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Golden Years Cartoon Series
Southwest Pennsylvania has been blessed with plentiful rainfall, rolling green hills, clean streams, and productive agricultural lands.
In pursuit of the coal under our feet, many coal operators are robbing us of these assets as they engage in unnecessarily damaging practices in the name of increased efficiency and profit opportunity.
This is the first in a four part cartoon series that will be printed in the Observer-Reporter each Wednesday beginning January 27th. Each cartoon highlights a particular instance where a vital environmental and/or community asset was sacrificed to mining operations.
At the very least, companies should not be allowed to walk away from the devastation that mining and resource extraction leaves behind. We had clean water and rich soil before they mined, and we must have it after they have mined as well.
Spend your Golden Years fixing up longwall subsided houses
Longwall mining—also known as full extraction mining—is a deep mining technique capable of fully extracting huge panels of coal, frequently up to 1,500 feet wide and 2 miles long. When this coal, often 400-800 feet below the earth’s surface, is extracted, it leaves no support behind and almost always causes subsidence to both the natural environment and man-made structures, including homes, business, and roads. It also causes wells and springs to dry up or turn foul—hence the “water buffaloes,” plastic water tanks dotting the countryside in southwestern Pennsylvania. |
This Greene County home, built in
1939, was on the National Register
of Hisotric Places, but that didn’t
save it from being undermined,
severely damaged, and eventually
torn down
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Coal companies that practice longwall mining are allowed, by law, to cause damage to structures including homes. They are also allowed to disrupt water supplies. Coal companies are required to fund repairs to homes and to replace water supplies, but frequently residents find themselves embroiled in lengthy legal battles with these companies to have their living conditions restored. Although Consol makes strident claims about their economic benefits to this area, the cold truth is, longwall mining significantly reduces the number of mining jobs in PA. According to the Energy Information Agency, since 1985 nearly two out of every three coal mining jobs in Pennsylvania have been lost with only an 8% reduction in the total amount of coal mined.
All of this comes at a serious price to local communities. Homes are lost, small business ruined, and even entire neighborhoods disappear. Our water resources, so vital to the long-term health and prosperity of the area, are vanishing or suffering severe pollution on a daily basis.
This is unacceptable, no matter what the bottom line for Consol and other coal operators may be. The Center for Coalfield Justice strives to hold the line, so when the coal companies pick up, and “the last one left turns out the lights,” we aren’t left with a fractured, tattered environment with no real hope for the future. |
| In 1994, the Pennsylvania General Assembly approved Act 54 which amended the Bituminous Mine Subsidence and Land Conservation Act (52 P. S. § 1406.6(a)). Act 54 deleted sections 4 and 6(a) of the BMSLCA (52 P. S. §§ 1406.4 and 1406.6(a)) which provided protection to a certain class of structures. These previously protected structures included private residences and businesses. Moreover, Act 54 removed the absolute protections allowed to structures built pre-1966 instead allowing companies to undermine these historic structures with the duty to repair subsidence damage. |
 Attempts to stabilize a residential garage
damaged by longwall mining subsidence.
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A 'water buffalo' is a plastic water tank that is supposed to serve as a temporary water supply. They dot the countryside in southwestern Pennsylvania. |
Spend your Golden Years with the endangered Indiana Bat
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Consolidation Coal Company has a permit application pending for the addition of a new coal refuse disposal area (CRDA) at the already extensive Bailey Mine Complex in Greene County. As planned, CRDA #5 will bury 25,835 linear feet of headwater streams in the Enlow Fork watershed. If burying nearly 6 miles of headwater streams isn't destructive enough, CRDA #5 is also very inappropriately sited in an area that provides habitat for an endangered species: the Indiana Bat.
In truly contradictory fashion, even while deliberately destroying wildlife habitat Consol nonetheless manages to position itself as a wildlife steward. In March 2008, Consol was awarded the Energy for Wildlife Corporate Achievement Award by the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF) in recognition of “outstanding efforts to improve wildlife habitat and promote conservation” (Consol Energy, Inc press release).
In January 2009, Consol and NWTF teamed up again through the Energy for Wildlife Program as Consol commited to “improving habitat for Indiana Bats and other wildlife” in Greene County (NWTF press release).
During the spring of 2009, Consol clear-cut over 113 forested acres at the planned CRDA site and surrounding area that was the known Indiana Bat habitat while the bats were migrating south. No doubt the bats will return and discover an eviction notice. This is what presently passes as protection for endangered species? This is what earns accolades for conservation and wildlife protection?
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| Clear cutting of prime habitat for the Indiana Bat for a coalway belt line at the future coal waste slurry valley fill in Richhill Township, Greene County, PA, Wheeling Creek watershed. |
“We have not inherited the world from our forefathers; rather we are borrowing it from our children.”
Kashmiri proverb
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Tune in again on February 17th for the next Golden Years installment...
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Spend your Golden Years on Ryerson's Duke Lake
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Duke Lake, named for the former manager of Ryerson Station State Park, Ronald J. Duke, was a 62 acre lake that provided boating and fishing recreation at the park. The lake along the North Fork of the Dunkard Fork of Wheeling Creek was created by DCNR in 1960, seven years before the park officially opened.
On July 28, 2005 Duke Lake was drawn down due to concerns about the integrity of the dam. As the dam was drawn down and the lake gradually disappeared, thousands of fish lost their habitat. Representatives of the Pennsylvania Fish and Game Commission were not on site and no effort was made by our state agencies to prevent the massive fish kill. Residents rallied at the site with trash cans and tried desperately to save all the fish that they could before the lake finally receded.
Officially, there is still no explanation of why the dam was compromised. Though DCNR and DEP commissioned a study of what happened, they have refused to publically share the findings of this study. Despite agency failure to act, the cause is clear and all too familiar in SWPA: longwall mining subsidence.
Consol’s Bailey South Mine Expansion was cutting a panel in that area at the precise time that the dam began to fail. Duke Lake was lost for the same cause of so many of our water features in southwest Pennsylvania. There is no mystery here. The only question is whether or not our state agencies and public officials will hold the coal company accountable and require them to restore Duke Lake. |
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Fish kill when Duke Lake was drawn
down in July 2005 |
Duke Lake as it stands today - five years later |
We believe that though the coal companies do own the coal, they do not have the right to destroy our natural resources in the process of its extraction.
We expect Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to prevent the coal companies from damaging our natural resources in the course of their operations. Where prevention is not possible, we expect the DEP to hold Coal Operators accountable for the damages caused by irresponsible and reckless mining practices.
We believe that the findings of publicly funded studies belong to the taxpayers of the Commonwealth and should be released in accordance with Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law. Accordingly, we expect DCNR and DEP to share what they know about the disappearance of Duke Lake with the public.
Click here to visit CCJ publications page where you can learn more about the environmental and public health threats caused by coal-based energy production.
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Spend your Golden Years on Dunkard Creek
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In September 2009 many of us watched as toxic conditions in Dunkard Creek killed fish, mussles, and virtually all other aquatic life throughout 43 miles of stream. The devastating fish kill was brought on by excessively high levels of total dissolved solids and chlorides which provided ideal conditions for a salt-water algae to bloom and suffocate most other living organisms in the water. Discharges from Consol mining operations are believed to be a main contributor to these high TDS levels. West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection estimates that “between 15,000 and 22,000 fish -- many of them large game fish -- died because of the toxins released by the algae. Also killed were large salamanders or "mudpuppies," and 14 species of freshwater mussels, some of them already ecologically threatened.”
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Both the US EPA and PA DEP have preliminarily determined that high TDS discharges from Consol’s mine drainage treatment facilities enabled the algae bloom. Consol continued dumping water from Blacksville #2 Mine into Dunkard Creek until September 17, 2009 – a full 16 days after West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection recognized the fish kill.
Bob Niedbala reported in the Observer-Reporter on Friday, January 08, 2010, that Consol Energy, Inc is preparing to resume dumping water from Blacksville #2 Mine directly into Dunkard Creek. The current plan allows Consol to dump water while temperatures are below 50 degrees Celsius and another algae bloom is less likely to flourish. The accompanying hope with this plan is that the waterways will be able to dilute this polluted water before the algae is able to take over once again. Risky hope.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has too long considered dilution to be an appropriate “treatment” for total dissolved solids. Thankfully, the agency is currently considering a proposed rule that would establish stronger regulations for TDS sources and requirements for removal of TDS. The public comment period for this proposed rule is open until February 5, 2010. Visit our action page for more information on the rule and to submit comments to the Environmental Quality Board today.
For more information on Dunkard Creek:
Pollution problems are a threat to everyone
Read a recent opinion piece by Phil Coleman printed in the Observer-Reporter
December 20, 2009.
Dunkard Creek kill frustrates residents of Greene County
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
December 5, 2009
Support the work of Friends of Dunkard Creek (PA group)
Contact person:
Jim O’Connell
jroconnell@gmail.com
724-839-7401
Support the work of Dunkard Creek Watershed Association (WV group)
Join the Dunkard Creek Facebook page
“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions,
and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
Wendell Berry
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