Consol's Plan for Mine Water Tests Effectiveness of U.S. Efforts
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
10 January 2011
By Don Hopey
A dispute over drilling bore holes into Consol Energy's Humphrey No. 7
deep mine in Greene County without a state permit and the planned
pumping and discharge of minimally treated mine water into Dunkard
Creek has bubbled over again.
How it's resolved could provide signs about the effectiveness of a 2009
U.S. Office of Surface Mining initiative to provide increased oversight
and reduce environmental damage from coal mining operations in
Pennsylvania and five other Appalachian region states.
The mining office says AMD Reclamation Inc. drilled the bore holes
along the North Branch of Calvin Run in Perry Township into the Consol
mine in apparent violation of a requirement to obtain a state mining
permit. On Dec. 29, acting on a complaint by Citizens for
Pennsylvania's Future, OSM filed a 10-day notice of violation with the
state Department of Environmental Protection, asking it to take action
against the ongoing construction project.
The DEP has until Wednesday to take action. Katie Kiresh, a DEP
spokeswoman, confirmed that the department had received the 10-day
notice detailing the alleged permit violation, but declined further
comment because of pending "legal issues."
The DEP could decide to allow the bore hole drilling to continue
without a permit and ask AMDRI to apply for one later, but Kurt Weist,
senior attorney for PennFuture, said that's not the way the permitting
process is supposed to work.
"DEP is required under federal mining law to issue a cessation order
because what is occurring is unpermitted mining activity," Mr. Weist
said. "It's supposed to be get the permit first and then do the work
second."
AMDRI, a nonprofit that was established and is affiliated with Dana
Mining Co., plans to use the bore holes to drain polluted water from
the inactive Consol mine in the Pittsburgh coal seam. That will allow
continued operation of Dana's mine, which the company said employs 500
miners, in the shallower Sewickley coal seam.
A side benefit for Consol is the reduction of its treatment costs for
getting rid of water pooling in the Humphrey Mine, Mr. Weist said.
AMDRI said it has worked with regulators in DEP's mining and legal
offices to complete the bore hole project and has followed the
permitting path they recommended. In a written statement it said that
the "surface disturbance associated with [the bore hole project] falls
in the earth-moving and surface activity provisions of its permit."
That's a different course than AMDRI and Dana Mining took in November
2009, when they sought and were granted a mining permit for the
dewatering project. After PennFuture challenged the permit in an appeal
to the state Environmental Hearing Board, the DEP revoked the permit in
February 2010, saying it had been "improvidently granted."
"If the DEP allows this to proceed and the OSM doesn't exercise its
oversight power to issue a cessation order to stop it," Mr. Weist said,
"it won't have credibility anywhere."
George Reiger, OSM division chief for the Pittsburgh Field Division,
which has oversight responsibility for Pennsylvania, said his office
will review DEP's response and, if necessary, take "appropriate action
to ensure federal standards are followed."
After it pumps the water from the Humphreys Mine, it would pipe it a
mile-and-a-half to its Shannopin Mine Dewatering Project treatment
facility, which was constructed with DEP approval in 2003 to prevent a
"breakout" and potentially disastrous overflow of acidic mine water
into Dunkard Creek and the Monongahela River from the abandoned
Shannopin mine, which operated from 1914 through 1992.
The emergency treatment permit granted to AMDRI allowed it to draw down
the Shannopin underground mine pool and provide incomplete treatment at
its Steele Shaft Treatment Facility before discharging the mine water,
contaminated with sulfates and dissolved solids, into Dunkard Creek.
"Steele Shaft was allowed relaxed treatment limits because of the
possibility of the damaging discharge from Shannopin," Mr. Weist said,
"But the water coming from Humphrey doesn't satisfy that criteria.
"Consol shouldn't be allowed to benefit from this situation," Mr. Weist
said.
Consol, in a written statement, said it is "honoring the conditions of
the permits reviewed and provided by the state and federal agencies
that have oversight" at all active operations.
A five-year renewal of the Steele Shaft treatment plant's relaxed
discharge permit by DEP's mining office has been pending for 28 months.
DEP's water management division has recommended that more stringent
limits be included in the new discharge permit.
The creek, which meanders across the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border,
was the site of a massive fish kill in September 2009. High levels of
total dissolved solids were a contributing factor to the growth of
toxic golden algae which has been blamed for the fish kill along 30
miles of the creek.
A February 2009 DEP report on an aquatic survey of Lower Dunkard Creek
found the Stele Shaft treatment plant discharges during low-flow creek
conditions caused "almost four miles of Dunkard Creek to be unable to
support fish life where a fishery previously existed."
A DEP stream assessment document released Dec. 23 listed 34.8 miles of
Dunkard Creek as impaired due to contamination by chlorides and
dissolved solids from underground mining.
Mr. Weist said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should insist
that any new mine discharge into the creek should be subject to the
full range of pollution controls applicable to all mine drainage pumped
from permitted mines.
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.