Planning commission opposes zoning change
By CHRISTINE HAINES
chaines@yourmvi.com
There was a resounding roar of approval from a crowd of 200-300 people Wednesday evening as the Forward Township Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend that the township supervisors deny a zoning change requested by Coronado Coal.
A hearing that preceded the vote lasted more than two hours and included testimony from the coal company, a brief statement from an attorney representing the township and numerous comments from members of the public.
Not one member of the public spoke in support of the zoning change or anything else related to the proposed coal mine, despite company assurances that it would be a clean operation providing jobs and tax revenue to the community.
Coronado’s chief geologist, Joe Wickline, explained that the company owns 930 acres, some of which is already zoned for industrial use with mining as a special exception, but it needs all the land rezoned to make its plan work. The area has already been mined by Consol Energy, which mined the Pittsburgh seam. Coronado is proposing mining a deeper seam of metallurgical coal.
“We are targeting these old coal mine areas,” Wickline said. “The entire area will be reclaimed to a lot better condition.”
He said the operation would create 238 permanent jobs working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for at least 10 years, with a possibility of an additional 20 years of mining after that.
“We only plan to use 343 acres of this parcel, about one-third of the land that we control,” Wickline said.
Wickline said the site would be accessed from Bunola River Road, Pangburn Hollow Road and Williamsport Road, with the coal leaving the site by enclosed conveyor belts to river and rail transfer points to reduce coal dust and truck traffic in the local area.
About 180 acres of the site would be for what Wickline called mine rock storage, with the site lined with a $50 million impermeable liner to prevent the mine waste from interacting with groundwater.
William Sittig Jr., special counsel hired by the township for the case, used a more common term for the coal mine rock storage.
“Storage means held for reuse. It’s a refuse facility. It’s a dump for what is called gob, garbage of bituminous,” Sittig said. “Coronado is looking at what they call storage and I call dumping of this garbage on what is now pristine virgin land.”
To read the rest of the story, please see a copy of Thursday’s Mon Valley Independent, call 724-314-0035 to subscribe or subscribe to our online edition at http://monvalleyindependent.com.
