Sagging Streams

Over the past decade the coal industry has generated copious ink by ripping the tops off American mountain ranges, in the process burying and polluting streams and converting some of the planet's most diverse temperate forests to desert. Meanwhile, beneath the surface, the industry is also ripping apart the earth and destroying streams with a less visible technique called "longwall mining" or "total extraction." Welsh coal miners introduced the practice to the US in 1875, but it didn't really catch on here until about 1980.

Traditional deep miners leave "pillars" of coal along the coal seam so that they and their equipment don't get buried. As a side benefit, the earth doesn't collapse under streams and manmade structures - at least not right away. But with longwalling the entire coal seam, which runs for miles and may be seven feet high and 1,000 feet wide, is removed the way a dentist excavates a root canal.

These days a "shearer" moves back and forth on a track set across the face of the coal seam as if the whole deposit were a stick of salami being abbreviated by a whirling meat slicer. Hydraulic roof supports are inserted and removed as the shearer progresses along the seam. As this happens the earth collapses into the cavity, and fish, wildlife and humans above are treated to what the industry chastely calls "planned subsidence." Buildings crack or fall apart. Wetlands, springs, ponds and streams vanish into the bowels of the earth. Even as they are dewatered, streams lose their riffles, transmogrifying into a series of stagnant pools sealed by dams that mark the edge of the collapsed mine. Sometimes the industry converts traditional deep mines to longwalls by going back in and removing the pillars. Leaving coal in the earth for any purpose is anathema.

Longwalling happens everywhere there are major coal deposits—in Pennsylvania, for instance, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Utah, Ohio, Illinois, Alabama and New Mexico—and it's increasing because it's the cheapest method of getting coal out of the ground. Currently there are 53 longwall mines operating in the US. "Longwall mining, which has revolutionized underground mining operations in the United States over the past 20 years, is one of the main reasons why coal is used today to generate 52 percent of the nation's electricity," reports the industry publication Longwall USA.

In Pennsylvania, the fourth largest coal producing state after Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky, longwalling now accounts for 75 percent of underground soft coal production. There's no reason to suppose that the practice is more hurtful there than in other states; the difference is that there have been witnesses. So Pennsylvania's experience offers the only clear vignette of the national scene. Personnel from the US Fish and Wildlife Service's Pennsylvania field office and the Raymond Proffitt Foundation, a Philadelphia-based NGO specializing in environmental protection, have been watching and collecting data.

State and federal laws prohibit damaging perennial streams by longwalling (or any other means), but when the industry controls the economy, fills the legislatures and appoints its own regulators—often from its own ranks—enforcement tends not to happen. As the Raymond Proffitt Foundation observes in a lengthy report on longwalling, "Pennsylvania wetlands [including streams] are being destroyed by the high-extraction (longwall) mining of bituminous coal underground. Quietly. Inexorably. Without regulation. Pennsylvania protects wetlands from other types of construction activities. Its laws do not exempt longwall mining from wetland regulation. But wetland law enforcement is absent when mining permits are approved."

Because of the "inadequate and unlawful implementation of the regulatory process for permitting new longwall mines," charges the foundation, "streams are dried up or altered to the extent that fish and invertebrate populations are devastated. Entire aquatic ecosystems are permanently changed." According to the foundation, the laws apparently are being broken with the tacit approval of the state Dept. of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Mining and Reclamation (BMR): "Examination of the BMR files . . . leads to the inescapable conclusion that BMR seeks deliberately to ignore the requirements protective of wetlands, the same requirements that the Department of Environmental Protection imposes upon other types of industrial and construction activities statewide."

Typical of the examples offered by the foundation is permit 30841316 for the expansion of Consol Energy's Bailey Mine in Washington and Greene counties. DEP approved it on Feb. 24, 2000, thereby adding 11,120 acres to Consol's underground mine permit area and 4,126 acres to its subsidence control plan area. The land overlying the expansion is covered with all manner of wetland types, and by law an applicant must identify water resources that might be compromised by its longwall operations. But despite the fact that the Pennsylvania Game Commission had repeatedly informed BMR that these wetlands were at risk, BMR issued the permit without making Consol identify them.

Streams dammed and dewatered by longwalling usually have few defenders. In Pennsylvania, for instance, coal seams occur in the southwestern part of the state, where coldwater habitat is rare. The smallmouth fishing is fabulous, and while the trout fishing can be good, it's a springtime deal dependent on hatcheries. One can't blame Trout Unlimited for not raising hell because its mission is to protect and restore wild salmonids (although on June 17 the Pennsylvania council passed a motion opposing longwall permitting until proper safeguards are in place). And while one might suppose that some of the bass organizations would come to the defense of the self-sustaining smallmouths, I found no evidence of this in my interviews or literature searches. Yet while sportsmen play Hester Prynne, the US Fish and Wildlife Service for once is speaking up for fish and wildlife. It's nice to see a state field office that's earning its keep and that is neither staffed nor controlled by wimps.

Enlow Fork, separating Washington and Greene counties and wandering through old-growth forests bright with rare wildflowers (including the state-endangered Curtis' goldenrod, found nowhere else in Pennsylvania), is one of the most beautiful smallmouth streams in the East. And it is—or was—one of the most productive, sustaining really large fish. What makes Enlow even more notable is that it's the only longwall-damaged stream in the nation where half-decent before—and after-mining data exists. During the early 1970s the Fish and Wildlife Service led a successful crusade to prevent the old Soil Conservation Service from flooding the valley for "flood-control." As part of the environmental impact study for its proposed dam SCS hired a consultant to survey fish and macroinvertebrates. In 125 feet of stream the consultant found 2,500 fish representing 23 species, mostly base-of-the-food-chain stuff like minnows and darters.