New Deal Accomplishment: Over 218,000 mine openings sealed, resulting in cleaner streams and rivers


Above: An abandoned mine in Allegany County, Maryland, July 8, 1936. Air enters abandoned mines, mixes with water and iron sulfides, and creates sulfuric acid. The acid then makes its way into local waterways and causes pollution problems. WPA workers would later seal this mine. Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.


Above: A WPA worker seals an abandoned mine in Garrett County, Maryland, April 17, 1937, in order to prevent air from entering. Photo from the University of Maryland College Park Archives.


Above: Part of a longer article in the The Pittsburgh Press, April 14, 1939, highlighting the value of WPA mine sealing work. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.



Above: In its 1936-1938 biannual report, the West Virginia Department of Health noted how the WPA had improved the state's sanitation with mine sealing and other activities.


Above: "Coal Town," a lithograph by Michael J. Gallagher (1898-1965), created while he was in the WPA, between 1935 and 1943. Image from the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art
in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Cleaning our waterways

Between July 1935 and June 1941, WPA workers sealed 218,325 abandoned coal mine openings (WPA Statistical Bulletin, November 1941, p. 8). CWA and FERA also performed such work, but their cumulative statistics are not as well-reported. At the very least, however, we can say that the New Deal sealed over 218,000 mine openings (it is important to note that a single mine can have several openings - so the total number of mines sealed would be a much lower number, possibly around 10,000). 

Much of the work was done in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky - where a large number of abandoned coal mines drained into the Ohio River area (see, e.g., "W.P.A. Mine-Sealing Program Curtails Stream Pollution," The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), April 16, 1939). 

New Deal mine-sealing work was incredibly important because waterways we're being overtaken by sulfuric acid pollution by the early 1930s, for example, 3.5 million pounds of it going into West Virginia streams and rivers, every day (see article, "To Complete Job...," cited in next paragraph). The acid was killing fish, fouling public water supplies, limiting recreation opportunities, and damaging boats and water-based infrastructure, such as locks and dams.

New Deal assistance ultimately reduced sulphuric acid run-off in West Virginia by somewhere between one-third and two-thirds (see, e.g., the newspaper article image above, "Mine Sealing..."; and also, "To Complete Job of Sealing Mines," The Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston, West Virginia), April 2, 1936; as well as, Work Projects Administration, West Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State, New York: Oxford University Press, 1941, p. 134).

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