Building resilience in Beaver County

An unlikely cast of Pennsylvania politicians and nonprofit leaders stood at the base of a vast Beaver County solar farm in June with a shared objective — to laud the merits of building solar on abandoned mine lands by leveraging historic levels of federal funding to make it happen. 

The Keystone State has the largest inventory of abandoned coal mines in the nation, and more than 7,000 streams statewide are affected by acid mine drainage from these former mining sites. 

Mine drainage can contaminate drinking water, corrode essential infrastructure like bridges, harm ecosystems and lead to dangerous erosion. 

Cleaning up toxic brownfields for solar development could be a “win-win,” speakers said in June at a Greene Township solar facility. 

The event, featuring Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley and two dozen state and local officials, came on the heels of a new DEP report that revealed nearly 169,000 acres of abandoned mine lands statewide could potentially host solar facilities, including 27,000 reclaimed and 142,000 unreclaimed acres.

“Our report shows that putting solar panels on just a small fraction of the suitable abandoned mine lands could produce enough electricity to power Pittsburgh,” said Shirley. “We can clean up these sites, put them back into use with solar energy and create jobs all at the same time.”

Pennsylvania will receive nearly $245 million annually for the next 15 years from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to reclaim and treat abandoned mine land, Davis noted, and new Inflation Reduction Act tax incentives are expected to reduce the cost of solar development.

This could help meet the state’s renewable energy goals in the coming decade while taking the pressure off of farmland and forests, supporters said. 

It could also help build generational resilience in environmental justice communities, Davis said, or those hit hardest by legacy pollution and disinvestment — reinforcing a recent shift in environmental justice policy on state and federal levels. 

The DEP last year revised its environmental justice policy after two decades, expanding the definition of an environmental justice area. The DEP’s new online tool, PennEnviroScreen, combines three dozen measures, such as exposure to air pollution, proximity to oil and gas wells, rates of cancer and respiratory illness, race and income to assign a score reflecting that community’s vulnerability. Regulators and companies can now consider this score during project permitting.

“So many communities, such as those here in Beaver County, or my hometown of McKeesport and all across southwestern and northeastern Pennsylvania, bear the scars of our state’s mining and industrial past,” Davis said. “As the steel plants or coal mines closed, those communities often struggled to compete in the new economy, and local residents live in the shadow of brownfields or abandoned mine lands that can cause pollution.”

It’s one of many examples of how historic investments in renewable energy and environmental justice are reshaping Beaver County and southwestern Pennsylvania. 

Billions of dollars in federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding are now available for renewable energy and environmental justice initiatives — the largest investment of its kind in American history. 

The federal government launched a “Justice 40” initiative that aims to direct 40% of these investments to disadvantaged environmental justice communities like Aliquippa, Beaver Falls and Ambridge in Beaver County. Justice 40 investments could range from clean energy and affordable housing to workforce development, legacy pollution remediation and clean drinking water infrastructure.

Environmental justice communities face greater barriers to federal grant funding, often due to limited organizational capacity, fewer resources, less political influence and steep bureaucratic hurdles in the application process. 

That’s why RiverWise and New Sun Rising launched a series of Ignite Environmental Justice Workshops for community development nonprofits in Beaver and Allegheny counties this past May.

The workshops centered on community building, accessing federal Justice 40 grants and peer support in developing projects that improve health, economic opportunity and climate resilience in the region. 

Applications recently closed for New Sun Rising and RiverWise's Launch Environmental Justice Incubator program, which is designed for projects in federally designated Environmental Justice Census Tracts in Beaver and Allegheny counties. "Launch" begins July 29.

The program offers one-on-one technical assistance, educational speakers, peer support and group workshops to bring environmental justice projects to life. Learn more here.