Jim Miller stands in front of the log home he and his wife built nearly 20 years ago in the woody hills of Westmoreland County. He points to a section of forest behind a fence post just off his driveway
“That’s about 73 feet from the corner of this house,” he says.
That point is the closest his house gets to the underground workings of Rustic Ridge #1 mine, an active coal mine about 300 feet below the surface. The mine is owned by LCT Energy of Johnstown, Pa., which is working it to extract metallurgical coal used in steelmaking.
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Because Miller’s house is 73 feet from where the mine ends, he thinks that may have spared it from the fate of others in his neighborhood.
“I got a phone call from the one neighbor one day and said, ‘Are you having any problem with your basement?’” he said.
She told him she could hear mining equipment operating underneath her house and could see cracks opening up in her basement.
Another neighbor reported the same thing. Neighbors reported other problems, Miller’s wife Judy says.
“Doors and cabinets open by themselves because [the house is] not level anymore,” she said.
These are common attributes of mine subsidence, when mining below ground causes damage to buildings and other infrastructure on the surface. According to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, mine subsidence can cause foundations to crack and floors and walls to tilt out of level. LCT has admitted its mining activities have caused subsidence in this part of the mine, blaming poor geology.
Judy Miller says her neighbors eventually stopped talking about the mine. And shortly thereafter, according to county records, LCT bought three houses nearby.
“Just talking to some of the neighbors, they’re afraid to talk about anything because the only recourse they have with this is to get some money from the mine. Otherwise, they are going to lose their house altogether,” she said.
Despite these problems, the DEP recently gave the go-ahead for LCT to expand its mine crossing beneath the Pennsylvania Turnpike near its exit at Donegal. Jim Miller says he wants to warn others in the expansion area to be vigilant.
“We would like to let the public know what’s going on, especially what could happen [to] the people in the expansion.”
Cleaning up legacy mines and worried about future ones
A few miles south of the Millers lies a series of ponds treating discharge from abandoned mines. These nearby mines were in use before modern environmental laws. Carla Ruddock of Mountain Watershed Association, a local environmental group, stands next to one of the ponds. It has a distinctive orange hue – a telltale sign of mine water.
“That is iron,” says Ruddock. “This discharge has iron and aluminum.”
Ruddock is helping to manage this treatment system, built with more than a million dollars in public and private money.
“As water goes into the mine, it picks up the minerals that are in there, and then it just discharges out,” Ruddock said. “Every time it rains, the water infiltrates into the ground and slowly but surely those mine pools fill back up.”
Ruddock fears the expansion of the Rustic Ridge mine could upset the delicate balance of water flowing into the nearby abandoned mines that feed into these ponds, affecting this treatment system.
“We do have concerns that it could possibly increase flows to this treatment system coming from that new mine. That is definitely a concern.”
In a statement, DEP spokesperson Laina Aquiline said the agency “cannot issue a permit that would cause probable hydrologic impacts to adjacent mine works.” Aquiline said that the mine has a “permitted hydrologic barrier to reduce the potential” for mine water to flow between Rustic Ridge and surrounding mines nearby.
Worried about water
Still, water is at the top of mind for Joan Hastings. She grew up nearby and has witnessed the damage legacy mines have done to Western Pennsylvania, particularly its streams. Abandoned mine drainage pollutes over 5,000 miles of streams across the state, according to the DEP.
“All of this area has been mined, and it all had water problems because of the mining from years ago. So how is this going to be different?” she said.
Hastings attended a recent town hall held by Mountain Watershed on the project, where she learned about ways landowners can protect themselves should mining damage their property.
She and her husband are some of the dozens of landowners who signed a lease allowing LCT to mine beneath their property.
Hastings and her husband paid for an expensive treatment system to remove iron from their water. She’s afraidthe mine could put that water in jeopardy – either through pollution or by causing their groundwater to dry up.
“We have well water, a lot of water, it’s good. We have springs in our yard, and I did sign for them to take the coal, but I’m really sorry I did it,” Hastings said.
She came to the meeting to see what she could do to cancel the lease, but found out there isn’t much she can do now. She’s surprised the state would allow the company to mine under the Turnpike.
“It has me sort of stunned because I didn’t think they would do that,” she said “I thought the turnpike was money enough that they would keep them from coming underneath there, but it’s going to happen, I guess, probably real soon.”
Assurances of safety
The Turnpike Commission blessed the project, saying it would closely monitor the condition of the roadway.
LCT says in its mine permit it will limit surface damage by using a form of mining called room and pillar – where the company leaves thick pillars of coal.
In theory, the overburden – that is, the ground on top of the mine – will be supported by these pillars. It will also conduct additional monitoring to test the underground rock layers for heightened risk of subsidence. But that hasn’t satisfied Kirk Russel. He lives on top of the expansion area.
“I don’t give a crap if it’s got pillars or not – it’s a void,” he said. “If there’s a void under there, there’s the chance for the overburden to fill that void. So … where does that come from? Your house.”
Russel’s property has been in his family for decades, and has an old strip mine on it. He said in this hilly part of Western Pennsylvania, with a history of pollution from mines, people are worried about a new one coming in.
“There’s no good water in the whole area,” he said. “That’s what everybody’s worried about. And if you’ve got any kind of water at all, you want to try to protect it.”
