Groups Appeal Mine Drainage Permit Approval by DEP
Say it allows illegal drainage into creeks
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
5 January 2010
By Don Hopey
Environmental groups have appealed Pennsylvania's November approval of
an expanded mine drainage permit that allows the discharge of minimally
treated water high in sulfates and dissolved solids from several mines
into Dunkard Creek, where such pollutants contributed to a massive fish
kill in September.
According to the appeal filed with the Pennsylvania Environmental
Hearing Board last week, the newly amended permit of the Shannopin Mine
Dewatering Project in Greene County illegally allows the discharge of
thousands of gallons of highly polluted mine water into the creek from
Consol Energy's Humphrey No. 7 Mine.
The amended permit was approved by the state Department of
Environmental Protection without the legally required opportunity for
public comment, said the appeal by Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future
(PennFuture), a statewide environmental organization, and Friends of
Dunkard Creek, a small Greene County conservation group.
"We are amazed the state is still operating in secret and doing so in
an area where water quality is extremely fragile," said Jim O'Connell,
a board member of Friends of Dunkard Creek. "How anyone could have
granted this permit revision after the destruction we experienced is
beyond me. And you can bet if there had been any public notice, DEP
would have heard our objections loud and clear. It's time to reverse
this backroom deal and clean up the water."
The Shannopin Mine treatment project was established in 2003 to prevent
a potentially disastrous discharge or "breakout" of acidic mine water
into Dunkard Creek and the Monongahela River from the abandoned mine
that operated from World War I to 1992. AMD Reclamation Inc. was
granted an emergency discharge permit that allowed it to draw down the
underground mine pool and discharge the water after providing
incomplete treatment.
But under the amended permit, water from Consol's Humphrey Mine can be
piped 8,200 feet to AMDRI's Steele Shaft Treatment Facility, which
already processes up to 7,000 gallons a minute from the Shannopin and
nearby Warwick Mine. That would save the state's biggest coal producer
the cost of treating its mine water to much cleaner standards at one of
its West Virginia treatment facilities and allow Dana Mining Co. to
mine Consol-owned coal reserves in the Sewickley coal seam above the
Humphrey Mine, said PennFuture Senior Attorney Kurt Weist.
"Bottom line, there is no imminent catastrophe if the water is not
pumped from Humphrey to Steele Shaft," Mr. Weist said. "This adds more
mine drainage water to Dunkard Creek and is being done to allow a
commercial mining operation to go forward."
Joe Cerenzia, a Consol spokesman, said the company hasn't seen the
appeal and "it would be premature to comment until we get the details."
Helen Humphreys, a DEP spokeswoman, said the department is reviewing
the appeal but has no further comment.
AMDRI and the corporately related Morgantown, W.Va.-based Dana Mining
Co., did not respond to phone requests for comment yesterday.
The amended discharge permit contains no limitations on total dissolved
solids or TDS, and was granted by DEP's Mining Division even though a
February 2009 report by a DEP biologist found that Shannopin's
discharges contained high levels of dissolved solids that were harming
the creek's aquatic life.
There were no TDS or other pollutant limits in AMDRI's original
discharge permit granted by DEP's Mining Division in September 2003,
despite a determination in June 2003 by DEP's Water Management Division
that TDS should be tightly limited in discharges into Dunkard Creek.
High TDS levels from mine treatment discharges on the creek helped
create conditions in which an invasive, highly toxic golden algae
thrived and killed fish, mussels and salamanders throughout 40 miles of
the creek in September, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.