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Coal company sues over house's historic status
Sunday, November 12, 2000 By Antoinette Fitch
WAYNESBURG -- A coal company whose mining operations are expected to damage a Greene County landmark home has sued the homeowners, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Register of Historic Places in federal court.
Consol Energy's West Virginia-based Blacksville Mine plans to do longwall mining under the circa-1939 Ernest Thralls House on Thursday.
Attorneys for the company brought suit Oct. 27 to have the eclectic Spanish Revival house removed from the national register. In its lawsuit papers, Consol claims its rights to due process were denied during the historic designation of the house, which requires the company to perform more thorough and expensive repairs and restoration for any damage.
The Thralls House is an unusual sight in its rural setting along Forney Hollow Road near the village of Spraggs, south of Waynesburg. It is a 12-room, 2 1/2-story structure made of glass block and masonry walls veneered with sandstone, brick, stucco and ornamental Spanish tile. A heavy oak front door accented with wrought-iron strap hinges is set in a stone turret.
The house appears invincible. But damage is expected during the sinking of a mine ceiling 400 feet below when Consol removes the coal. Longwall mining leaves no coal supports to keep the surface from subsiding, unlike the old room and pillar mining method. Mining experts usually say flatly that there will be subsidence using the longwall technique; the question is how much.
To try to prevent the house from collapsing during mining, Consol has dug deep trenches around its foundation and braced the exterior walls. The excavation has uprooted shrubbery and perennial plantings, some original to the house.
Consol officials predict the greatest damage will happen five days after mining under the home begins.
Roy and Diane Brendel, who have owned the house for 29 years, have hired an attorney and are fighting to save it. "The mining will ruin our home," said Roy Brendel, 56, a guidance counselor.
Taylor Structural Engineers, experts hired by the Brendels, say the brittle masonry walls will sustain severe vertical cracks, the floors will pitch and parts of the house may even collapse from the subsidence, despite Consol's mitigation efforts.
Patrick Foltz, executive director of Preservation Pennsylvania, agrees with those findings. "Spanish Revival houses are particularly vulnerable," said Foltz. "By their very composition of masonry, stucco and tile they are very fragile structures."
Foltz said he had toured areas in southwestern Pennsylvania in which homes were damaged by longwall mining. "I am skeptical that anything could be done by a coal company to offset the damage done by dropping a house 4 feet into the ground."
Will stay in house
The National Trust for Historic Preservation is worried about the potential loss of the Thralls House. "The house is configured in a 'Y' shape, making mitigation and protection of the structure difficult during the subsidence process," said Patricia O'Connell, National Trust spokeswoman.
Buildings listed on the national register are protected from severe mine damage under federal preservation laws.
Consol Energy contends that the Thralls House should not have been listed. "This is a case where preservation law has been abused," said Consol spokesman Thomas Hoffman. "The Thralls House does not represent the work of a master and does not possess high architectural value. It flat out does not meet the criteria under the law."
Although the company and the homeowners have not reached agreement on a final damage-control plan, workers for Consol have cleared out the Brendels' basement and erected cribbing to brace the plate of the house. Support walls will be built throughout the interior upper floors. The braces will stay in place for months as the house settles.
Consol workers will have access to the basement around the clock during the mining to adjust the supports.
The Brendels say they will stay in their house through it all. "We don't feel safe leaving," said Diane Brendel, 54.
She said it was difficult to cope with the invasion and that her emotions fluctuate from panic to anger to grief.
"I am in sheer terror that I will lose my house," she said. "The coal company says I have to take all the pictures from the walls and pack up our valuables, but I can't seem to focus on anything."
Over the years she said they grew to love the home's original but outdated features, such as windows that are not energy efficient, and instead of remodeling did careful maintenance. Diane Brendel left her elementary teaching job with Central Greene schools to raise their daughter, Michelle, care for the home and work with her brother Leigh Shields at his neighboring herb and flower farm. That farm also will be undermined soon.
The Brendel home, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, was the creation of Ernest Thralls, an officer in the National Guard serving along the Mexican border in the early 1900s. He advanced to major and later served overseas in World War I.
Thralls designed and built the house in two stages on the 133-acre farm where he grew up, outside of Spraggs.
Using local craftsmen, Thralls first built a five-room summer cottage in 1939, where he and his wife vacationed. He continued adding to the house for a year, and it later became his retirement home. Thralls also built a stucco guest house, log garden shed and animal pens on the property.
"Whenever the major traveled to the Southwest he brought back decorative tiles for the house," said Diane Brendel.
Thralls died in 1954. His body was viewed in the living room of his Greene County home before burial in Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington D.C.
Farm also in Consol sites
National Register documents on the Thralls House cite numerous features that are considered architecturally significant and contribute to its beauty. A ceramic mosaic floor patterned as a Mexican rug is inlaid in the main entry. Leaded stained-glass windows in the foyer and living room tint the natural light in rainbow hues.
The large living room incorporates hand-hewn oak ceiling beams reclaimed from the property's earlier farmhouse, and a Palladian window overlooks the rear veranda, gardens and water well. A massive, beveled mirror and Renaissance Revival-style built-in mahogany sideboard dominate the adjoining dining room. French doors in the master bedroom lead to a private second-floor veranda.
The federal Office of Surface Mining, the agency that oversees the protection of landmarks endangered by mining, has agreed with the state Department of Environmental Protection to accept the coal company's engineering plan to mitigate damage to the house and will not halt the work. It has even tried to expedite an agreement among the homeowners, coal company and preservation agencies. The preservation agencies have strongly objected.
However, Brenda Barrett, director of the Bureau for Historic Preservation, an arm of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, will be leaving that post, it was announced last week. Barrett has been an outspoken critic of longwall coal mining. A PHMC spokesman, John Robinson, said Barrett resigned and will leave the agency Friday. He would not explain the reason for the departure.
Barrett did not return calls to comment.
Coal companies are required by law to repair or pay all property owners for damage caused by their mines and are regulated primarily by the state Department of Environmental Protection. But under the National Historic Preservation Act, the responsibility shifts to the federal Office of Surface Mining.
The agency is required to consult with state and federal preservation agencies about mining that will affect architecturally significant and historic properties before allowing mining. The DEP, homeowners and coal company are included in the process.
The consultations can result in a memorandum of agreement, in which the coal company may have to alter its mining plans, undertake costly measures to preserve key architectural details and use historic restoration practices and authentic materials to repair the mine damage. For coal operators, it is an expensive and time-consuming process.
Hoffman said the company was moving ahead with its plans despite the opposition. "This is a permit that was granted years before the Thralls House was listed. Our mining and mitigation plans have been reviewed and accepted by all the relevant agencies and we are proceeding."
Consol's lawsuit is the second time this year a coal company has tried to remove a structure from the National Register. RAG Emerald Resources Inc., this spring succeeded in removing the Kent Farm, also in Greene County, from the register. The owners managed to have it re-listed in August.
But the listing has not stopped plans to mine beneath it and it has not provoked a preservation agreement. A portion of that farm has already been mined and the farmhouse and buildings are scheduled to be subsided in February.
The coal company, homeowners and government agencies are still deliberating mitigation plans, which are required because the house is on the register. A current proposal allows the coal company to mine under the Kent House but obligates it to restore the home using historic preservation standards.
Because of the historic designation, it will be a costly project in which expert craftsmen must replicate the original work done by the earlier builders. Both the coal company and the homeowners have rejected that agreement.
Consol is trying to avoid some of the requirements that RAG currently faces with the Kent House.
Hoffman said it was difficult for the company to avoid longwall mining under houses. "It would mean stopping short, moving our equipment and reassembling it elsewhere. When we leave coal behind we lose production."
Hoffman would not disclose actual projected losses from such an arrangement for the Thralls House or the amount of coal involved. He did say the company had offered the Brendels a settlement exceeding the $368,000 estimated cost to rebuild the house.
It was rejected.
"That settlement was for damage to the entire property -- the houses, the stream, the loss of our water," explained Roy Brendel. "This is our home, our lifestyle. We want to preserve it. You can't put a price tag on it."
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