New Mine Spurs Questions
Meeting about Mon complex draws 100 people
Morgantown Dominion Post
18 January 2012
By Ben Conley
About 100 people gathered in the Clay-Battelle High School
auditorium Tuesday night during the first public meeting regarding
a new longwall mining complex CONSOL hopes to build.
The gathering was organized by the Pittsburgh District of the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE), which is doing an environmental
impact study of the proposed mine and related processing
facilities — refuse disposal site, preparation plant, fresh water
impoundment and new railway line.
“The intent of tonight is not to answer every question you have,
the intent is to find out what those questions are, so we can go
out and try to find the answers,” said Scott Hans, the district
regulatory branch chief for the Army Corps of Engineers.
The meeting opened with a brief presentation from the corps. They
outlined their role as one of the permitting entities that CONSOL
subsidiary Wolfpen Knob Development Company will have to satisfy
before the project is given the go-ahead. Among their areas of
focus are the 85,812 linear feet of stream — Dunkard Creek
draining east and Church Creek draining west — and 9.42 acres of
wetland labeled as “aquatic impacts” on an ACOE fact sheet.
Representatives from Wolfpen Knob laid out some of the potential
economic benefits to the area, including 400 hourly and 100 salary
jobs with the mine, and roughly 2,600 ancillary positions the mine
would bring with it.
Wolfpen puts a number of $1.5 billion in taxable wages to
employees over the 30-year life of the mine, which would be about
a mile from Wadestown. They also calculate the project would
translate to $3.25 million annually in property taxes.
The meeting picked up considerably when the microphone was turned
over for questions from the audience. Questions came from two
groups: Residents and property owners near the proposed 3,200 acre
project, and coal miners.
David and Lori Wilfong live on property adjacent to land marked as
part of the potential refuse disposal area.
“I’m not opposed to the project, I think it’s a good thing in the
jobs that it would provide. My ultimate question, though, is how
that is going to impact our property and our way of lifestyle
there, being that I’m on top of that mountain looking right down
into that refuse area?”
Coal miners in the crowd were worried that the new mine would
ultimately take work away from them. They were concerned that the
money CONSOL would spend to get the new mine up and running would
be far more than it would take to give existing mines the ability
to go after the same coal.
CONSOL representatives would not comment on the future of existing
mines or whether the new jobs would be union, stating only that it
would be a choice of the employee.
Members of the crowd seemed dissatisfied at times with the lack of
concrete answers they were receiving, but Hans assured them their
concerns are going to be addressed and there would be more
opportunity for public input as the project moves forward.
“This is only the very beginning,” he said.
COMMENTS on the proposed mine can be emailed to mason.dixon@
usace.army.mil.