WASHINGTON – Towering high over the community of Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, is a hill of coal waste decades in the making.

Instead of a symbol of the past, however, some including Joe Pizarchik, director of the federal Office of Surface Mining, see in the site a path to the future for places with a rich heritage of making a living from coal but that have struggled with lost jobs.

The future of this western Pennsylvania borough begins to change Thursday with a ceremony marking the site as the first to tap $90 million in economic development funds approved by Congress to help areas once dependent on coal. The fund – to be split evenly between Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky – will be used to clean now unusable sites of abandoned mines.

Though not addressing the presidential election in an interview this week, Pizarchik’s description of plans for the mound of waste in Ehrenfeld points to differences in what Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump are emphasizing as they describe the future of coal communities.

Trump has called for easing government restrictions on the coal industry, helping put miners back to work, while Clinton has emphasized moving communities including Ehrenfeld off their dependence on coal.

In this borough, state environmental officials have drafted a $26 million plan drawing upon the economic development fund and other federal sources. Plans call for rehiring 40 laid-off Rosebud Mining Co. workers to haul away debris that grew on the 62-acre site from 1903 to 1971.

“It’s going to take three years to haul away what it took 70 years to build up,” Pizarchik said.

Neither the state nor U.S. Interior Department could say how the project’s wages will compare to what workers were paid by the mine, but Pizarchik said he understands it’s “comparable.”

Projects funded by the federal program will vary in size and focus, from removing mine waste to building roads to treating drainage, allowing for other uses of former mining sites.

It’s impossible to say whether reclaiming mines – even with more money being considered by Congress – can replace all of the jobs that have been lost, Pizarchik said

“It’s definitely better than doing nothing,” he said. “It goes a long ways toward creating jobs – not just temporary jobs to clean up the site. We’re eliminating the impediment to build new homes and create an opportunity for development in the area.”

Neil Shader, spokesman for the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, said the Ehrenfeld project also calls for building a regional park to be tied into the “Path of the Flood Trail,” boosting tourism to the Johnstown area. The mining community on the Conemaugh River is about 10 miles east of Johnstown.

Pizarchik, who grew on a farm in Brush Valley Township about 30 miles from Ehrenfeld, said he understands firsthand the struggles of coal communities.

He’s seen cousins and high school friends lose coal jobs.

“Losing a job is always devastating. Be we grew up in the culture where we were taught to work,” he said. “People in my community didn’t want government assistance, you wanted to provide for their families.”

Despite a national debate on coal policy, efforts to repurpose abandoned mines have wide support. Rachel Gleason, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coal Alliance, an industry group, said the Ehrenfeld project is “positive,” though she also called for easing coal regulations.

A law proposed by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., in February, would add $1 billion over five years to efforts to repurpose abandoned mines. President Barack Obama has asked for the same amount, over the same time frame, in his budget request.

Economic fortunes of coal communities is a focal point of the presidential campaign, with Trump and Clinton both reaching out to miners in nomination speeches at their parties’ conventions.

Trump focused on easing government regulation, calling it “one of the greatest job-killers of them all.” He promised to “to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy.”

Clinton, said Trump, “wants to put the great miners and steel workers of our country out of work.”

“That will never happen when I am president,” he said.

Clinton told coal miners that her “primary mission as president will be to create more opportunity and more good jobs with rising wages right here in the United States … especially in places that for too long have been left out and left behind, from our inner-cities to our small towns, from Indian country to coal country.”

But Clinton has emphasized moving away from coal, saying she believes “climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good paying, clean energy jobs.”

Her $30 billion plan calls for diversifying the economies of coal areas – paying for projects like the one in Ehrenfeld while building new roads, bridges and airports, and improving rural Internet connectivity, to attract new industry.

Moody’s Analytics this week said Clinton’s plan would improve the U.S economy. The financial analysts previously predicted Trump’s plan would cause a lengthy recession.

Clinton’s vision, though, is being met with skepticism – especially from those who say coal regulations should be eased.

The program could help laid-off mine workers, said Phil Smith, spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America.

“But there is nothing that guarantees them that work (in tourism or other new industries), and it will certainly pay a lot less than what they were making as miners,” he said.

Pizarchik, though, said coal is suffering because natural gas is cheaper, China’s economy is struggling, and demand for clean energy is growing.

The cost of maintaining coal plants is more than the industry can handle in the long run, he said.

Blaming environmental regulations, he said, “is just baloney.”

Kery Murakami is the Washington, D.C. reporter for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at kmurakami@cnhi.com