Consol Builds Va. Plant to Remove Salts From Water;
No Plans Yet
for W.Va. Plant
The State Journal
16 January 2010
By Pam Kasey
A new plant to treat high-salinity water coming from the Buchanan No. 1
mine in Virginia should start operations this year.
MORGANTOWN -- Consolidation Coal Co. resumed discharging high-salinity
water Jan. 7 from its Blacksville No. 2 mine into Dunkard Creek north
of Morgantown under a state order that gives the company until 2013 to
clean up the salts.
Consolidation Coal has argued in the past that removing the salts would
be too expensive.
But at the same time, the company is actively constructing a
salt-removal system at one of its mines in Virginia.
Both mines’ discharges are high in chlorides, a salt that results from
some natural resource extraction processes and that is expensive to
remove.
The salty Blacksville No. 2 discharge contributed in the fall of 2009
to a bloom of golden algae that killed as many as 22,000 fish and all
of the mussels on more than 38 miles of Dunkard Creek.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has placed
Consolidation Coal under three successive compliance orders beginning
in 2004. The orders allow the company to exceed effluent limits aimed
at keeping the creek
below the state’s acute water quality standard for chlorides of 860
milligrams per liter and its chronic standard of 230 mg/L.
Consolidation began withholding discharges in September, during the
kill.
But on Jan. 7, WVDEP allowed the discharge to resume in response to
concerns about miner safety based on the presumption that golden algae
will not bloom in cold weather. The discharge takes place under a new
compliance order
that requires treatment by May 2013.
At its Buchanan No. 1 mine in Virginia, the company is building a
system designed to treat the very same problem — a plant that went into
construction in 2009 and will be in operation this year.
The Virginia treatment plant came about as part of a larger expansion
project, according to Cathy St. Clair, public relations manager for
parent company CONSOL Energy’s Central Appalachia Operations.
“The availability of water here to run the existing prep plant,
especially in dry periods like summer, was a continuing concern,” St.
Clair said. “We realized that we were going to need an even greater
amount of water for the upgrade, and
as a result we opted to build the water treatment facility that we have
under construction.”
The plant will use reverse osmosis technology, a filtration method that
uses pressure to force the demineralization of water.
As at Blacksville No. 2, the water that will be pumped from the
Buchanan No. 1 mine is high-chloride drainage that naturally
accumulates in the void spaces left behind by previous mining.
St. Clair said she does not know the cost of the reverse osmosis
treatment plant alone. The entire project, with upgrades to the coal
prep plant, is estimated at $100 million; annual operations and
maintenance costs will not be known
until the plant is operating.
The company began the Buchanan project in spring 2009 and is expected
to be in testing during the summer of 2010 and in operation by the end
of 2010.
It is CONSOL’s first reverse osmosis treatment plant for mine drainage,
St. Clair said.
The Buchanan plant’s peak capacity will be 1,600 gallons per minute.
Blacksville No. 2 discharges on average 400 gpm, according to CONSOL
spokesman Joe Cerenzia. Asked in early December whether WVDEP has the
authority to withdraw CONSOL’s compliance order and require the company
to remove
the salts from its discharge, a DEP official said only that “the
authority is there, but so is the ability to appeal.”
The agency issued a new compliance order on Dec. 18, 2009.