Companies Snookered DEP

Washington PA Observer-Reporter
25 April 2010:
By Andrew Liebhold

It is a clever but sad ploy when the coal industry tricks state taxpayers into paying to pollute their own water.

In 2003 AMDRI, a subsidiary of the West Virginia coal and power generating companies Dana Mining & GenPower, received more than $13 million in Pennsylvania grants and loans to build the "Steel Shaft Site" near Davistown. This project ostensibly was designed to lower the rising waters building in the abandoned Shannopin mine that were threatening to break out into Dunkard Creek and the Mon River.

The benefit to Dana was that lowering water levels would allow them to mine coal in the Sewickley seam, and the benefit to the state was that it would avert the spill of acid mine water. The whole deal sounded sweet because AMDRI promised that it would only temporarily discharge water into Dunkard Creek because the plan was to clean the polluted water and pipe it to the Longview power plant for use in cooling.

The deal was even sweeter because AMDRI promised to establish a trust fund to treat the polluted Shannopin Mine water in perpetuity. In exchange, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection granted AMDRI permission to temporarily exceed its water quality standards when it discharged directly into Dunkard Creek prior to changing its flow to the Longview plant.

Unfortunately, the deal began to unravel in 2008 when Dana/GenPower announced that the water from the Steel Shaft site was too polluted for its purposes and that the Longview plant would instead draw water from the Mon river. However, the DEP continued to give AMDRI permission to pump its polluted water into Dunkard Creek.

Even more incredulous, the DEP allowed AMDRI to double the amount of water flowing into the creek by diverting water from the abandoned Humphrey mine. This mine has never been in danger of breaking out and was never included in the original agreement to build the plant.

The water discharged into Dunkard by AMDRI is very high in total dissolved solids. AMDRI's permit to exceed TDS levels in its discharge expired almost two years ago, but DEP allows it to continue.

A study conducted by the DEP in 2009 concluded that TDS levels from the AMDRI site were severely impairing aquatic life in Dunkard Creek. Furthermore, the AMDRI source is a major contributor of excess TDS in the Mon River; over the last two summers, TDS levels have exceeded safe drinking water standards several times, and this threatens the safety of the water drawn from the Mon by virtually all municipal water systems in the region. Finally, excess TDS from the Blacksville No. 2 mine were found to be the cause of the algae bloom causing the massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek in September 2009.

The high TDS levels created by the AMDRI site are setting the stage for a repeat of this disaster.

While the danger of TDS was not fully understood in 2003 when the state funded AMDRI, this problem is now well-known, and we face a TDS crisis in Dunkard Creek and the Mon River. And AMDRI has reneged on its agreement to use the minepool water for cooling instead of dumping it in Dunkard Creek. It has also reneged on its promise to establish a trust fund for treatment of minepool water in the future.

The time has come for the DEP to face the reality that it has been snookered in this deal. Discharge of polluted water into Dunkard Creek at the AMDRI site should stop immediately and only resume when discharges can meet state water quality standards. If DEP does not address this matter immediately, we will be faced with a disaster that pales in comparison to the recent Dunkard Creek fish kill.

Andrew Liebhold is a government research scientist, a resident of Perry Township and board member of Friends of Dunkard Creek.