This article originally provided by The Pittsburg Post Gazette

April 22, 2008

Mining companies seek to reclassify Greene County stream for coal plant

By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

WAYNESBURG, Pa. -- The South Fork of Ten Mile Creek curves lazily beneath arching sycamores as it flows through hills and farm fields west of here.

It holds small-mouth bass that hit harder than a punch and one of its tributaries once supplied water for this Greene County seat.

Now, though, Baltimore-based Foundation Mining LP wants to knock out the protective "High Quality Warm Water Fishery" tag hung on the South Fork and its tributaries in 1979, when Pennsylvania first classified its streams.

That would make it easier and cheaper for the company to build a coal-preparation plant, sludge ponds and "valley fills" where waste rock could be dumped.

In a petition filed in February with the Pennsylvania Environmental Quality Board, Foundation Mining asked the board to end the High Quality rating for 163 stream miles draining 44,000 acres in the South Fork watershed.

For at least a decade, the state Department of Environmental Protection has not approved a valley fill or a coal-preparation plant, which uses and discharges large amounts of water, in a High Quality watershed. Foundation wants to knock the watershed's designation down a peg to the less protective "Warm Water Fishery."

"The higher stream designation isn't a fatal flaw for permitting mine facilities, but it makes it much more difficult," said Terry Dayton, the company's environmental manager.

Terri Davin, president of the Greene County Watershed Alliance, said she's shocked that Foundation Mining is trying to redesignate such a wide swath of the watershed.

"We should be doing what we can to live up to that designation, not lower it to meet some individual needs, whether those are for sewage discharges or mining discharges, timbering or agriculture," Ms. Davin said.

Foundation Mining claims the South Fork watershed no longer deserves the High Quality rating because the Waynesburg water supply was switched to the Monongahela River in 1990. And a stream survey done by Foundation consultant Wallace & Pancher Inc. found the creek does not meet biological criteria required for the designation under today's more scientific state standards.

Foundation's broad petition follows a more narrow path blazed by Bethel Park-based Consol Energy in a October 2006 redesignation petition for Grinnage Run. That mile-long headwater tributary in the South Fork watershed is near the town of Graysville, north of the area Foundation is targeting.

Consol also is seeking redesignation to make siting easier for a possible valley fill, and like Foundation, submitted a consultant's study showing the creek doesn't meet scientific criteria for High Quality warm-water streams.

Tom Hoffman, a Consol spokesman, said he was unaware of any company plans to request more stream redesignations and doesn't view the two reclassification requests as a new industry strategy. But environmental groups and the Greene County Conservation District said approval of the petitions could open the way for more.

"If Grinnage Run gets redesignated, then what happens to the larger one for South Fork? We think it sets a precedent," said Lisa Snider, the conservation district's watershed specialist. "We're very concerned and very worried about the future if the stream designation is changed."

The DEP is reviewing the Grinnage Run petition, is accepting public comments and has completed stream work for its evaluation report to the Environmental Quality Board. After that report is submitted to the board, probably sometime this summer, there will be a second 30-day public comment period before the board votes sometime this fall.

It is rare for a private commercial entity to petition the board for a stream redesignation, said Michelle Tate, the board's regulatory coordinator. Less than a handful of corporate petitions have been requested in the last decade. Almost all petitions come from nonprofit watershed groups seeking to upgrade existing stream designations.

Krissy Kasserman, a member of the Mountain Watershed Association in Fayette County and the Youghiogheny Riverkeeper, said granting the mining companies' petitions would set a precedent that could endanger streams throughout the state's coal mining regions.

"We feel this is just another front in the coal industry's assault on the state's water resources," Ms. Kasserman said.

The original state stream designations were based on existing, best available uses. Grinnage Run and all of the South Fork watershed west of and upstream from West Waynesburg was part of a "Conservation Area" due to its use as a public water supply and bass fishery.

In an effort to establish more objective standards for classifying the state's streams, the DEP a decade ago developed scientific biological and chemical criteria and comparisons for determining stream designations.

But there are few High Quality Warm Water streams in the state and fewer still that have been assessed using the new criteria, said John Arway, chief of the state Fish and Boat Commission's environmental services division and a member of the Environmental Quality Board.

"One of our concerns is looking for an appropriate reference stream for comparison," Mr. Arway said, noting that Grinnage Run's protected status was based on the best available use of the stream in the late 1970s.

"Obviously it was important to someone at some time. That's why it got special protection. Since it has that High Quality protection, someone has to show it doesn't meet the old or the new criteria."

The DEP is accepting public comments on the Grinnage Run petition now. Comments can be sent to Tony Shaw, Pennsylvania DEP, Division of Water Quality Standards, Bureau of Water Quality Standards and Facility Regulation, Box 8467, Harrisburg, PA 17105-8467.
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.