Pennsylvania blames mine discharges for massive fish kill

By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tuesday, October 13, 2009 A heretofore undisclosed underground flow of mine pool water between Consol Energy’s Blacksville No. 1 and No. 2 mines may have contributed to the highly salty, polluted discharges that caused the massive, month-long fish kill on Dunkard Creek. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said stream sampling shows discharges high in dissolved solids and chlorides from Consol Energy’s Blacksville No. 2 Mine are the “primary immediate source” of the fish kill that last month wiped out aquatic life on 35 miles of the 38-mile stream that meanders along the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. But the DEP, in a letter dated Wednesday, has also asked Consol to provide information of the underground connections between its active Blacksville No. 2 Mine in West Virginia and its inactive Blacksville No. 1 Mine in Pennsylvania, and requested that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revoke a deep well injection permit for coalbed methane waste water at the inactive mine. The DEP also said it has obtained information that the mine pool in the inactive mine is flowing into the mine pool in Blacksville No. 2. Consol has previously said that the wastewater from the inactive Blacksville No. 1 mine is not flowing into the active Blacksville No. 2 mine. Fish, freshwater mussels, salamanders and aquatic insects started dying on Sept. 1 and continued dying throughout the month. The Pennsylvania DEP has also asked the West Virginia DEP, in a letter dated Oct. 2, to “take necessary enforcement measures” to control pollution discharges of total dissolved solids, chlorides and sulfides from the Blacksville No. 2 mine treatment facility. That treatment facility stopped treating and pumping mine water into the creek as the fish kill progressed last month, but Pennsylvania DEP wants assurances that the earlier pollution loads will not resume when it becomes necessary for Consol to resume pumping water out of its active mine. …