GRASS IS GREENER.

One federal worker may have a vastly cheaper alternative to the more than $6 billion experts predict it could cost to do conventional reclamation of more than 200,000 acres of abandoned coal mine waste in southern West Virginia. The waste from deep mines lacks soil cover and permits super-heated gob to drift. killing native plants and leaving eroded, gray-faced mountains for generations.

"Nature, left alone, will not heal these waste lands in my lifetime," says Sam Depue, Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) district conservationist.

Depue's search for an answer led to a dry shale area along U.S. 460 near Princeton, West Virginia, where sprigs of Cape American beachgrass (Ammorplzila bredviligulata) planted in 1970 thrived. The plant stabilizes sand dunes, withstands 100 degree F. heat, and spreads rapidly, despite being buried time after time, Depue says.

In 1984 Depue planted a dozen sprigs at Jacob's Fork, a mined mountain that had lain dormant for 20 years in McDowell County. By 1990 hills of black slag-the waste created during the coal extraction process-had turned green, and once-sterile landscapes were alive with activity. Beachgrass sprouted, organic matter accumulated, and plant life grew versatile.

Impressed with the work. NRCS gave Depue 50,000 beachgrass sprigs in April 1991 for a 2-acre trial at Jacob's Fork. Six months later 90 percent of the plants had survived, producing five stems per plant. Depue notes that conventional grading, topsoiling, seeding, and mulching on two acres would have cost $125,000; his experiment cost $7,500. He views beachgrass planting as an inexpensive way to cover mountain eyesores, stop pollution at minimum cost, and return the land to forests.

Today, Depue's 1984 plant site has been colonized by grasses and other plants. The slag now sports red maple and black birch, as well as sumac, Joe Pye weed, and blackberry. Native seeds have sprouted in the litter, and for the first time princess trees (Paulownia) seeded in. Should the potentially commercially valuable tree take hold, it would mark n significant improvement for the damaged lands.