Pennsylvania has an extraordinary mine land legacy — and an extraordinary community working on it.

Pennsylvania has more than 2,400 miles of streams impaired by acid mine drainage — more than any other state in the country. Approximately 250,000 acres of surface mine land remain unreclaimed. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law authorized $11.3 billion in new federal AML funding through 2036 — the largest investment in mine land reclamation in history — and Pennsylvania is the leading recipient state.

Watershed associations, conservation districts, volunteer monitors, and regional coalitions have been building the knowledge to do this work for decades — through treatment systems constructed and maintained, assessments completed, grants written and reported, and volunteers trained and retained. Too much of that knowledge lives only in the memories of the people who built it. When a leader leaves, when a group loses funding, when an organization dissolves, that institutional memory can vanish.

AML-Connect was built to change that.

How AML-Connect is organized.

AML-Connect organizes all content into three distinct sections. Each answers a different question. Keeping them separated ensures the platform stays organized and searchable as it grows.

Beyond the three content sections, AML-Connect includes a community layer — forums for questions and peer help, working groups for coordination, and a member directory. Good answers get promoted back into the Knowledge Base. Shared documents go into the Resource Library. The platform improves with every exchange.

The Knowledge Base is publicly accessible without registration. Community features require a free account.

The full PA AML/AMD network.

AML-Connect is built for everyone working on Pennsylvania’s abandoned mine land and acid mine drainage challenges — watershed organizations and volunteer monitors, conservation district and agency staff, engineers and technical consultants, community leaders and nonprofit administrators, educators, researchers, and funders.

Priority during the pilot phase is practitioners doing the day-to-day work: watershed associations maintaining treatment systems, conservation district staff managing assessment and restoration projects, and community leaders navigating organizational capacity challenges.

Administered by EPCAMR.

AML-Connect is administered by the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR), based in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. EPCAMR is a regional environmental nonprofit that has worked on AML and AMD issues in eastern Pennsylvania since 1993.

The platform is designed to serve the full PA AML/AMD network — not just eastern Pennsylvania. Governance, content priorities, and network development are guided by input from partner organizations across the state.