Steep Slopes Challenge Coal Mine Cleanup in New Mexico

Albuquerque-based Samcon, Inc. has won a $738,000 state contract for a second attempt to stabilize soil and encourage vegetation growth to control erosion at a large abandoned coal mine waste pile in the Sugarite Canyon State Park, northeast of Raton, New Mexico. The project is just the latest in a decade-long, $4 million effort to preserve the park’s five huge mine waste piles and to slow their erosion into creeks and streams in the canyon. In addition to historic site preservation restrictions on work, there are very steep slopes.