Once upon a time (actually around 2004), there was a mine owner named Bob Murray who operated a longwall mine in Washington County, Pennsylvania known as the High Quality Mine. It was a shallow mine as far as longwall mining was concerned - as shallow as 210 feet below the ground surface - and, like many underground mines in Washington County, it crossed under a number of springs, seeps and streams.
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Bob Murray - also part owner of
the Crandall Canyon Mine, where
six miners died in August 2007.
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By the time PennFuture was asked by local citizens to get involved in the matter, we found that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) had been permitting the mine in a very unusual way. Instead of issuing a single permit that comprehensively looked at the impacts of the entire mine, DEP was segmenting the project into individual authorizations that only looked at the environmental impacts from the next longwall panel. The streams that flowed over the mine were fed by shallow, perched groundwater zones. This was significant because this shallow source water could be permanently redirected away from the stream by mine subsidence fractures.
When PennFuture entered the scene, Murray's company, UMCO Energy, Inc., had completely eliminated every spring and seep above the portion of the mine that had been completed, including eradication of the flow in an unnamed tributary to Maple Creek known as the 5E stream, and DEP was proposing to allow UMCO to continue mining under, and no doubt eliminating, the next tributary that would be encountered, the 6E stream.
For more than two years, PennFuture pursued litigation on behalf of local citizens that were concerned about the permanent impacts of the mine on local streams. Through a series of actions filed with the Environmental Hearing Board and an appeal to Commonwealth Court, PennFuture not only prevented DEP from continuing to permit the mine and the subsequent destruction of the springs, seeps and streams in the Maple Creek watershed, it also established important legal precedent on how DEP permits longwall mines.
In particular, the UMCO proceedings established that DEP had to comprehensively consider the effects of all anticipated mining on area hydrology, and could not make decisions based on an artificially narrow and segmented approach. In its supersedeas decision, Judge Labuskes of the Board chided the agency for its slanted approach, saying that it would not surprise anyone that the hydrologic impacts of a mine would appear insignificant if you focused only on small, isolated portions of the mine rather than looking holistically at the full impact of the entire operation.
The case represented a significant decision for Maple Creek and its tributaries, and had a lasting impact on how DEP permits mines in Pennsylvania.
PennFuture will celebrate 15 years of environmental victories on September 25. Please consider joining us!
