State suing Consol over Ryerson damage
WIND RIDGE – A week after the state filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against Consol Energy, Inc., for its alleged role in the dam failure at Ryerson Station State Park, a local environmental group has blasted the suit and suggested the state should be suing itself for its own failures. The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources filed a suit last week seeking more than $58 million in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, alleging that the mining company’s operations near Ryerson caused damage to the dam at Duke Lake, which had been a top recreation spot in the county.
However, Phil Coleman, the interim executive director of the Washington, Pa.-based Center for Coalfield Justice, said in a press release that the state should also take action against its Department of Environmental Protection for granting Consol mining permits in the first place.
“DEP has been a willing partner in permitting Consol and other mining companies to continue to expand operations even though it has to have known who caused the damage,” Coleman said.
“When DEP knows what the study says, it will have to review what it means about the way mining should be conducted. The state should be suing itself as well as Consol.”
Consol officials declined comment on the suit last week, but spokesman Tom Hoffman had previously stated that there is no evidence that mining caused the park’s problems, according to the Associated Press.
After the DCNR and DEP inspected the dam in July 2005 and found cracks in the concrete and water seepage, the state drained the lake, and irreparably harmed local recreational activities as well as the environment, the lawsuit claims.
The suit seeks $38 million for the replacement of the dam and the restoration of the lake, as well as approximately $20 million for the estimated damage to natural resources.
In the suit, the DCNR alleges that Consol lied about the risks of mining so close to Ryerson and that the company was responsible for conducting mining in a manner that would be the least harmful to the park’s features.
“Consol had a duty to the public, and the commonwealth, to safely perform its mining operations, taking every reasonable precaution, or not do it at all,” the suit states. “The unstable nature of the dam posed a safety threat to those individuals living downstream of the dam.”
The lawsuit follows months of legal negotiations between Consol and the DCNR, which filed a notice in January 2007 of its intention to sue the company over the damage to the lake and the dam.
The DCNR has still not released details of its report about the causes of the dam failure.
“DCNR has consistently denied us the opportunity to review the expensive study it conducted to establish who destroyed the lake,” Coleman said.
“Are we to believe that DCNR also didn’t reveal the study to DEP? The departments occupy the same building in Harrisburg.”
The suit also follows the state’s announcement in November 2007 of its plans to rebuild the dam and restore the lake, which will take about three years to complete but may be delayed while the lawsuit progresses and responsibility for the damage is decided.
(Additional information provided by Jennifer Harr of the Herald-Standard)