Sagging Streams

Then in 1998, after an eight-mile stretch of the stream had subsided due to longwalling, Consol Energy, the nation's largest underground coal producer, sought to expand the nation's largest underground mining operation—the Bailey complex, under Enlow Fork. By sheer coincidence the consultant Consol hired to survey Enlow Fork sampled within a few hundred feet of the station checked by SCS's consultant more than two decades earlier, but now that reach had receded about four feet into the earth because of the mining. Despite the fact that the new study area was considerably larger than the original (600 feet) electro-shocking gear turned up only 36 fish representing only 10 species. The excuse offered by Consol was that in the earlier study, SCS's consultant had sampled with rotenone, turning the belly of every last fish in the stretch sunward. When the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Raymond Proffitt Foundation observed that this was plainly and simply an untruth Consol claimed that SCS's consultant had been more thorough in his shocking.

When I asked Consol's manager of environmental permits, Jonathan Pachter, why the company's consultant had found more fish in the unsubsided sections in 1998 he said it could be coincidence and that "anything's possible when you're dealing with organisms that move all over the place."

Consol's PR staff said they knew why I was calling them. "There's a group of anti-mining organizations that have been contacting media of all types," Sandra Hamm informed me. "My guess would be that someone from the Raymond Proffitt Foundation contacted your magazine." (Actually, I had contacted the foundation.) When I asked her about the increased diversity of fish in unsubsided sections she said: "This comes up again and again and has been fed to journalists all over the country by the Fish and Wildlife Service. They [service personnel] come and protest at the hearings. They hold little media conferences downtown on their anti-longwall mining studies." But the Fish and Wildlife Service does no such thing.

Consol's Thomas Hoffman was even more direct. "I know what's happening here," he told me. "Certain groups [which he later narrowed down to the Raymond Proffitt Foundation] are working the media to generate as much publicity for their side of the story as they can. The Fish and Wildlife Service's whole case is based on an old study compared with a sample they think we have that shows this dramatic reduction in species and individuals at Enlow Fork. What they never tell you, because it's not in their interest to do that, is that the baseline study was done in the days when they'd take a long stretch and repeatedly shock until they virtually shocked every critter that was in the stream. . . . Quite frankly, they don't know what they're talking about. They're comparing apples and oranges. We believe they know that that's what they're doing."

Longwall miners routinely damage perennial streams with impunity. In Pennsylvania all that DEP has required Consol to do on the eight subsided miles of Enlow Fork is make a stab at fixing 600 feet as a "mitigation experiment." According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the experiment has failed spectacularly. Even the mining itself had been an experiment, permitted by DEP in the guise of a "low-cover study." Basically DEP told Consol, "Go ahead and grab the coal, and let's see if you ruin the stream." It did both. Because Enlow Fork is only about 400 feet above the coal seam DEP had major reservations about issuing the permit, but it just couldn't say no. Now eight miles of pools, riffles and runs have been converted to a series of stagnant impoundments that function as sediment traps. Boulders and cobbles that had provided superb habitat for smallmouth and a diverse community of macroinvertebrates have been smothered with silt. Where wading fishermen used to move with no trace they now leave 50-yard plumes of café au lait.

In a joint silt study the Fish and Wildlife Service and the EPA looked at three sites on Enlow, comparing them to an unsubsided reference stream with similar watershed characteristics. Only 3.6 percent of the reference stream's bottom composition consisted of silty material of less than two millimeters in diameter. For the two Enlow sites in the subsided reach, the figures were 30.9 percent and 41.8 percent. At the third Enlow site—downstream from the undermined area—18.2 percent of bottom composition was material of less than two millimeters in diameter, clearly indicating that longwalling affects downstream reaches. But according to Consol, the ponding is good. "The fish like cold, deep pools," says Sandra Hamm. "When the undermining first occurred there was a drought, so it was actually pretty good that there were pools because it gave the fish someplace to hide."

"A complete misrepresentation of data" is how this fish refugia line, oft repeated by Consol and its hirelings, strikes aquatic ecologist Lou Reynolds, who has been contracted by the Raymond Proffitt Foundation to study the effects of longwalling. "I think that when you get into these drought situations the fish pretty much stay where they are, and the habitat shrinks," he says. "It's not like the fish are actually seeking these pools out. On a density level there are fewer fish there than on the unsubsided reaches. I'm pretty concerned with what I see. Headwater streams are disappearing, and the coal companies know it. These impacts are happening from the headwaters all the way down to the larger streams. The coal companies say give the streams time and they'll correct themselves. Well, I don't think they're qualified to make those kinds of statements. They're not hydrologists."

Both the Raymond Proffitt Foundation and the Fish and Wildlife Service are also collecting other incriminating data. Of the 131 streams in southwest Pennsylvania the service has evaluated, 26 have subsided sections and 38 others have reduced flows or, in some sections, no flows.

"The Fish and Wildlife Service," charges Consol's Hoffman, "has a point of view; they are in the minority among the agencies. They don't really have a role to play in the regulation of the industry." But the service does have a role; it is required by law to advise DEP and the Army Corps of Engineers on mining permits. Moreover, the service is not in the minority. In issuing the permit to mine under Enlow Fork DEP ignored the advice not just of the service but of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and the Pennsylvania Game Commission. In fact, both commissions saw fit to sue DEP and Consol over the permit. As part of the settlement Consol agreed to do what it was already obligated to do - delineate wetlands and riparian zones over the mined areas 400 feet or less above.

DEP is required by law to send the Fish and Wildlife Service copies of mining permit applications on request. But such a request by the service's Pennsylvania field office sent DEP's Bureau of Mining and Reclamation director J. Scott Roberts into a state of high dudgeon. He fired off a blistering letter to the service's director, Jamie Clark, in Washington, DC, informing her that if her Pennsylvania field office wished to see the applications it could get them itself, then wandering off into a long list of unrelated grievances such as a complaint that field office personnel "subrogate the scientific method" by "develop[ing] conclusions" and then conjuring supporting data.