting water quality.
The 1972 Ohio law made a drastic improvement in the final reclaimed product and in the resultant water quality, and was an improvement over the reclamation practices under Ohio’s previous reclamation laws. When the Federal Surface Mine Act passed in 1977, Ohio’s enforcement became subject to the regulations of the federal law. Under P.L. 95-87, the process and final product were nearly identical to results under the 1972 Ohio law. While strict interpretation of the law and current attitudes have resulted in achieving the objective of improved water quality, the indirect effect is that present regulatory policies actually discourage use of trees in revegetating surface mined land. Many complicating factors inhibit tree planting at present, and in fact have been preventing tree planting since the Ohio law changed in 1972. The primary impediments to reforestation are physical, biological, regulatory and economic.
The physical problems are created during the reclamation process. Research has shown that the most serious of these is the spoil and topsoil compaction that results from repeated travel of heavy equipment in rough grading of the overburden, and hauling and placing the topsoil. This process begins by striping off, with pans and dozers, the topsoil medium, often a heavy red clay subsoil, and placing it in a storage pile, all the while smoothing and packing this topsoil into a compact storage pile. After the mining and rough grading of the overburden back to the approximate original contours is completed, the topsoil is then retrieved from the storage piles and spread onto the rough graded overburden areas until the required depth is attained. In all of these earth-moving operations, the material moved or graded is continually smoothed, backbladed and packed. This intensive grading and manipulation prior to revegetation generates compacted soil characteristics that limit root penetration, prevent proper movement of air and water into the soil, and thus are detrimental to successful tree establishment and growth. Additional equipment compaction occurs when fertilizer is applied, the topsoil is disced, and the area is seeded, and mulched. Repeated travel by equipment over the reclaimed area creates a soil base that has long-term detrimental effects on growth of planted trees.
Vegetation - Once the area is graded and topsoiled, an intense revegetation effort ensues to establish a vegetative cover on the bar areas as quickly as possible. This involves heavy applications of fertilizer, disking, heavy seed applications, and mulching. This intense process produces a lush vegetative cover of grasses and legumes that has a competitive advantage over tree seedlings and is a major factor contributing to tree mortality in plantings on reclaimed grassland. Fertilization ensures establishment of grasses and legumes. Disking the topsoil reduces soil compaction near the soil surface. This improves the growth of shallow-rooted grasses, but does not benefit deep-rooted plants such as trees. Competition for soil moisture is extremely intense in such shallow root zones, and grasses will always out-compete trees for available moisture.
Animal Damage – Grassland ecosystems resulting from current reclamation are excellent habitats for rabbits, voles and woodchucks. The agronomic grasses and legumes are also very attractive to deer from neighboring woodlands. Trees planted in these grasslands are subject to sever animal damage from deer, voles and rabbits. Some tree plantings fail completely, while survival of others is reduced below acceptable limits.
Because adequate tree survival levels cannot be guaranteed on these reclaimed lands, the timely release of bonds is jeopardized. As a consequence, permanent pasture land is favored over forest land as a final land use in the reclamation permitting process.
The current law forces the coal operator to follow restoration and revegatation practices that assure immediate protection of water quality. Because of the physical and biological problems already noted, reclaimed lands will not support tree plantations considered successful by present regulations. As a result, coal operators avoid using trees because compliance cannot be achieved and bond release is delayed. Research has shown that present compliance survival levels often cannot be attained with present techniques.
Tree planting will not play a significant role in reclamation efforts until a process is developed that will enable trees to be established in this hostile environment at survival levels that ensure compliance ant timely bond release, or until compliance survival levels are reduced to be compatible with what the sight can support successfully. Consequently, permanent pasture will be the dominant and final land use in reclamation permitting.
Even if suitable techniques were available that afforded adequate survival and assured timely release of permit bonds, it would still be questionable if coal companies would plant trees. By the time the reclaimed area is ready for tree planting, the regarding, topsoiling, seeding, fertilizing and mulching that are required to assure water quality and soil protection have been completed. At this point, 100 percent of the required reclamation work is done and the coal company has only to wait until the grass is fully established to get its final release. Consequently, no further costs or investments are justified. Planting trees, even if survival were adequate for forest land compliance, would require an additional cost that would then have to be passed on to the coal consumer. Regardless of the desirability of trees, these facts cause permanent pasture to be the post-reclamation land use favored by most operators.
Another economic disincentive influencing restoration of forest land is that it is more costly to establish, even though forest land is classified as a lower priority land use category than grassland. Forest land use must meet the same water quality standards applied to permanent pasture land use, even though the processes required to achieve those water quality standards are not only detrimental to establishment of trees, but also indirectly dictate high additional costs of establishing trees. The resulting cost imbalance biases the choice of land-use options and discourages the designation of forest land uses.
As a result of the impediments to reforestation, nearly every acre that has been mined in Ohio since 1972 has been reclaimed to permanent pasture. Studies indicate that since the implementation of PL 95-87 regulations in Ohio, 212,00 acres have been mined while only 1 percent of reclaimed mined land has been returned to a post-reclamation forest land use. Since 90 percent of the land had a prior land use of forest, this represents a significant loss.
Even though the intent of Public Law 95-87 is for the premining land use to be restored after mining, the impediments associated with achieving a successful stand of trees have encouraged coal companies to follow the necessary steps within the law to achieve a land use change to agriculture: permanent pasture. This approach assures them of regulatory compliance and timely bond release.
An examination of USGS topographic maps shows that the majority of the coal extraction in Ohio since 1972 has occurred in southeast Ohio, which is predominantly forested. As a consequence, thousands of acres of forest land have been converted to permanent pasture and will continue to be converted as mining continues. The indirect effect of the otherwise positive legislation has been to mandate a significant land use change throughout Ohio.
While in some instances this may have produced a higher land use for local economies, Ohio may have reached a point where the supply of permanent pasture land far exceeds the demand.
In recent years, the cumulative effect and threat to the forest resource of Ohio have been recognized by regulatory agencies, wood-using industries, hunters, environmental groups, foresters and the general public. In fact this issue has developed beyond a discussion of whether permanent pasture land or forest land is best for society.
The reduction in forest acreage adversely affects Ohio’s citizens and many programs of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources through the loss of important biodiversity and ecological habitat. The loss of biodiversity from Ohio landscapes is of increasing importance to the public. The quality of life afforded by clean water and clean air created in the forest ecosystem is an asset too valuable to destroy and not replace.
Economically, the foundation of the forest industry in southeast Ohio is being undermined, while an oversupply of permanent pasture is being created. These forest lands are in the heart of the country’s hardwood forest region. They are the factory that supplies raw materials for Ohio’s forest industry. These forest lands, whether publicly or privately owned, are the key to the future of Ohio’s forest industry. Annually, this industry generates nearly $7 billion in gross receipts. Its future, and the future of all those employed, as well as the citizens and future generation that benefit from its products and economies, are being threatened. Forest resources destroyed by mining need to be replaced.
Increased use of trees in revegetation of mined land would benefit the people of Ohio. To achieve this, changes in revegetation requirements should be made that will equalize the cost of revegetating for forest land uses with the cost of revegetating for other final land uses. Recent legislative action addresses this problem. House Bill 518, Trees for Mined Land, supplies free trees for individual and industrial owners to plant on lands permitted underpost-1972 mining laws, after final reclamation bond has been release. In 1995, with an appropriation of $100,000 the Division of Forestry, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, supplied 364,175 free seedlings to individual landowners and 75,000 free seedlings to industrial owners for reclamation plantings. Response to the program was enthusiastic, with more seedlings requested than could be furnished. This illustrates there is a very real interest in tree planting on lands reclaimed after coal mining. Nevertheless, post-mining land use on mining permits is still being determined by the short term cost of vegetative establishment and bond release, rather than by what is best suited for the site or the local economy. Changes in the requirements for grading, topsoiling, fertilization, ground cover establishment, and tree survival levels would eliminate cost imbalances and promote more tree planting as a post mining land use. A recent additional final land use, undeveloped land, does have less stringent requirements for tree survival than the forest land category, while keeping requirements for grading, topsoiling, and planting herbaceous cover.
If reforestation is to be a valid post mining land use option, some major changes in current spoil regarding and topsoil handling procedures are needed to prevent soil compaction. Research has shown that controlling herbaceous cover alone will not suffice. While modifying spoil regarding standards and topsoiling requirements may be politically and socially unpopular, some aspects of the old methods of spoil handling are more conducive to successful tree plantations.
In Ohio, results of long-established tree plantations under previous reclamation laws on mine spoils without topsoil show that trees do not require topsoil for satisfactory growth. In fact, studies have shown that tree survival and growth on untopsoiled mine spoils without intensive grading and ground cover has exceeded survival and growth on intensively graded, topsoiled mine spoils seeded to grasses and legumes. Allowing soil characteristics similar to those developed on pre-1972 law spoils would not only be conducive to successful tree planting, but would also lead to significant cost savings that would give the coal operator an incentive to create forest land as a final land use. Finally, operators should have more flexibility. They should be able to apply different reclamation procedures within the mining area to create a landscape of varied vegetation types, each adapted to topographic, spoil and moisture conditions, and each providing long-term site protection and useful products.
Gary Kaster
Forestry and Recreation Programs Supervisor
American Electric Power
McConnelsville, Ohio
John P. Vimmerstedt
Associate Professor Emeritus
The Ohio State University
Wooster, Ohio