Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette Jeff Christy of Amerikohl Mining Inc. is pleased with the progress at the company's Ernest No. 5 surface mine site, which is under reclamation with traditional and new methods. The new method creates loose, rocky mounds that allow quick rooting of trees and grasses. Click photo for larger image.

ERNEST, Pa. -- The humpy, lumpy piles of waste rock and soil on Amerikohl Mining Inc.'s reclaimed, 150-acre Ernest No. 5 surface mine look like big moguls on an otherwise smooth and well-groomed ski slope.

The hillocky 3-acre plot in Indiana County appears rough and unfinished, sitting in the middle of the gently graded grassland. Neighboring rural property owners, accustomed to the smooth landscapes created on surface mine reclamation sites throughout the state since the 1970s, have said the same since the piles were dumped from the back gates of Amerikohl's 50-ton rock trucks this spring.

But in the tight creases between the 7-foot-tall mounds a new way to reclaim surface mined land is taking root.

There, surrounded by a green ground cover of fuzzy-headed millet, bird's-foot trefoil and clover, are foot-tall seedlings of red and white oak, black cherry, choke cherry and silky dogwood. Those small hardwoods are the first Pennsylvania plantings in a federal program aimed at remedying mining-caused forest fragmentation by restocking Appalachian forests with commercially valuable tree species, including the once dominant American chestnut.

The Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, a cooperative effort of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and eight Appalachian states, was started in 2004 to encourage the planting of high-value hardwood trees on reclaimed coal mine sites that now mostly support compacted and gently sloping pasture lands and pines.

The initiative is promoting the hillocky hardwood plantings in loose, uncompacted, rocky soil that more closely mimics uneven, well-drained, natural forest soils.

"This is way out there as far as mine reclamation goes. It's totally different," said Jeff Christy, Amerikohl Mining manager of acquisition and development, as he scrambled over and around the irregular mounds recently to point out some of the 1,800 saplings planted there.

The Ernest No. 5 Mine opened in December 2004 and operated in the 4-foot thick Upper Freeport coal seam until December 2006. Amerikohl, which mines about 1.5 million tons of coal annually from seven different mines in the state, agreed to participate in the Reforestation Initiative at the Office of Surface Mining's suggestion.

In April, the saplings and ground cover species were planted in the creases between the rocky piles where they can take advantage of greater moisture and be shielded from the wind. According to forest research at the University of Kentucky and Virginia Tech, seedlings planted in those conditions grow much faster. On one test plot in Kentucky, hardwoods produced a closed canopy 20 feet high in just seven years.

"A lot of landowners like hardwoods, but we do have problems getting them to grow because of the way the soil is usually compacted by the bulldozers used in reclaiming the mine land," Mr. Christy said. "We're hoping this kind of terrain will encourage tree growth. It may look ugly, but if it works landowners might put up with the piles of dirt."

Millions of acres of land have been surface mined throughout the Appalachians in the past 30 years. Much of that could have been replanted with hardwoods but wasn't because the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act and state mining laws put a premium on quickly controlling erosion and creating a stable terrain.

As a result, mining companies used bulldozers and graders to smooth the ground and compact the top soil before planting aggressively growing grasses and ground covers that squeezed out all but the fastest growing trees, like locust and pine.

"Prior to the federal mining law, forestry was the post-mining land use of choice, but for the past 25 years there was a specific look that the industry wanted to get in reclamation, kind of like a golf course, and that was detrimental to the growth of trees," said Patrick Angel, the Office of Surface Mining's chief forester, a position that didn't exist two years ago."

Mr. Angel, who's based in Kentucky and is a former state mine inspector there, said changing back to a hardwood reforestation mentality will necessitate overcoming industry, regulatory and cultural barriers taller than the mounds of dirt and rock on the Ernest No. 5 mine site.

Some states are already moving in that direction. In West Virginia, 80 percent of the mines use reforestation techniques on uncompacted soils. In Tennessee, 100 percent of the mines have switched. Virginia also has several sites.

Accelerating the changeover is the cost of the hardwood reforestation program in those states. While hardwood seedlings cost more than the softwoods, mine operators can save money because soil spreading time, machinery operation and gasoline use are reduced.

"If operators and property owners want hay and pasture land, it's their choice and it's OK," Mr. Angel said. "But we want them to know that hardwoods can be planted and thrive, that mining bonds can be released, watersheds can be protected and marketable timber produced. We can even sequester carbon to combat global warming."

Pennsylvania, which has 418,000 acres in active surface coal mining and another 180,000 of unreclaimed abandoned mine land, is seemingly stuck in the compacted soil of past practices.

"We really haven't been out to talk with many property owners yet. The program is in its infancy here," said Doug Saylor, the state Department of Environmental Protection's mining office representative for the reforestation program.

Mr. Saylor said the state Bureau of Forestry has shown interest in the program for a mine site in Jefferson County, as has the state game commission for a site in Centre County, but neither has signed on yet.

David Hamilton, the Office of Surface Mining's program specialist in Harrisburg, said thousands of trees have been planted in the state, but almost all are softwood pines -- like those Amerikohl planted on the majority of its Ernest Mine site -- or fast growing locusts with little commercial value.

He called the Amerikohl site "a toehold in Pennsylvania," and said if state and federal officials can show landowners that the uncompacted soils can produce marketable forests quicker, they'll see the advantages.

Another major hardwood reforestation program selling point is its role in the eventual restoration of the American chestnut tree, which was the cultural and economic mainstay of the Appalachian forest.

About a century ago, one in four trees from Maine to Florida and west though the Appalachians into the Ohio Valley was an American chestnut. But a fungal bark blight first identified on trees at the Bronx Zoo in 1904 killed 3.5 billion of the trees by 1950, and ranks as one of the greatest ecological disasters in North American history.

Through a partnership with the American Chestnut Foundation, a nonprofit group started in 1983 to breed a blight-resistant tree, the Reforestation Initiative has added chestnut seedlings to the hardwood mix available for mine land restoration. And it may be the ultimate environmental irony that Pennsylvania's worst pollution-producing legacy -- abandoned surface mine land -- may also be a vehicle for restoration of the chestnut tree.

More than 3,000 American chestnut seedlings have already been planted on surface mine land reclamation projects throughout the Appalachians.

At the end of July, Office of Surface Mining representatives met with members of the Chestnut Foundation in Pittsburgh, who are conducting a search for likely active and abandoned mine lands to participate in the program, including on Chestnut Ridge, the western edge of the Appalachian Mountains that runs through several southwestern Pennsylvania counties.

U.S. Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne highlighted the Reforestation Initiative's partnership with the Chestnut Foundation by planting a single chestnut tree two weeks ago outside the Office of Surface Mining headquarters in Washington, D.C.

It won't hurt that Brent Wahlquist, who spearheaded the Reforestation Initiative while director of OSM's Appalachian Region office in Pittsburgh for the past five years, was confirmed by the Senate two weeks ago as the office's director of reclamation and enforcement.

Sara Fitzsimmons, northern regional science coordinator for the American Chestnut Foundation in State College and a research technologist with Penn State University, said the foundation's tree plantations are already providing chestnut seedlings with full American chestnut wood characteristics and a high probability of blight resistance.

"If they're planted properly, chestnuts can grow four or five times faster and there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of acres of mine land where they could take root," Ms. Fitzsimmons said.

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Aug. 14, 2007) This story on a mining reclamation technique using American chestnuts and other hardwoods as originally published Aug. 13, 2007 incorrectly said the blight that kills chestnuts was brought to North America by the Bronx Zoo. The blight was first identified at the zoo.