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A public meeting was held at the Fellowship Center in Wallins on Thursday to inform the public on ongoing issues with area waterways created by past mining.

Harlan County Judge-Executive Dan Mosley summed up the circumstances behind the situation following the meeting.

“This public meeting was held tonight as a result of about three to ten years’ worth of complaints about issues related to stream bank destabilization and drainage issues because of so much abandoned mine land in the Wallins area,” Mosley said. “The Division of Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) has been very aware of the problems that have happened.”

Previously, a multimillion-dollar project occurred in Wallins during which the waterways were stabilized using Gabion baskets filled with rock, Mosley explained.

“Over the course of time, high water, flooding, abandoned mine ruptures, and different things caused large volumes of water to flow through, that pulls trees out, the trees get hung in the baskets which pulls the baskets out, the baskets turn over in the creek, it just causes a mess,” Mosley said. “The question then becomes who’s responsible; ultimately, it falls under the Division of Abandoned Mine Lands.”

Mosley said a dialogue began several years ago with the AML about addressing the issue.

One of the first obstacles involved locating the money to complete a project.

“As part of the bipartisan infrastructure law passed by Congress, there was a lot of money placed for AML to do work,” Mosley said. “A lot of citizens here had reported issues. we started a database in our office of who those people are and what their issue was, and that gave AML the ability to say we have a comprehensive project to do in the Wallins Creek area.”

The public meeting served as the kickoff of the project.

“The goal of the meeting tonight was to make community members aware that this project is getting ready to start,” Mosley said. “Their first focus is creating a scope of work, taking all the database information that we’ve got plus getting additional reports from citizens about issues they’ve found on their property where baskets have fallen or whatever the issue may be, and come up with a design and scope so that a project profile can be created and the work can go to bid and eventually begin construction to get this fixed.”

Approximately 50 people were present at the meeting.

“What they’re doing is getting easements so that people can give them access to come on the property to evaluate what’s going on,” Mosley said.

The firm in charge of creating the plan is Tetra Tech.

“Tetra Tech is the engineering firm that has been assigned to the project by the AML,” Mosley said. “They’ve hired a local coordinator, Ed Harris, that will go around and talk to people and get them on the list to be evaluated.”

Mosley pointed out this is a major project which will take years.

“This will be several years’ worth of work and a multimillion-dollar project for this area,” Mosley said. “It’s much needed.”