By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A proposal to strip mine environmentally sensitive woodland in South Park
met angry opposition from about 300 people at an informal hearing
yesterday, leading Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato to
declare that the mining proposal had been "laid to rest."
"It's dead on arrival. There will be no deal to do this. That area will
stay as it is," he said after the meeting at South Park High School.
When
he asked for a show of hands, no more than 20 people indicated support
for the mining.
Green Vue Systems LLC owns the coal under South Park, but not the surface
rights for strip mining. The company, which was formed last year and has
no prior mining experience, offered to build 12 ball fields after it
finished removing coal from 100 acres in the Sleepy Hollow area of the
county park.
The area is popular with hikers, and the county parks department has
plans to connect it with the Montour Trail.
The mood in the auditorium was clear before the meeting began. Four young
children carried signs across the stage proclaiming, "Save our trees!"
and "Trees not trucks." Virtually the entire assemblage burst into
applause and cheers.
Jon Hiser, a mining engineer hired by Green Vue, spoke briefly, saying
the company wanted to "put something back into the community."
"Trees will get cut down, but trees are a renewable resource," he said,
sparking boos.
Later, Mr. Hiser said the company had not done a study to determine how
much coal was under Sleepy Hollow. He said the coal rights had been
inherited by Green Vue's founder, Nello Fiore, who intended to hire "a
responsible miner" to do the extraction.
Former South Park Township school board member Mary Franko led the
opposition, speaking from the podium and distributing a treatise on the
risks of strip mining. She called the proposal "ridiculous and obscene,"
saying strip mining should never be done in a residential area, in part
because "fly rock" can kill people up to a mile away.
She warned that township property values would plummet and blasting could
cause subsidence in the many underground mines in the area.
Richard Weaver, a South Park resident who said he grew up in coal-mine
country, doubted Green Vue would keep its promise of ball fields.
"They can say, 'We're going to reclaim the land,' then leave a couple of
rusting pieces of equipment so they can say, 'We're not done yet.' It
never gets done," he said.
One speaker tried to support the Green Vue proposal but was booed into
silence when she suggested that the community could "graciously accept a
donation."
Mr. Onorato said repeatedly that no formal application had been made by
Green Vue, but that he wanted to vet the idea with the public.
Many local politicians attended the session, including Democratic
congressional candidate Steve O'Donnell; County Council members Vince
Gastgeb, R-Bethel Park, and Joan Cleary, D-Brentwood; and state Rep.
David K. Levdansky, D-Forward.
Mr. Levdansky, the ranking majority member of the state House Energy and
Environmental Resources Committee, said he doubted Green Vue could get
the environmental permits to mine Sleepy Hollow.
"You are not allowed to encroach on a stream. I don't see how strip
mining can be done in that area," he said.
Mining companies seek to reclassify Greene County stream for coal plant
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
WAYNESBURG, Pa. -- The South Fork of Ten Mile Creek curves lazily beneath arching sycamores as it flows through hills and farm fields west of here.
It holds small-mouth bass that hit harder than a punch and one of its tributaries once supplied water for this Greene County seat.
Now, though, Baltimore-based Foundation Mining LP wants to knock out the protective "High Quality Warm Water Fishery" tag hung on the South Fork and its tributaries in 1979, when Pennsylvania first classified its streams.
That would make it easier and cheaper for the company to build a coal-preparation plant, sludge ponds and "valley fills" where waste rock could be dumped.
In a petition filed in February with the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, Foundation Mining asked the board to end the High Quality rating for 163 stream miles draining 44,000 acres in the South Fork watershed.
For at least a decade, the state Department of Environmental Protection has not approved a valley fill or a coal-preparation plant, which uses and discharges large amounts of water, in a High Quality watershed. Foundation wants to knock the watershed's designation down a peg to the less protective "Warm Water Fishery."
"The higher stream designation isn't a fatal flaw for permitting mine facilities, but it makes it much more difficult," said Terry Dayton, the company's environmental manager.
Terri Davin, president of the Greene County Watershed Alliance, said she's shocked that Foundation Mining is trying to redesignate such a wide swath of the watershed.
"We should be doing what we can to live up to that designation, not lower it to meet some individual needs, whether those are for sewage discharges or mining discharges, timbering or agriculture," Ms. Davin said.
Foundation Mining claims the South Fork watershed no longer deserves the High Quality rating because the Waynesburg water supply was switched to the Monongahela River in 1990. And a stream survey done by Foundation consultant Wallace & Pancher Inc. found the creek does not meet biological criteria required for the designation under today's more scientific state standards.
Foundation's broad petition follows a more narrow path blazed by Bethel Park-based Consol Energy in a October 2006 redesignation petition for Grinnage Run. That mile-long headwater tributary in the South Fork watershed is near the town of Graysville, north of the area Foundation is targeting.
Consol also is seeking redesignation to make siting easier for a possible valley fill, and like Foundation, submitted a consultant's study showing the creek doesn't meet scientific criteria for High Quality warm-water streams.
Tom Hoffman, a Consol spokesman, said he was unaware of any company plans to request more stream redesignations and doesn't view the two reclassification requests as a new industry strategy. But environmental groups and the Greene County Conservation District said approval of the petitions could open the way for more.
"If Grinnage Run gets redesignated, then what happens to the larger one for South Fork? We think it sets a precedent," said Lisa Snider, the conservation district's watershed specialist. "We're very concerned and very worried about the future if the stream designation is changed."
The DEP is reviewing the Grinnage Run petition, is accepting public comments and has completed stream work for its evaluation report to the Environmental Quality Board. After that report is submitted to the board, probably sometime this summer, there will be a second 30-day public comment period before the board votes sometime this fall.
It is rare for a private commercial entity to petition the board for a stream redesignation, said Michelle Tate, the board's regulatory coordinator. Less than a handful of corporate petitions have been requested in the last decade. Almost all petitions come from nonprofit watershed groups seeking to upgrade existing stream designations.
Krissy Kasserman, a member of the Mountain Watershed Association in Fayette County and the Youghiogheny Riverkeeper, said granting the mining companies' petitions would set a precedent that could endanger streams throughout the state's coal mining regions.
"We feel this is just another front in the coal industry's assault on the state's water resources," Ms. Kasserman said.
The original state stream designations were based on existing, best available uses. Grinnage Run and all of the South Fork watershed west of and upstream from West Waynesburg was part of a "Conservation Area" due to its use as a public water supply and bass fishery.
In an effort to establish more objective standards for classifying the state's streams, the DEP a decade ago developed scientific biological and chemical criteria and comparisons for determining stream designations.
But there are few High Quality Warm Water streams in the state and fewer still that have been assessed using the new criteria, said John Arway, chief of the state Fish and Boat Commission's environmental services division and a member of the Environmental Quality Board.
"One of our concerns is looking for an appropriate reference stream for comparison," Mr. Arway said, noting that Grinnage Run's protected status was based on the best available use of the stream in the late 1970s.
"Obviously it was important to someone at some time. That's why it got special protection. Since it has that High Quality protection, someone has to show it doesn't meet the old or the new criteria."
The DEP is accepting public comments on the Grinnage Run petition now. Comments can be sent to Tony Shaw, Pennsylvania DEP, Division of Water Quality Standards, Bureau of Water Quality Standards and Facility Regulation, Box 8467, Harrisburg, PA 17105-8467.
Treatment sabotaged at abandoned mine
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A $3.4 million abandoned mine water treatment project along Indian Creek in Saltlick, Fayette County, was temporarily incapacitated by vandals who opened a manhole cover and dumped two bushels of a gelatinous substance into a pipe leading from the mine.
The sabotage was discovered yesterday morning before it could create a dangerous situation because of pressure building up in the abandoned deep mine, said the Mountain Watershed Association, the nonprofit organization that finished installing the Anna and Steve Gdosky Indian Creek Restoration Project last fall.
The substance pulled from the manhole by Fayette County hazardous materials workers and placed into a 55-gallon drum by the state Department of Environmental Protection was identified as ammonium chloride, which is sold in 5-gallon buckets by hardware stores and used to clean the tip of a soldering iron, in solder as flux and in snow making to slow melting.
Helen Humphreys, a DEP spokeswoman, said state police are investigating, but neither the treatment project nor the creek sustained any long-term damage.
Beverly Braverman, executive director of the Mountain Watershed Association, said the ammonium chloride partially blocked the pipeline running under Route 711 from the abandoned mine pool to the treatment ponds near the creek.
"Whoever did this is a total idiot because the project was done to reduce the risk of a blowout from the mine pool that could endanger people in the area, their homes and wipe out life in 12 miles of the creek all the way down to the Youghiogheny River," Ms. Braverman said.
She said the pool has risen about 5 feet inside the mine and could have created dangerous pressure on the hillside in the area if it had risen another 5 feet.
The 10-acre project treats what is known as the Kalp Discharge, responsible for more than 40 percent of the total mine pollution in the Indian Creek watershed. This discharge produces more than 184 million gallons of acidic mine water every year.
Before installation of the passive treatment project, which uses settling ponds and natural buffers to neutralize the mine water and settle out iron and other metals, the discharge carried about 76,800 pounds of iron into the creek each year and was long recognized as a health and safety problem.
Citizens Protest Process on Possible Mining Operations
By Patty Yauger, Herald-Standard
04/17/2008
DUNBAR TWP. - Environmentalists, residents, river enthusiasts, bikers and others were outraged Wednesday when the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) failed to allow public participation during an advertised public meeting to discuss a possible mining operation adjacent to Ohiopyle State Park.
The meeting drew dozens from the local area and outside the community with many standing in the Dunbar Township Municipal Building hallway and near a rear doorway of the small room awaiting a chance to voice their opposition or support for the project submitted by Amerikohl Mining Inc. of Butler and currently being reviewed by the DEP.
However, when DEP technical services permit chief Tom Kovalchuk said that those with comments would be required to enter a separate room and record their statement after he and the mining company made their respective presentations, the crowd protested, stating that their concerns should be heard by all in a public forum.
"This format is unacceptable," said Beverly Braverman, Mountain Watershed Association executive director. "We want an open format."
An open format, continued Braverman would allow the DEP officials and mining company representatives to be questioned by those in attendance.
Kovalchuk, however, said that the session would allow for the public to make recorded statements or that all were welcome to submit written comments to the DEP. Also, he said, those reviewing the Amerikohl mining permit application, including a geologist, forester, blaster and inspector were also available to discuss various aspects of the application and the permitting process.
"There will be no documentation or no record of my comments to the (DEP) experts," argued Braverman.
The Curry Mine project, said Amerikohl Company president John Stilley is located within a 588-acre tract with approximately 140-acres of property to be affected with the recovery of both the Upper Freeport and Upper Kittanning coal seams. The mining firm anticipates removing a total of 250,000 tons of low-sulfur coal that will be sold to area utility companies.
The mining operation, said Stilley, will not be visible from the Allegheny Highlands Trail that weaves through Ohiopyle State Park.
"The only thing that will be heard is the back up alert signals," he said.
The alarm, speculated Stilley, would be less than the sounds emanating from the CSX trains that travel through the area and are less than 500 feet from the bike trail.
Seven sedimentation ponds and associated ditches will restrict water flow to several waterways in the area, including Morgan Run, Indian Creek River, Johnson Run and the Youghiogheny River.
The site is to be returned to its present status as a forest after the expected 20 month project is completed.
Pennsylvania Sierra Club Mining Issues spokesman Michael V. Nixon, meanwhile, said that the format hindered the sharing of information.
"In the course of discussion of presenting information, there is a dialogue," he said following the meeting. "There was someone that wanted to talk about the plant and animal species that they apparently were familiar with; probably more so than the DEP.
"They may have vital information."
Carl William Schneider, said like many in the room, he was concerned about how the mining operation would impact the neighboring state park and the Youghiogheny River where he and his friends come to paddle throughout the summer.
David Farhinger, his maternal grandfather, he said, was commissioned in the 1960s to determine the location of state parks, including Ohiopyle State Park and makes the location more special to him.
"I come up here and camp on a regular basis," said Schneider.
Andrea Funyak drove nearly two hours to attend the meeting to publicly voice her concerns about the project and believed the refusal by the DEP officials to allow her to do so, was "wrong."
"I volunteer at the state park," she said of her attendance. "Anytime I have been at a public or board meeting you sign your name and speak your peace.
"For these (DEP) people to come in here and be rude to us; avoid our questions is wrong.
"If I lived in this community I would be livid that they are not going to listen to the residents or the users of the park."
Braverman said that her organization would likely file a petition with the Office of Surface Mining - a federal oversight committee to alert them that the state agency did not comply with public participation requirements.
"(DEP) is holding meetings that are not public; meetings that do not support Congress' assertion that the public should be able to participate in these matters," she said.
Property owner files suit over gas extraction
By Bob Niedbala, Staff writer
March 28, 2008
niedbala@observer-reporter.com
WAYNESBURG - A group of property owners have filed a $20 million lawsuit against CNX Gas Co. LLC and Consol Energy Inc. claiming the companies have extracted coal-bed methane gas from their properties without compensating them.
The suit was filed Wednesday in Greene County court by Earl Kennedy, Elizabeth Kennedy, Charles G. Ely II, James Sisley, Joanna Storer, John O. Harker and the Earl Kennedy Trust.
The plaintiffs collectively own two tracts of land in Gilmore Township that together contain more than 842 acres. They have retained ownership of the underlying oil, gas, water and mineral rights, the suit claims.
During the years, various tracts of Pittsburgh seam coal beneath the properties were sold to the Consolidation Coal Co. In neither of the tracts, however, was all the Pittsburgh seam coal conveyed to Consolidation Coal, the suit said.
The companies began drilling for coal-bed methane gas in 2005, with five wells that included horizontal and vertical drilling.
The plaintiffs claim the companies have drilled into, and extracted gas from the Pittsburgh seam as well as from surrounding strata, including the "Rider Coal Zone," which was not conveyed to Consolidation Coal and is owned by the plaintiffs.
The Rider Coal Zone (RCZ) is about 4.23 feet thick and is above the Pittsburgh seam. It is separated from the Pittsburgh seam by about 21/2 inches of shale, the complaint said.
In submissions to the state Department of Environmental Resources, "Defendants stated that their intention was to drill their wells within the Pittsburgh or river vein of coal as well as the RCZ seam," the suit states.
The suit claims the companies had no right to extract coal-bed methane gas from the Rider Coal Zone nor from the Pittsburgh seam.
The companies apparently believe they can extract coal-bed methane from the Pittsburgh seam based on a 1983 decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in U.S. Steel v. Hoge, the lawsuit said.
That decision gave the owner of the coal the right to coal-bed methane within the seam.
The plaintiffs maintain, however, the Hoge decision is invalid in light of a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Amoco Production Co. v. Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
In that case, the suit said, the court held that coal-bed methane is not owned by the coal owner but by the owner of the gas estate.
"Our clients maintain the companies have captured gas outside their ownership by going outside the seam," said attorney John Smith, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs.
"And if the court employs the analysis used in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Amoco, all the coal-bed methane gas is owned by our clients," he said.
The lawsuit asks for damages, including punitive damages, in an amount in excess of $20 million. It also seeks a permanent injunction to halt further coal-bed methane extraction from the property.
Consol spokesman Joseph Cerenzia said Thursday that it is the company's policy not to comment on lawsuits. A spokesman for CNX, which is owned primarily by Consol, could not be reached for comment.
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