Mining = Money, To Hell with the Commons

Pennsylvania seems to be getting hit particularly hard with fossil fuel company damage.

Here is another story that I think folks should be aware of.

Mining - money - revenues - profits

That's all the fossil fuel corporations care about.

And yet our legislators keep giving them more and more access to our commons - destroying our way of life - and potentially killing not only destroying the environment - but killing the people.

Stockpiles of any type of fossil fuel isn't necessary if you end up dead from lack of water/food or polluted air/water caused by the decimation of our commons by fossil fuel operations.

Please take the time to read the whole article

>>>>HERE<<<<

Knowledge is power.

A few snips:

New scrutiny of 'longwall' mining finds damage in Pennsylvania streams

By Kristen Lombardi

The brutally efficient coal-extraction method known as “longwall mining” has permanently damaged a half dozen streams in Pennsylvania, state regulators have found — a finding that could trigger deeper waves for such operations in the state.

In December, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, sent a little-noticed letter relaying its unusual decision to the coal company that has tried to repair one such stream for five years, Consol Energy. Regulators determined the unnamed tributary, UT-32596, “has not been restored to conditions that existed prior to undermining.” They called further remediation attempts “futile,” and demanded the company compensate “for the loss of Commonwealth resources.”

 “This is the first time a state agency has come out and admitted permanent damage to a stream from longwall mining,” says Aimee Erickson, director of the Citizens Coal Council. Now, “we have the evidence to try to do something to stop longwall mining.”

All six of the irreparably damaged streams have suffered “flow loss” from Consol’s Bailey Mine, which snakes beneath 144 square miles of rural terrain in Greene County. Here, Bailey’s longwall machine has caused such hydrologic chaos that Consol has had to conduct state-required remediation on miles of creek, the Center for Public Integrity reported in 2009. Four of the broken streams run above Bailey’s 1-I to 4-1 longwall panels, the same panels underlying Ryerson Station State Park. In 2005, the park lost its 62-acre Duke Lake when its dam cracked after the longwall machine had moved beneath it.

Note this from the previous paragraph (my emphasis):

All six of the irreparably damaged streams have suffered “flow loss” from Consol’s Bailey Mine, … 

Four of the broken streams   …  underlying Ryerson Station State Park.

In 2005, the park lost its 62-acre Duke Lake when its dam cracked after the longwall machine had moved beneath it.

Meet Duke Lake.

Courtesy of Consol’s Bailey Mine