Local Environmentalist Group is Turning Acid Mine Pollution Into Artist-Grade Paint

Acid Mine Drainage site in Oreton, Ohio. ©2018 Ohio University. All rights reserved/ Photo by Ben Siegel

Acid mine pollution has turned Ohio rivers orange

Difficult to clean and harmful to the ecosystem

There are more than 23,000 abandoned mines across the U.S., according to records maintained by the Department of the Interior. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency identifies these mines as the main regional source of acid mine drainage (AMD), a pollutant that contaminates drinking water, disrupts the growth of plants and animals, and corrodes infrastructure like bridges.

While the federal government has been attempting to mitigate acid mine drainage since 1977 (by removing the sources of contamination, diverting polluted channels, or allowing them to rewild, with funding from the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act), it remains a health and environmental hazard, especially in Appalachia.

One solution for rivers being cleaned up by neutralizing the acidity of AMD, but it’s an expensive process. Environmental friendly, two professors at Ohio University have come up with a way to fund the clean-up of polluted rivers by extracting the iron oxide — a substance commonly used to make pigments — and turning it into artist-grade paint.

Coal was once an important part of Ohio’s economy and the state produced approximately 2.35 billion tons from its underground mines between 1800 and 2010. But before 1977, when the US introduced the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, mines that were no longer needed were often simply abandoned.

As a result, many of the mines have become polluters, with AMD affecting 1,300 miles of Ohio streams, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

Water from mines is difficult to clean and harmful to the ecosystem, but it does have one thing going for it. This water contains iron oxide, an essential ingredient for the pigment found in paint. The unique process of turning pollution into products is sustainable and mostly manual.

Guy Riefler, an environmental engineer and Ohio University professor, has been working to tackle the problem for the last 15 years.

“It’s a nuisance and an eyesore and an embarrassment really to the population. And because it’s a poor area, it really doesn’t get the attention it deserves,” Riefler explains.

Riefler landed on the idea of extracting iron oxide from the polluted water and turning it into color pigments, which could be sold to further fund the clean-up of AMD. But he didn’t know enough about paints to determine what made them good quality.

Coincidentally, a decade ago, Ohio University art professor John Sabraw went on a faculty tour of acid mine discharge sites and experimented with making paint from a jar of polluted stream water — without much success.

The pair began working together to turn extracted iron oxide into artist-quality paint. Their collaboration has helped take the idea from “an interesting little science project” to something bigger, as Riefler developed a small-scale process to neutralize the acidity of contaminated streams and extract iron oxide particles — which he says is the predominant metal pollutant in Ohio’s acid mine seeps.

“The modern artist is very good at engineering solutions to problems,” he says. “I can’t tell you how many times I got to a roadblock and I bounce it off John … he’d come up with something that I didn’t think of and just took us to the next level.”

Through their social enterprise called True Pigments, they are now putting their clean-up model to the test by building their first full-scale treatment facility, due to be operational in 2024. It will be located at the Truetown discharge, at the Sunday Creek Watershed, a site in southeastern Ohio heavily impacted by AMD, according to Riefler.

Once the treatment facility is operational, True Pigments aims to extract approximately 2 million pounds of iron oxide per year and clean up seven miles of the stream — starting from Sunday Creek to the opening of Hocking River — according to MacIver.

How To Make Paint From Pollution | World Wide Waste

As well as helping the environment, the hope is that the Truetown facility will provide jobs for the local community, and create a supply of iron oxide for other uses — such as in the construction industry, where it’s used in bricks, and colored concrete, and tiles.

“Everything is intertwined,” Sabraw says. “The streams these pigments come from connecting to other streams, rivers, and eventually the ocean. This might seem like a local issue, but it’s not—it’s a global issue.”

Riefler echoes this sentiment. “With a little bit more work, it could be adapted to a lot of different places,” he says. “So, it’s the first step, and it’s a big one. It’s got a promise for pollution around the world.”

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