Companies Snookered DEP

By Andrew Liebhold

It is a clever but sad ploy when the coal industry tricks State taxpayers into paying to pollute their own water. In 2003 AMDRI, a subsidiary of WV coal and power generating companies Dana Mining & GenPower, received over $13 million in PA grants and loans to build the “Steel Shaft Site” near Davistown, PA. This project ostensibly was designed to lower the rising waters building in the abandoned Shannopin mine which were threatening to break out into Dunkard Creek and the MonRiver. The benefit to Dana was that lowering water levelswould allow them to mine coal in the Swickley seam and the benefit to the state was that it would avert the spill of acid mine water.

The whole deal sounded sweet because AMDRI promised that they would only temporarily discharge water into Dunkard Creek because their plan was to clean the polluted water and pipe it to the Longivew power plant for use in cooling. The deal was even sweater because AMDRI promised to establish a trust fund to treat the polluted Shannopin Mine water in perpetuity. In exchange, the PA DEP granted AMDRI permission to temporarily exceed DEP water quality standards when they discharged directly into Dunkard Creek prior to changing its flow to the Longview plant.

Unfortunately the deal began to unravel in 2008 when Dana / GenPower announced that the water from the Steel Shaft site was too polluted for their purposes and that the Longview plant would instead draw water from the Mon river. However the PA DEP continued to give AMDRI permission to pump their polluted water into Dunkard Creek. Even more incredulous, the PA DEP granted AMDRI to double the amount of water flowing into the creek by diverting water from the abandoned Humphrey
mine. This mine has never been in danger of breaking out and was never included in the original agreement to build the plant. The water discharged into Dunkard by AMDRI is very high in TDS (total dissolved solids). AMDRI’s permit to exceed TDS levels in their discharge expired almost 2 years ago but PA DEP allows it to continue.

A study conducted by PA DEP in 2009 concluded that TDS levels from the AMDRI site were severely impairing the aquatic community in Dunkard Creek. Furthermore, the AMDRI source is a major contributor of excess TDS in the MonRiver; over the last 2 summers, TDS levels have exceeded safe drinking water standards several times and this threatens the safety of the water drawn from the Mon by virtually all municipal water systems in the region. Finally, excess TDS from the Blacksville 2 mine was found to be the cause of the algal bloom causing the massive fish kill in Dunkard Creek in Sept., 2009. The high TDS levels created by the AMDRI site are setting the stage for a repeat of this disaster.

While the danger of TDS was not fully understood in 2003 when the State funded AMDRI, this problem is now well-known and we face a TDS crisis in Dunkard Creek and the MonRiver. Furthermore AMDRI has reneged on their agreement to utilize the minepool water for cooling instead of dumping it in Dunkard Creek. They have also reneged on their promise to establish a trust to fund treatment of minepool water in the future. The time has come for the PA DEP to face the reality that they have been snookered in this deal. Discharge of polluted water into Dunkard Creek at the AMDRI site should stop immediately and only resume when their discharges can meet State water quality standards. If PA DEP does not address this matter immediately, we will be faced with a disaster that pales in comparison to the recent Dunkard Creek fish kill.