Ceremony marks progress for Mather gob pile
MORGAN TWP. — Angela McDonald of Mather was pleased when she heard the good news about the coal refuse pile a stone’s throw from her home.
Politicians, civic leaders and others hailed the start of remediation of the multi-acre Mather “gob” pile in Greene County during a ceremony Thursday at the foot of tall mounds of coal waste left behind by the Mather mine.
“I’m glad to see it go,” said McDonald, 17, of Eighth Street, who has lived close to the coal refuse pile all her life. “Mice and rats come down from that gob pile. And there’s holes up there that you can fall into and not get out. That gob pile is a big hazard.”
McDonald’s father, Chris Ewart, 42, has lived with his family by the gob pile for nearly 20 years.
Ewart smiled as he said, “I like that it is going to be fixed.”
John Poister, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the 70-acre refuse pile, situated near Third Street in Mather, was once part of the Mather Mine, which began operations in 1917 and was abandoned in 1964. A part of the pile has been burning for several years.
Poister said nothing grows in seven-mile wide coal refuse pile.
“All this is the result of 60 years of coal mining,” Poister said. “The Mather mine was the generator of jobs and the economy and when that was gone after the mine was abandoned, the byproducts, the waste — this gob pile — remained. You get up there and it is like the surface of the moon.”
Poister said that as part of the project, soil from the bottom of Duke Lake at Ryerson Station State Park will be excavated to cover the pile. He said the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) is removing the silt from the lake bottom to begin its dam reconstruction project. The lake was drawn down in 2005 after cracks and water seepage were discovered in its dam. Restoration of the lake is now in the permitting process, he said. Poister said 250,000 cubic yards of soil from the lake bottom will be excavated to cover the gob pile.
DCNR has projected the lake will be restored by the summer of 2017.
Poister said the total project will cost about $3.6 million.
Of that figure, he said, the DEP awarded the nearly $1.6 million contract to Berner Construction of Gap to reclaim the refuse pile. Poister said the DEP provided an additional $2 million needed to remove the soil from the lake bottom and deliver it to coal refuse pile.
“This is a terrific project because what it does is take land that is absolutely unusable and even dangerous — people use their ATVs along with erosion with drop-offs – and transforms this land so that it will covered, planted and turned into a park area that will be an asset to the community. They’ll be able to use the land for community activities, maybe a ball field or soccer field. A local conservation group wants to put in hiking trails and maybe a boat launch. There are a lot of things as a result of the work that is being done,” he said.
DCNR Secretary Ellen Ferretti, DEP Deputy Secretary for Active and Abandoned Mine Operations John Stefanko and along with local leaders for the ceremony at the coal refuse site.
State Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Jefferson, said she was pleased that not only would the gob pile will be remediated, but that Duke Lake will be restored.
“This is a win-win situation – two state agencies working together,” she said. “This is great for taxpayers dollars to be utilized this way. Two wonderful projects for two communities that really deserve to have both of these projects completed.”
Snyder stood in the shadow of towering mounds of coal refuse as she spoke about the brownfield site that has plagued Mather for generations.
“Any time you have a site like this, you want to make it better for the community,” Snyder said as she stepped over small nuggets of coal. “This community has been waiting a long time to have this removed.”
Poister added, “People live here. This is their neighborhood. So now instead of looking out over an ugly coal pile, this land will be made better through remediation. This is a huge project. Sadly, there are coal piles like this all over.”