e land sinking down 15 feet, causing damage to roads and formations of creeks in what was once profitable farmland. Yet as of 2010 Cline Mining continues to buy land from struggling farmers and its mining efforts are expanding, with new mines starting closer to Hillsboro. Many townspeople begrudgingly support the business. In a time when jobs are increasingly hard to find, the development of longwall mining in the area promises to bring jobs to many people in the area, despite the cost for others. While the more traditional practice of room-and-pillar mining could be used in the area instead, the practice takes considerably longer to set up and execute, and cannot extract as much coal.
Longwall mining in Pennsylvania
2010 Citizens Coal Council report on damage to PA water
In July 2010, the Citizens Coal Council (CCC) - a national alliance of social and environmental justice grassroots groups - released the results of a nine-month long investigation into the regulatory files of three major longwall mining operations in southwestern Pennsylvania: Bailey Mine (Consol Energy), Enlow Fork Mine (Consol), and Emerald Mine (Foundation Coal). Analyzing over 75,000 pages of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) mining files, CCC found "an internal administrative quagmire of illogical permit monitoring, baseless decisions, and lax oversight of coal operators by the PADEP." The report finds that despite improved data collection requirements and strong state constitutional and regulatory safeguards, the PADEP has failed to adequately evaluate and protect against threats to Pennsylvania streams and watersheds adversely affected by the longwall “full extraction” method of coal mining. The report can be found here.
CCC said that while the report only focuses on the past several years of mining records, subsidence damage to streams and watersheds has been allowed by PADEP since Act 54 of 1994, which paved the way for widespread use of longwall mining in Pennsylvania. Communities impacted by longwall-related water losses and property damage have been raising their concerns with legislators and PADEP for the past 16 years. CCC’s website Longwall Mining states: "Like a slow-moving earthquake, longwall mining damages the complex and interrelated system of groundwater and surface water in streams and watersheds. A typical longwall mining panel is more than 1,000 feet wide and several thousand feet long and is usually between 200 to 800 feet below the surface. As the longwall mining shearer moves forward the roof supports move with it and the ceiling behind the supports collapses, generally 4 to 6 feet, causing ground movement and strata displacement and disrupting groundwater flow by creating cracks and fractures as the overlying rock drops into the void left after the coal is removed."
Among the investigation’s key findings:
- Lax enforcement of state and federal coal mining laws that protect hydrologic balance, including the Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA), resulting in stream dewatering and widely-damaged aquatic systems.
- State water quality standards are inadequately enforced, and permit discharge limits are routinely exceeded; for example, the anti-degradation requirements which can protect high quality water resources most at risk from longwall mining damage.
- Longwall mining permits are routinely issued based on inadequate assessments of likely impacts to streams, wetlands, and the hydrologic balance.
- Oversight and enforcement of pre-mining mitigation and post-mining restoration and coal mine reclamation are piecemeal and inadequate, and may in fact be illegal under the Clean Water Act and the PA Clean Streams Law.
2011 Citizens Coal Council report on Act 54
In Pennsylvania, the passage of Act 54 in 1994 altered the state’s 1966 mining regulations from the “prevention of damage from mine subsidence” to “restoration of damage from mine subsidence.” According to a 2011 report by the national Citizens Coal Council - "The Increasing Damage from Underground Coal Mining in Pennsylvania: A Review and 