State and federal officials are using chicken manure to reclaim an old F&M Coal site in Preston County. The manure has increased the density of plant life at the site, and phosphates that it contains have helped neutralize acid mine drainage, said Ken Haid of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Haid said chicken manure produces better results at about half the cost of traditional reclamation methods. The only drawback is the cost of transporting manure to the site, so the arrangement works best at sites within 100 miles of a chicken farm.

‘That's the thing. It’s going to be real site specific,’ Haid said.

Mining sites in north-central West Virginia would benefit more than those in southern West Virginia because of their proximity to the Eastern Panhandle’s poultry industry.

The process also could reduce water pollution in the Eastern Panhandle, where storm water washes through the region’s chicken farms and picks up phosphates from the manure.

The West Virginia Development Office has contracted with Al Stiller, a chemical engineering professor at West Virginia University, to analyze the results of the demonstration project.

Stiller said the project could bring the poultry industry to mountainous areas where crop farming is limited, because chicken houses can sit anywhere. [Heaven help us! First we endure MTR, excess logging and severe flooding. Now the WVDO wants to inflict another serious blow to us residents of Southern West Virginia!]

Jeff Herholdt, manager of the West Virginia Development Office’s energy efficiency program, said he did not know if the project could lure poultry farms to mountainous areas near mines. But he said it could help ease one of the poultry industry’s biggest headaches: disposing of chicken manure.

‘We want to see the poultry industry expand in West Virginia,’ he said. [Jeff, if you want this for West Virginia, I think you should move next door to a factory chicken farm to prove to the rest of us it’s okay!]

Federal and state officials plan to show the Preston County site Friday to coal company representatives, landowners and mine reclamation contractors."

"Pardon me for being cynical. Does anyone know what rate they are talking about?

Although manure application is a time-honored (and organically approved) method of improving soil fertility, SIZE DOES MATTER. The usual rate for farmland use is 10 tons/acre and generally does not exceed 25 tons per acre per year. Similar proposals some years ago to use sewage sludge to reclaim mine sites proposed rates up to 500-800 tons/Acre.

Why would the problems associated with excess application of manure to farmland (e.g., coliform bacteria, phosphorus, odors, excess nitrogen leaching and surface runoff) not also apply to mine land soils?

If some coal company tells me that they suddenly have the solution to their destructive mining practices and all they have to do is dump 500 tons of chicken s--- in my back yard????, well I guess I would want to get my well tested.

I know Al Stiller and have a lot of respect for his work, but this is a job for an environmental risk assessor (or at least someone with soils and mineland reclamation experience), not a chemical engineer."