>>ANNOUNCER: Promoting a healthy environment...
it's the
air we breathe...
clean safe water
responsible management of our natural
resources
we protect and restore
for a sustainable future...
environment matters
>>MIKE SHEEHAN: Sludge management is a huge expense for the treatment of acid mine drainage so
if we can find a beneficial use of this
byproduct of the treatment process
it would be a tremendous savings to the state.
>>NARRATION: A partnership between the DEP and scientists at West Virginia University
looks to develop a commercially viable
method for extracting valuable minerals
from mine sludge - an effort that, if
successful, could bring millions in
economic activity to the state. plus:
>>BLAKE MILLER: Ah, no-brainer. I mean anything that we can
do to affect the environment especially
locally I think it's beneficial to do
our part in helping out the planet.
>>NARRATION: One West Virginia County takes its recycling
act on the road to rave reviews.
>>GREG ADOLFSON: Hello
everyone and welcome to another edition
of Environment Matters. I'm Greg Adolfson.
The huge and continuing problem of
dealing with acid mine drainage and the
damage it causes to the environment in
West Virginia has been well-documented.
Standard treatments involve introducing
alkalinity to neutralize the acid,
but doing so causes metal in the
solution to precipitate out. What to do
with the resulting tons and tons of
sludge is a difficult proposition but a
group of researchers may have come up
with a creative and potentially
profitable way around it the DEP's
Jake Glance joins us now with more...
>>JAKE GLANCE: Greg, a team of scientists from WVU's
Water Research Institute is partnering
with the DEP to take what has been an
expensive to handle waste product and
extract something almost as valuable as gold.
>>NARRATION: Alchemy - it's the medieval
forerunner to chemistry that was
concerned primarily with attempting to
turn base metals, like lead, into gold.
While those efforts
were not successful, there's something
similar going on inside this unassuming
brick building outside Morgantown - only
this time, it's not gold they're looking
for. They're called rare earth elements - a
group of elements on the periodic table:
scandium, yttrium, and these guys -
elements 57 to 71: the Lanthanides.
Despite their name, rare earth elements
are widely distributed in the rocks of
the earth -
just rarely concentrated enough to get a
commercially viable deposit.
>>PAUL ZIEWKIEWICZ: As a result, the supplies are limited to relatively few locations on earth and the global
market is controlled by relatively few
mining operations. China controls about
95 percent of the imports of rare earth
elements to the United States. So, what
makes these rare earth elements so
important? Dr. Ziemkiewicz explains.
>>PAUL ZIEMKIEWICZ: Well, they're important because they have some really, really good properties as
alloys - parts of alloys with metals,
ceramics, magnets. They make some very,
very powerful, but small and light
magnets, for example in a lot of
high-tech applications. Your cell phone
has a magnet that has rare earth
elements in it in order to create the
vibration. So, and in a lot of these have
really important defense applications
like scandium, for example, is one of the
rare earths. Scandium is used to alloy
with aluminum. It creates a very light
aluminium alloy. It's not only used in
baseball bats - your aluminum baseball bats
have some scandium in them but also high
performance jet aircraft, the F-35 for instance.
>>NARRATION: They're also in things like
computer memory chips, electronic
displays, rechargeable batteries,
night-vision goggles, and the generators
inside giant wind turbines - and the
worldwide demand for them keeps growing.
>>PAUL Z: Some rare earth's are worth a fabulous amount of money. Scandium, the example I just gave
you I think the market value is about
$16,000
per kilogram - that's  two and a half, 2.2 pounds. Others are worth $8
per kilogram. So, they're not all equally
valuable. So what we pay a lot of
attention to is the distribution of the
valuable rare earths and the non
valuable rare earths and so you don't want to
spend all your time extracting stuff
that is basically a bulk commodity on
the world market and not in short supply.
>>NARRATION: And that's what makes this pilot project in West Virginia so interesting and
potentially beneficial and that's where
the DEP comes in.
>>MIKE SHEEHAN: DEP was approached by the Water Research Institute back in 2015 as a cost share
for this the rare earth element
extraction process. We've contributed
certain amount of monies and in-kind
services. They've also asked for sites
where they can collect some of the
sludge, and being that the Office of
Special Reclamation is probably the
largest producer of sludge in the state,
we provided them with some good, good
sites for them to collect their samples.
>>NARRATION: Like this one. The DEP operates a
treatment plant here at the former Omega
deep mine site to handle the acid mine
drainage that continues to leak from the
abandoned works. The acid mine drainage
leeches the rare earth elements from the
shales found in and around the coal
seams.
>>PAUL Z: It turns out that the the source
that we're looking at here - the acid mine
drainage source - has actually has a very
high concentration of the more valuable
rare earths, the critical rare earth
elements, and also the heavy rare earth
elements. Those are the ones that command
the greatest price. Overall, and we've
looked at hundreds of samples of sludges
across the tri-state area and Maryland,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and on
average our rare-earth ratio of heavy
rare earths and criticals to total rare
earths concentration is something like
50%. So that's a really good average.
The mines, the biggest mine I think
in the world, but it's in China, it's the
Baiyun'ebo mine - has a rare earth heavy to
total rare earth ratio of about 12%, as
opposed to 50. So, the fact that we have this
enrichment of the the more valuable
rare earths makes this a really important source.
>>NARRATION: Finding a commercially viable
method to extract those rare earth
elements from acid mine drainage could
turn what is now a financial liability
into an asset.
Here at the Omega site,
operation and maintenance costs to run
the treatment facility average between
$90,000 and $100,000 a year
>>LARRY RIGGLEMAN: The treating the water is probably the easy part.
The cost with this treatment process
comes back to the sludge. What do you do
with the sludge? How do you handle the sludge really drives the cost of the treatment process.
>>MIKE SHEEHAN: Sludge management is a huge expense for when you're treating acid mine drainage.
So, if we can find a beneficial
use of this byproduct of the treatment
process, it would be a tremendous savings
to the state.
>>NARRATION: Here at the Omega site, the
treatment process involves adding
hydrated lime to the acid mine drainage,
which forms a slurry. The water flows
through a clarifier that allows the
heavier particulates and sludge to
settle to the bottom. The clear water
flows off for additional treatment and
the sludge is pumped up the hill into
what are called geo tubes.
>>LARRY RIGGLEMAN: A geo tube is
nothing other than basically a large
perforated tube and we actually use
these pumps here and we add a polymer to
those. Polymer's like a magnet so it's got
a specific charge. The sludge has got a
specific charge and it draws the solids
together and to make what we call a
flock. That flock is then pumped into the
Geo tubes and then what happens is the
pores let the clean water come out and
it holds the solid in and over a period
of time that solid staying in that tube
will dry. The tubes are actually black, so
whenever you have sunlight, especially -
even in the wintertime, they'll still
draw heat and help remove that moisture.
>>NARRATION: Right now, the Geo tubes are being used
as part of the reclamation work at the
site as backfill for a high wall, but one
day they could represent money in the
bank.
>>PAUL Z: A single geo tube from this
property, we've analyzed it - this sludge, quite a number of times and
a single geotube has about
$11,000 worth of rare earths in it, for
example, and I think the number of
geotubes up there right now gives you a
total value sitting up on the
property of about a $175,000
dollars worth of rare earths
right there.
So, it's not a king's ransom, but
nevertheless it's a way of
offsetting the cost of AMD treatment
that is going to be valuable and also
incentivizes someone taking that stuff
and doing something with it other than
just piling it up.
>>NARRATION: And there are tons, and
tons, and tons of the stuff piled up all
over Appalachia.
>>NARRATION: This particular mine has
a sludge that's worth that has maybe 400
grams per ton of rare earth element in it
and that matches some of the biggest
deposits in the world right now. Those
kind of concentrations and so it's - we
consider that commercially attractive.
>>NARRATION: WVU recently received 2.7 million
dollars from the US Department of Energy
to begin a second phase of the project
to build and operate a pilot plan to
extract the rare earth elements from the
acid mine drainage sludge. If successful,
and the technology can be expanded to an
industrial scale, it could be a
game-changer for the region.
>>PAUL Z; Well, as a source, this is really attractive because you have infrastructure. Now this is a
good example - you've got a rare or earth
reserve right here, what, six miles from
Morgantown, West Virginia?  It's on a paved
road. It's got power right to the site
and it doesn't take much in order to get
a process installed here that can do
some of the basic extraction or at least
haul it off to an extraction site. Most
of the rare earth mines that are under
consideration in the United States or
Canada are in the wilderness somewhere.
So you have to build a road for, maybe,
100 miles. You have to build a power line
in or put a power station into the
wilderness somewhere. So, in terms of
infrastructure already in place, a
workforce that's already here -
trained workforce that, frankly, is
looking for opportunities for economic
development and in putting food on
the table. You've got it right here.
>>JAKE GLANCE: Dr. Ziemkiewicz says based on some
early estimates, there is a potential for
this developed industry to generate
somewhere between $400 million and $1.2
billion dollars of economic activity per
year in the central and northern
Appalachian Basin.
For Environment Matters, I'm Jake Glance.
>>GREG ADOLFSON: Thanks, Jake.
The current enrichment process for rare
earth elements uses something called
heat bleaching. It takes low-grade ore
and uses a chemical process to extract
and concentrate the valuable elements
contained within it. Doctor Ziemkiewicz
says, in a sense, just about every mine in
Appalachia is a natural heat bleach.
The presents are all unwrapped and the
decorations are all back in the attic,
and the only thing left to do, come
January, is figure out what to do with
the now-not-so-freshly-cut Christmas
tree, but, if you thought the only option
involved a wood chipper, you'd be wrong.
The DEP's Breanna Hickman joins us now
with details.
>>BRIANNA HICKMAN: That's right, Greg. For the
past 15 years, the DEP has partnered with
the DNR to help folks recycle their used
Christmas trees into something besides
mulch.
>>NARRATION: As they say in the gangster movies,
these trees are about to be "sleeping with the fishes."
That's because the DNR collects them to
use as fish attractors and improve fish
habitats in lakes throughout West
Virginia.
>>JEFF HANSBARGER (off camera): We put out individual ones that are attractors and if we put out a whole bunch of them, that actually
improves the habitat by adding some
complexity. Also, as the trees break down,
bacteria and little critters feed on
those and then little fish will come in
and feed off of those. Pretty soon the
bass and other fish will come in so they
kind of congregate fish, hence they're
called fish attractors.

>>NARRATION: As you might expect with temperatures
hovering in the single digits, the area
around the space heater was a pretty
popular place to be. But, despite the
frigid air, the flow of cars, SUVs, and
pickup trucks hauling trees into
Capitol Market was pretty steady.
>>TERRY CARRINGTON: I am shocked! The business has been fantastic.
I believe we've had close to 300 people
come in already and on such a cold
morning, that was kind of surprising. We have
just a, you know, some giveaways to
show our appreciation and also people
that bring their tree down can sign up
for one of our four door prizes. There
are three of them are one night stays at
Twin Falls State Park and then we're
also giving away a gift certificate to
Capitol Market.
>>JOE ARMSTRONG: I've done it for the past five years. It helps the DNR with fish habitat in our state's lakes.
>>NARRATION: And it also keeps the
trees from taking up space in a landfill.
>>TERRY: Any organic materials, particularly, that
we can keep out of landfills, that can be
composed or recycled -  any way we can
use them that doesn't involve throwing
them in a landfill, we always, you know,
try to find ways to use materials like that.
>>NARRATION: Most of these trees are headed
for the larger flood control reservoirs
operated by the US Army Corps of
Engineers - places like Summersville,
Stonewall Jackson, Sutton, East Lynn and
Cheat Lake. Since they're man-made lakes,
most of the underwater structure was
removed during construction.
>>JEFF: All of those have a big draw down to make room for flood control and they're also not a lot
of structure because the Corps does not
want a lot of things that could maybe
flow down the lake and stop up their
water intake structure so we secure
these. We also fell trees along shoreline
later in the year and we're also very
careful to cable those so that they
don't become a problem for the Corps later on.
>>NARRATION: The DNR will begin placing the trees in shoreline areas while the lake
is still drawn down to its winter pool
level. Biologists also sink trees in some
of the deeper parts of the lake, as well.
By spring, when the water comes back up,
these trees will become part of the
aquatic ecosystem.
>>JEFF: The habitat is ---
in habitat work is something that we spend
a lot of time on. We have a federal aid
grant to do this kind of work and
maintaining and enhancing our present
habitat it's fundamental to ensuring
good fisheries for people to have and to
enjoy in the future. That's one of the
main reasons
we're doing this.
>>BRIANNA HICKMAN: Greg, once they're in the water, the trees last one to three
years before they break down, so the DNR
needs a steady supply. In addition to the
trees folks drop off at the market,
Christmas tree vendors also donate their
unsold trees -- although we're told there
were fewer of those this year.
For Environment Matters, I'm Brianna Hickman.
>>GREG: Thanks, Brianna. The DEP's annual Christmas
tree drop-off at Capitol Market is
usually held the first Saturday in January.
World Wetlands Day is celebrated
every February second. Wetlands include
ponds, marshes, bogs and seeps and are
home to a wide variety of plant and
animal life. West Virginia has up to one
hundred and two thousand acres of
wetlands according to the US Fish and
Wildlife Service - about one percent of
the acreage of the state. Wetlands
provide a number of benefits. They serve
as important fish and wildlife habitat.
They improve water quality by removing
and retaining nutrients, processing
chemical and organic wastes, and
filtering sediment. They also temporarily
store floodwaters. The majority of West
Virginia's rare and endangered species,
as many as 150 species, depend on
wetlands for survival. The theme for this
year's World Wetlands Day is "Wetlands
for a Sustainable Urban Future", which
highlights how urban wetlands make
cities more livable. You can find out
more by visiting World Wetlands day.org.
The Ohio River Sweep has been honored by
AmericanRivers.org for collecting over
1 million pounds of trash. The Ohio River
Sweep is an annual event organized by
ORSANCO, the Ohio River Water
Sanitation Commission. Since 1989,
thousands of volunteers have helped
remove tons and tons of trash from
roughly 3,000 miles of shoreline from
Pittsburgh to Cairo, Illinois. Cleanup
efforts along the West Virginia
shoreline are coordinated by the DEP,
which is a partner agency of ORSANCO. This year's Ohio River Sweep is set for
June 16th. You can find out more,
including where to volunteer, by visiting
ORSANCO's website: orsanco.org.
Twenty-one West Virginia watershed
groups will share nearly $100,000 in
stream partners grant finds. The West
Virginia stream partners program was
established by the state legislature to
encourage citizens to work in
partnership with appropriate state
agencies so that the state's rivers and
streams are safe for swimming fishing
and other forms of recreation and can
support appropriate public and
commercial purposes and provide habitat
for plant and animal life. The funds are
provided by the DEP, the West Virginia
Division of Natural Resources, the West
Virginia Conservation Agency, and the
state Division of Forestry. For a
complete list of this year's grant
recipients, visit our website: dep.wv.gov
and if you'd like to find out more about
some of those volunteer watershed groups
and the good work that they do, check out
the short film "Currents", which is
available on the Environment Matters
YouTube channel. The DEP recently awarded
1.3 million dollars in REAP recycling
grants to 23 organizations and
municipalities throughout the state. REAP
stands for Rehabilitation Environmental
Action Plan and is the DEP program that
coordinates all the various cleanup
programs throughout the state
like the pollution prevention and open
dump program and the DEP statewide tire
collection events. The Cabell County
Solid Waste Authority is taking its
recycling program on the road thanks to
a DEP REAP grant and the partnership of
a local community organization. The DEP's
Mike Huff has the details.
 Now are you going to do this every month?
 Yep, every month. Yes, ma'am.
>>NARRATION: you won't
get much argument that there's a demand
for recycling in Cabell County.
>>BLAKE MILLER: Oh, no brainer. I mean anything that we
can do to affect the environment,
especially locally, I think it's
beneficial to do our part and helping
out the planet.
>>NARRATION: Because of reduced
funding over the last few years,
recycling options in Cabell County
have narrowed somewhat. The recycling
trailers, which can hold up to a ton of
recyclables, are one way the Cabell
County Solid Waste Authority is trying
to reverse that trend.
>>MARK BUCHANAN: This effort
hatched out probably two years ago is
when we initially came up with the idea.
We lost several sites out in the county
that were funded by the county and
municipalities. We had - initially
we had eight sites around the county. We
lost four of them and we wanted to
replace those sites with some sort of
recycling effort. We couldn't afford to
continue paying Rumpke because we lost
those funds from the county and
municipalities, so we ended up, you know,
hatching this idea with these trailers.
We would go out and we would collect the
materials and then Goodwill would process them.
>>NARRATION: Goodwill of KYOWVA partners
with Cabell County to process
cardboard, mixed paper, and aluminum and
tin cans at its recycling center on West
19th Street. It's a partnership that has
benefited both organizations.
>>ALISSA STEWART SPARKS: Definitely, because it gives people more of an opportunity if they're unable to bring
it to one of our stores or bring it to
our recycling center on 19th Street West,
they can go to mobile recycling units
and then it still helps reduce the
carbon footprint and help us, you know,
save the earth.
>>NARRATION: The trailers are
currently on a rotating schedule setting
up every Saturday in either Milton,
Lesage, Huntington, or Culloden. Those
locations may shift as the program moves
forward depending on the demand. The
Cabell County Solid Waste Authority has
the most up-to-date scheduling
information on its website. You can also
follow them on Facebook. On this first
Saturday at the Huntington location,
traffic was steady and enthusiastic.
>>CHARLES SEPLOCHA: We
have been recycling before and then this
thing sprung up so we're trying to take
advantage of it and it's a really
helpful for us. We had like one garbage
can of week and then all of a sudden
when recycling stopped, we had two
garbage cans a week. So it's nice, we're
back to one and we can recycle our stuff.
>>MARK BUCHANAN: This is our first effort inside
Huntington City Limits.
I've had a lot of contact
through Facebook and through email
asking when the site was gonna set up in
Huntington, so we're expecting a decent
turnout today - at least what we had
in Milton. I'm hoping to see that.
>>NARRATION: The
trailers were purchased with funds
from a DEP REAP grant.
>>MARK: There's no way we could have
gotten to this point without the funds
from the the REAP grant. There's
absolutely no way. Recycling would
absolutely be dead,
with the exception of Barboursville.
So we're very happy that those funds came
our way. This is actually - and I
tell the board this, you know,
every time we meet:  We're building a
foundation is what we're doing and this
is going to be, you know, stable enough
and go any direction that it has to that
we ensure that recycling maintains part
of Cabell County.
>>ALISSA: And any time that Mark or
I come up with an idea, or one of our
team members do, we usually can figure
out how to hammer it out and - I mean its
ever since we've partnered with them, I
mean we've just continued to increase
our recycling efforts.
>>NARRATION: In Huntington, I'm
Mike Huff for Environment Matters.
>>GREG: Residents can also use the solid waste authority's new drop-off center in West
Huntington which also offers plastic and
glass recycling. It opened this past
October and is located at the old
National Guard Armory at eight hundred
Virginia Avenue. While dropping off at
the mobile recycling trailer is free, the
Virginia Avenue location costs seventy
five dollars a year to use. Residents can
purchase a key fob that will allow them
access to the gated site. The Solid Waste
Authority will prorate the cost for
passes purchased after October 2017 and
through September 2018 when a new plan
year starts. For more information, you can
visit their website
it's ccswa.us.  About five hundred
people that purchased passes so far.
Our friends at the recycling coalition of
West Virginia, in conjunction with the West
Virginia solid waste management board,
have announced the winners of this
year's annual West Virginia Recycles
youth contest. The contest encourages
students from kindergarten through high
school to use their creativity and learn
about recycling. This is the winning
entry in the second through third grade
category by Carli Smith, a student at
Confidence Elementary School at Putnam
County.
Lillie Villainave from Park Middle School took
top honors in the seventh through eighth
grade category for her sculpture
entitled "Never forget to care for your planet."
Students also submitted original
songs and videos.
Here's an excerpt from the winning entry
in the high school category by Alexander
Aires, a 16 year old 11th grader from
Greenbrier West High School, who wrote
and performed this song about recycling.
Take a listen.
 "You don't know what it's like to be that little plastic bottle being buried underground"
"If I were given another chance to make this place a better place, I'd go another time around..." 
>>GREG: And finally, the winning entry in the 4th
through 6th grade category is from 12
year-old Malachi Unger from Morgan
County who used Legos to create this
pretty impressive stop-motion animation
video to tell the story of employees
recycling and, in some cases, not
recycling...

>>FIRST STORM TROOPER: Hey, why did you throw that can in the trash?
>>SECOND STORM TROOPER: Because I can...

>>THIRD STORM TROOPER: Payday!
>>FORTH STORM TROOPER: Hello there, I am the monitor and I saw you throw that thing in the trash the other day
and I'll have you know our trash bill is going through the roof and this is coming out of your paycheck! 
>>GREG: You can see and hear all of the winning entries and in their entirety on the
Recycling Coalition of West Virginia's
website: WVrecycles.com.
And this wraps up another season of Environment Matters - our sixth season. We'll be back with
another season of all-new stories in the
spring, following a brief hiatus. In the
meantime, you can follow the DEP on
Twitter for the latest news and
information. We're @DEPWV. And be sure
to subscribe to the Environment Matters
YouTube channel so you never miss an
episode.  You can find us at Environment
Matters WV DEP. We leave you now along a
snowy Paint Creek in Fayette County.  On
behalf of all of us here at the West
Virginia Department of Environmental
Protection, along with our broadcast
partners, thanks for watching.
We'll see you soon.

>>ANNOUNCER: More than eight hundred people with one mission: promoting a healthy environment.
We are the West Virginia Department of
Environmental Protection.
