Published: May 30, 2017 |

Senator Joe Scarnati.
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A bill that will make it harder to challenge underground coal mining permits because of their potential to damage streams advanced out of a Senate committee on Monday.

The bill by Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, would amend the state’s mining law to clarify that planned mining subsidence does not constitute potential pollution under the state Clean Streams Law if it is not predicted to result in permanent damage to waterways.

The Environmental Resources and Energy committee voted 8-4 to advance the measure to the full Senate.

Mr. Scarnati said the bill essentially reaffirms current law. Sen. Gene Yaw, R-Lycoming, said the state Department of Environmental Protection opposes the bill, but a DEP spokesman said the agency does not comment on pending legislation and has not taken a position on it.

Senate Bill 624 was also designed to apply retroactively to permits that allow CONSOL Energy to longwall mine under streams near Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County.

Those DEP approvals have been challenged by the Center for Coalfield Justice and the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club in the state Environmental Hearing Board, where a judge is expected to clarify how the obligations of the state’s Clean Streams Law — which prohibits intentionally degrading waterways — interact with the state’s mining law, which allows planned subsidence as long as companies make repairs to prevent lasting damage.

A ruling in a related appeal halted CONSOL’s mining within 100 feet of a stream that flows through the state park, which led the Cecil-based company to temporarily lay off about 200 miners for a few weeks in February as it moved mining machinery.

Joanne Kilgour, director of the state chapter of the Sierra Club, said the bill takes away the court’s ability to interpret the law and instead changes the law retroactively “to solidify the opinion of the mining company.”

Environmental groups have said the bill substantially weakens environmental protections and they question whether a $5,000 donation from CONSOL to Mr. Scarnati on March 29 influenced his decision to introduce the bill two weeks later.

Mr. Scarnati dismissed the suggestion. “I’ve been receiving campaign contributions from CONSOL for 17 years,” he said.

A 1994 revision to Pennsylvania’s mining law, known as Act 54, allows regulators to deny mining permits if DEP determines in advance that the activity will cause severe, irreparable damage to streams. But the most recent report on the status of the law, produced for the state by University of Pittsburgh researchers in 2015, found damage in some cases beyond what DEP had predicted, including streams that were deemed unrecoverable at the end of seven investigations.

Mr. Scarnati said he suspects that the affected streams were “highly polluted and in much worse condition” before they were undermined.

“Every time [the mining companies] go back in to do something, they make it better,” he said.

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources recently reached an agreement with CONSOL to prevent mining within 100 feet of Kent Run in some longwall panels to protect a primary feature of Ryerson Station State Park.

The agreement also requires enhanced stream restoration if subsidence affects two other waterways that run through the park, Polen Run and North Fork Dunkard Fork, a DCNR spokeswoman said.

Source: (May 23, 2017) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

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