State needs to settle "BIG DROP CLAIMS"

written by the editor of the casper star tribune. please feel free to leave comments.


It's been more than two years since a ground-pounding subsidence project in Rock Springs was halted by Wyoming's Abandoned Mine Lands Division after nearly two dozen homeowners complained about damage.
The state has yet to settle with residents of the Tree Street neighborhood, where 25- and 35-ton weights were dropped more than 2,000 times on a nearby tract of unoccupied land. The "dynamic compaction" experiment (known in Rock Springs as "The Big Drop") was part of a pilot project intended to stabilize the land for housing construction.
Houses in the neighborhood were built over old underground coal mine voids. Engineering studies show that there continues to be movement in the old mine workings beneath the neighborhood and the subsidence risk in the area remains high.
Days after the dynamic compaction project began, residents began complaining that the shock waves from the dropped weights was shaking houses, cracking driveways and foundations, accelerating ongoing subsidence and severely damaging their houses.
The Abandoned Mine Lands Division offered to pay for damages that an Evanston-based engineer determined may have been caused by the ground pounding. But the offers were much lower than what it would cost to actually repair the homes' subsidence damage, and most homeowners refused the settlement.
They are amazed that nothing has been done to fix their homes, and so are we. "We're not just frustrated .. we're way beyond frustrated at this point," said Ash Street resident Donna Maynard.
It has taken the state far too long to settle this issue. The money exists to make these homeowners whole, and it should be used for that purpose because that's precisely what it was intended to do: address problems caused by old, abandoned mines.
Coal companies contribute 35 cents for every ton of coal extracted from surface mines and 15 cents per ton from underground mines to fund mine reclamation projects. Over the past 20 years, Wyoming's AML has spent more than $80 million on various grouting and excavation-and-backfill mine reclamation projects across Rock Springs.
The AML Division has been conducting subsurface investigations since the fall of 2007 to determine if any further mitigation measures are required. Engineers resumed drilling in the neighborhood in September to gather additional data, and will continue through December.
AML Administrator Rick Chancellor said the agency hopes to have a negotiated agreement soon with the homeowners that should lead the way to new inspections. That's the first hopeful sign we've seen in the past year.
It will likely be difficult to prove that dynamic compaction directly caused all of the damage to houses. But there's no question that mine subsidence has badly damaged a significant number of homes in the neighborhood, and the risks of further damage are still great. It's an issue the state can't afford to ignore.
Members of the House this year unanimously passed a budget amendment that would have allocated $2.8 million to provide relief to the homeowners, but it was rejected by the Senate. The AML Division did agree, at the behest of state lawmakers, to redo the engineering inspections with the goal of making new compensation offers.
It's time for the state to open up the purse strings and get this accomplished. Money should not be an issue.