Sagging Streams

He further charged that: "In early July [2000] USFWS personnel held a press conference to publicize the preliminary findings. Neither DEP, nor the [federal] Office of Surface Mining, were given the courtesy of prior notice of this event." Apparently, the "press conference" Roberts referred to was a meeting in Waynesburg of the Fish and Boat Commission, Game Commission, US Geological Survey, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and concerned citizens who had requested information from these resource agencies. While two members of the press showed up, neither had been invited. The most telling part of Roberts' harangue was this proclamation: "At present, subsidence from longwall mining is the subject of spirited public debate in Pennsylvania. Little is known, either beneficial or adverse, about the 'pooling' impacts."

To this, David Densmore, who directs the Fish and Wildlife Service's Pennsylvania field office, responded to Roberts' boss as follows: "In fact, while there may be a 'spirited debate' about whether longwall mining should be permitted to cause subsidence under highways, buildings, utility lines, etc., there is little debate over whether streams have been impaired or, in some cases, existing uses eliminated, by either 'pooling' or flow reduction. Some streams, such as Laurel Run in southern Greene County, dried up entirely after being undermined."

Laurel Run had been a pretty little perennial stream full of crayfish and minnows, a support system for downstream smallmouth water, before RAG Coal Holdings started longwalling the watershed two years ago. Murray and Laurine Williams, who live beside the now-intermittent, fishless stream, have spent 12 years restoring their 150-year-old farmhouse. After they got it listed on the National Register of Historic Places RAG informed the National Park Service that, since it owned the coal under the house, it should have a say in the designation, and that it didn't like the designation. The Park Service rolled over and delisted the house, but with the help of a smart, aggressive attorney named Dick Ehmann the Williamses got it re-listed.

Now the spring that had supplied their water has dried up, and RAG's planned earthquake has badly damaged the house. "Every house on Laurel Run Road is damaged," declares Ehmann. "Walls have cracked. Doors don't open or won't close. On some of the houses you can set a marble on the floor and it will roll to one side. Water supplies have disappeared." Under a settlement forced by Ehmann RAG is restoring the Williams' farmhouse, but it can't do much about the missing spring and brook.

In 1966 the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a law that, reasonably enough, said that longwallers couldn't destroy people's homes. The industry challenged this "Subsidence Act" all the way to the US Supreme Court and lost. Then, in 1996, coal moguls and beneficiaries serving as state legislators slipped through a law, written by the mining companies, that required longwallers to replace water supplies they destroyed but which also stipulated that it was OK for them to destroy property provided they paid to have it fixed later—in the case of water supplies, three years later. Few noticed the second part of the bill, and it sailed through without a single nay. So now King Coal can legally destroy private and public property and, while it's supposed to pick up the tab for repairs, it frequently doesn't. Bob Ging, the attorney who has litigated every longwalling case in Pennsylvania so far, has been trying to get a water supply replaced since 1995. "If government agencies want to destroy your home, they have to compensate you first and then only after they go through eminent domain proceedings," he says. "So coal companies basically have more power than our government." You'd think the property-rights crowd would be screaming like rousted guinea fowl, but they've not uttered a peep.

The sad thing is that the damage to private property and the environment isn't necessary. Degrading perennial streams is illegal and wouldn't happen if DEP enforced the law. What's more, if coal companies would "backstow"—i.e., fill the cavities they create in the earth—most of the subsidence could be avoided. They could use their own longwall waste, dredge spoil, "overburden" from their strip mines which they currently dump onto headwater streams, and even the right kind of municipal trash. But backstowing costs money, and because it's not required in the US, longwallers don't do it here. European countries are not so permissive. In Germany, where backstowing is mandatory, Consol and RAG—both German firms - have no trouble with it.

America, whose executive branch of government is currently giving the green light to longwallers, has long preached energy self-sufficiency. We decry the purchase of fossil fuel extracted from foreign nations. But we happily purchase it from energy companies based in those foreign nations after they have hacked it out of our own landscape sans environmental safeguards. We pay twice for longwalled coal, and the real costs of getting it out of the earth are borne not by the foreign energy companies but by American property owners, by American fish and wildlife, and by Americans who love fish and wildlife. That's something to remember next time you see an ad proclaiming that coal-fired electricity is cheap.