Officials say halt mine water project
The federal office overseeing mining operations in Pennsylvania ordered a West Virginia company to immediately stop a project intended to reduce mine water levels that are threatening a coal mine in Greene County.
The Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) issued an “imminent harm cessation order” to Dana Mining of Morgantown to halt the borehole drilling and mine water-pumping project because it does not have a state permit for the project.
“OSM has determined that allowing the operator to continue constitutes a circumvention of the approved Pennsylvania permitting process,” said OSM spokesman Christopher Holmes.
The cessation order was issued Tuesday, he said.
Dana Mining incorrectly believed it didn’t need a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to drill two boreholes and build a pump station along Calvin Run in Perry Township to pump water from Consol Energy’s closed and flooded Humphrey No. 7 mine in Maidsville, W.Va., according to the DEP.
Pumping water from the Humphrey mine to the Steele Shaft mine water treatment facility, which is operated by AMD Reclamation Inc., a nonprofit affiliate of Dana Mining in Dunkard Township is needed to reduce rising water levels that threaten mining of the Sewickley coal seam in Dana’s 4 West Mine in Dunkard Township, according to the DEP.
Several years ago, the rising mine water levels forced Dana Mining to shut down its Dooley Run Mine in Dunkard Township, according to the DEP.
Dana started the work on the Calvin Run project in September 2010. By late December, one borehole was finished, the second hole was started and the pump station was under construction.
On Dec. 29, the OSM issued the DEP a 10-day notice of violation, saying a mining permit was needed for the project, Holmes said.
The DEP replied by sending the OSM a copy of a consent order and agreement it issued to Dana Mining, he said.
The consent order required Dana Mining to submit an application to revise its permit for the 4 West Mine to include the borehole and mine water-pumping project at the Calvin Run site by Jan. 24.
If Dana Mining didn’t stop the project, it faced a fine $1,000 for each month the work continued. The DEP also ordered a fine of $750 for each day Dana failed to comply with any provision of the order.
The OSM determined that the Calvin Run project is mining activity and Dana Mining must have a permit from the DEP to continue working on the project, Holmes said.
Pennsylvania’s permitting process is vital to protect people living near mines and the environment from potential harm from mining, he said.
Circumventing the state permitting process also violates the federal Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Act of 1977, Holmes said.
Dana Mining could respond to the OSM’s cessation order in several ways, but the two primary options are to appeal the order to Department of the Interior or to obtain a permit from the DEP, he said.
The DEP gave Dana Mining a permit for the Calvin Run project, but withdrew the permit in February 2010 after residents complained that the DEP didn’t allow for public comment or input before the permit was issued, Holmes said.
Based on communication with the DEP and after obtaining an excavation permit for the project from the Greene County Conservation District, Dana Mining believed that all required approvals for the project were in place and started work in September, according to the DEP.
AMD had been pumping water from Humphrey No. 7 to its Shannopin Mine Dewatering treatment plant in Dunkard Township since 2003. Dana Mining and AMD built the plant using $7.1 million in state grants and loans to prevent a catastrophic escape of the rising mine water into Dunkard Creek and the Monongahela River.
The DEP’s permit for the Shannopin treatment facility allows AMD to pump water from the Shannopin facility to the Steele Shaft treatment facility, which has a DEP permit to discharge treated mine water into Dunkard Creek. Steele Shaft is a shaft in the old Shannopin Mine.
In September 2009, a golden algae bloom in Dunkard Creek in West Virginia released toxins that played a part in a massive fish kill in which most of the aquatic life in the 40-mile creek in West Virginia and Pennsylvania died.
The West Virginia DEP, which led the investigation into the incident, said the algae played a part in the fish kill, but never pinpointed the source of the algae.
The Pennsylvania DEP blamed the algae bloom on discharges from Consol’s Blacksville No. 2 Mine.
Dana Mining has been pumping water out of Humphrey No. 7 to Shannopin to protect the 4 West Mine for several years using boreholes and a pump station along Watkins Run, but deterioration of the Humphrey mine and boreholes reduced the amount of water being extracted, according to the DEP.