On Dec. 11, 1980, the federal government’s $1.6 billion “Superfund” was created to pay for cleaning up environmental messes, such as acid water draining from abandoned coal mines, deteriorating abandoned structures (anthracite coal breakers) and abandoned coal strip mines (land and pits).

Originally, the Superfund’s clean-up projects were to be paid for by the property owners, but many of them were either bankrupt or reused to take action. As a result, public taxpayer funds were used. During the past five years, the Superfund’s $1.26 billion environmental pollution clean-up projects have been funded 100 percent with taxpayer money. Likewise, the $600,000 demolition of the former Shroyer Dress Company building in Shamokin is being paid for with Pennsylvania taxpayer money in the form of a grant from the state Department of Community and Economic Development.

Unless Gov. Wolf and the Legislature take action to tax the profits of the natural gas industry in order to create a trust fund to clean up the environment when the natural gas has been depleted and the wells are abandoned by these energy companies, they will be guilty of continuing government policy of allowing private enterprise to “rape the earth” and then have the taxpayers pay for the cleanup.

David Faust

Selinsgrove