MORGANTOWN – Coal industry experts, researchers, regulators and policymakers have assembled at the event center at Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place for the 2026 West Virginia Mine Drainage Task Force Symposium.
It’s an annual meeting of the minds to explore AMD treatment technologies and resources, and to explore the regulatory environment.
The symposium drew 19 from Brazil, where thermal coal extraction in the southern part of the country feeds the coal-fired power plants there.
Marcio Zanuz is technical director for the Santa Catarina Coal Mining Industry Association. One of his roles, he told The Dominion Post, is to take care of reclamation projects resulting from AMD damage to waterways in that southern state during the period 1972-1990.
A court order handed down in a 2000 suit mandates the reclamation, he said, and a new judge is overseeing the implementation of the sentence. That judge, along with representatives of federal and state agencies, and coal companies, all make up the Brazilian delegation.
“Since the beginning,” he said, “our reclamation projects have been based on what you do here in the Appalachians – both Pennsylvania and West Virginia.”
From this symposium, he said, they are looking to educate and convince the judge about a new way to gauge the results of reclamation: Instead of using complex formulas, look at the return of fish to the waterways.
He had kind words for his West Virginia hosts. “First of all, you are really kind people here. We are always well received here.”
The Mine Drainage Task Force emerged from a committee assembled in 1978 to address certain AMD problems in the central part of the state, the task force website explains. Following publication of a landmark paper in 1979, the first symposium was held in 1980.
This year’s symposium sessions delved deep into AMD technology, with such titles as “Watershed-Scale Remediation of of Acid Mine Drainage in the Robinson Run Watershed” and “Proactive Mine Pool Management: Implementing a Remote Telemetry Monitoring Network.”
West Virginia Coal Association Jason Bostic updated attendees on industry and regulatory issues. The work of the task force enabled him, as a lobbyist, to help implement public policy he said. “We were only able to advance this industry through the good work you have done.”
Bostic contrasted anti-fossil fuel policies of the Obama and Biden administrations with the pro-fossil fule policies of the current Trump administration. Now, he said, “It’s hard to be critical of or take issue with anything that’s being done at the federal level.”
Some Trump policies, he said, don’t have much effect here. For example, because West Virginia is a primacy state, where mining is done on private land and regulated by the Department of Environmental of Environmental Protection, such things as expedited permitting procedures have limited value.
But, he said of Trump’s policies, “They served to stop the premature execution of coal-fired power plants.”
And the relationship with the EPA has evolved. “We’re actually having conversations with that agency – meaningful, helpful conversations with EPA. That’s the first time it’s ever happened in my career.”
One challenge for the industry and West Virginia in general, he said, is rising utility rates. West Virginia has the fifth-lowest rates in the nation, and second lowest east of the Mississippi after Kentucky, but bills are still rising.
“At the end of the day, the goal here is to get utility rates lower. … We’ve got to get a handle on that to get industry attracted here. The use of the coal-fired power plants, that our ratepayers have already paid for, is the best way to do that.”
