DEP plans another hearing on strip mine
Daily Courier
By Michael Cope
Daily Courier Staff Writer
Saturday, May 17, 2008

The state Department of Environmental Protection is planning a second opportunity for the public to voice concern about a proposed strip mine near Ohiopyle State Park.

A controversial hearing on April 16 packed dozens of people into a small meeting room at the Dunbar Township municipal building. Those providing testimony were taken to a separate room to speak into a tape recorder.

“We decided to have another one,” said Thomas Kovalchuk, chief of permits and technical services at the Greensburg District Mining Office. “The size of the room was insufficient.”

The proposed mine is near several high-quality cold water fisheries, including Morgan Run, Indian Creek, Johnson Run and the Youghiogheny River.

“The tax-paying citizens of Pennsylvania deserve an opportunity to discuss their concerns in a public forum, and the April 16 meeting did not allow such an opportunity,” said Liz Tavares, president of Friends of Ohiopyle. “The facility was so small that many were forced to stand outside, and those who managed to squeeze inside were subjected to what was essentially a commercial for Amerikohl Mining.”

John Stilley, owner of Amerikohl Mining Inc., said his company is planning to remove about 250,000 tons of low-sulfur coal from the Curry Mine, a project area of 600 acres. Coal would be removed from about 280 acres of the Upper Freeport and Upper Kittanning coal seams. The property is forest, which would be restored.

Trucks transporting coal from the mine would travel Camp Carmel Road, Greenbrier Road, Chalk Hill-Ohiopyle Road and township roads 547 and 1055.

The operation is scheduled to be completed in 18 to 24 months. The mine would involve at least seven sedimentation ponds and connecting ditches. The DEP requested additional ponds to keep run-off away from streams and the Youghiogheny River.

“This site presents some very serious environmental concerns and has the potential to further pollute a stream that our organization anticipates spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to clean up,” said Scott Hoffman of Chestnut Ridge Trout Unlimited.

Hoffman’s organization has received DEP Growing Greener funding to install a treatment system to remediate acidic discharges from past coal mines.

“Our members have worked incredibly hard to move this project forward, and the DEP should allow them to voice their concerns about new mining in a public forum,” Hoffman said.

As part of the mining permit, Amerikohl applied to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, the wastewater permits division of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

“Pennsylvania’s EPA-approved program for issuing NPDES discharge permits under the Clean Water Act specifically allows citizens to request public hearings on NPDES discharge permits,” said Krissy Kasserman, Youghiogheny Riverkeeper with the Mountain Watershed Association. “We dispute that the (April 16) conference meets the requirements of the NPDES program’s public participation requirements.”

Kovalchuk agrees.

“We need to follow NPDES regulations,” he said. “We’ve been looking at different facilities, trying to find one close that will handle a large crowd.

“We tried to use a format that was good for people to get information to us, but NPDES requires different procedures. We’ll try to combine those procedures during next meeting.”

The DEP settled on Morrell Volunteer Fire Department, near Connellsville, but has not set a date.

Michael Cope can be reached at mcope@tribweb.com or 724-626-3537.

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