Stop Curry Mine
Your newspaper often reports on “summit meetings” to promote tourism throughout Fayette County. Now you, your readers, and our public officials have the opportunity to do something real to promote tourism and protect the county’s natural beauty. Stop the Curry Mine.
That’s the proposed 588-acre strip mine adjacent to Ohiopyle State Park, to the Yough River, to the Yough River Bike Trail, to State Game Lands 51, and four miles upstream from the takeout point for most of Fayette County’s public water supply.
A 2007 survey found that hikers and bikers spend $12 million annually along the Yough Trail a total that will increase when the trail connects to Pittsburgh later this year.
The whitewater outfitters in nearby Ohiopyle do additional millions in business annually.
Those boaters and trail users come here from all over the world.
Who would come here from far away to bike or raft past a strip mine?
No one. If you doubt me, look at recent experience along the Cheat River in West Virginia. Thirty thousand people used to raft that river every year.
Then a mine spill turned the rocks orange. Now only 4,000 raft it.
Tourists come here for ecotourism, the mountains, the Yough River, and the bike trail.
The proposed 588-acre nuisance stabs at the heart of all those resources.
It rips Fayette County’s economic development strategy to shreds.
And all for the 12 temporary jobs the mine would create.
The Fayette County Zoning Hearing Board, at its next meeting on Wednesday, has the power to stop the mine by denying Amerikohl Mining’s request for a special exception.
But the board may be skittish after Judge Ralph Warman’s recent decision, reversing its denial of a special exception for the windmill project south of Uniontown.
I therefore call on our county and state officials to put their influence where their rhetoric is and intervene to stop the Curry Mine.
And I ask you to editorialize against the project.
Michael Comiskey
Connellsville