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This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

When the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was signed into law in 2021, authorizing more than $11 billion in new funding to reclaim lands and waterways damaged by abandoned coal mines, the people who lead this work on the ground were ecstatic.

“We were to the moon,” said Amanda Pitzer, the executive director at Friends of the Cheat, a nonprofit organization in West Virginia that works to restore the Cheat River watershed. “Once that big influx of money was announced, with West Virginia on track to receive $2.1 billion over those 15 years, we thought, ‘Now’s the time. Now’s the time to invest in water treatment.’”

But Congress wants to claw back some of that funding.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that would withdraw $500 million of the money allocated in 2021 for abandoned mine cleanup projects. The states that stand to lose the most are Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois and Kentucky, according to an analysis by Appalachian Voices, an environmental organization that works on conservation issues in central and southern Appalachia. The bill must still pass the Senate, which plans to take it up this week, and be signed by the president before it becomes law.

“We’re horribly disappointed,” Pitzer said. “Less money means less........

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