(Radio Iowa) – The panel of lawmakers that reviews state regulations is asking questions about the problems Marion County faces due to a large sinkhole and the committee may propose new rules for mineral mines. The sinkhole opened up in mid-April, south of Knoxville, partly in the ditch of a county road. In May, officials determined the cause. An abandoned part of a limestone mine 200 feet below ground had collapsed. Kelly Meyers, a lobbyist for Marion County, testified at a recent meeting of the legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee.

“We have this huge sinkhole and the county road is closed because it’s adjacent to the sinkhole,” Meyers says, “and it’s basically not getting addressed sufficiently or quickly enough.” The operator of the limestone quarry has accepted responsibility, but Meyers says there are no state standards for how it should be fixed. “What we would like to see is you all having that regulatory authority to make sure that whatever reclamation is done — and I would expect it would be done at the expense of the quarry — that it be done appropriately,” Meyers says.

Senator Mike Klimish of Spillville says the state’s Mines and Minerals Bureau has no oversight. “Ultimately, if they backed up and started just pouring dirt into the sink hole, you’d have no way to stop them from doing that,” Klimesh said, “to fix the sink hole.” Klimesh and other legislators may sponsor a bill to establish sinkhole remediation standards AND address deficiencies in the underground mapping of mineral mines in Iowa.

It took weeks to confirm what caused the sinkhole because maps of the mine weren’t readily available. Vince Sitzmann is chief of the State of Iowa’s Mines and Minerals Bureau. “Right away when this happened, had we had that map in hand, we could have gone and said: ‘Yeah, you absolutely have mined this area,’ because the quarry themselves didn’t think they’d mined that area and the map indicated that yes, they did mine it,” he said. “Now, should the quarry have had that map? Absolutely, but it just wasn’t available. They’ve gone under some new ownership.”

Sitzmann says the Iowa Geological Survey is responsible for collecting maps for underground mining. “They had previously been part of the Department of Natural Resources,” Sitzmann says. “That was in 2014 and they moved over the University of Iowa and I think they were understanding the mine maps were no longer under their purview and were part of the DNR, which turns out was not the case, and so there was a little bit of misunderstanding and, I think, misfortune on this particular site.”

Senator Nate Boulton of Des Moines says this is a stunning case and, luckily, no one was injured or killed.  “But you can clearly see where a tragedy could happen and we really have to get serious about this,” Boulton said. The state Mines and Minerals Bureau got the initial call in April about the sinkhole, did some drilling in the area and quickly concluded the sinkhole was not connected to a coal mine.

“Essentially, that kind of ends our responsibility there,” Sitzmann said. “We paid for the borings, but we do not have the authority to go in there and reclaim a subsidence like that unless it’s coal related.” When an underground mine can no longer support the material above it and collapses, it’s called a subsidence. There is FEDERAL money available for remediation of sinkholes connected to collapsed coal mines, but NOT when an underground limestone mine is involved.