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.