 
|
|||||||||
              
|
Citizen group fights state mining law Longwall method spurs court challenge Tuesday, March 13, 2001 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Subsidence caused by longwall mining in Washington and Greene counties is damaging homes and water supplies, and that constitutes an illegal "taking" of the surface property owners' rights, according to a local citizens group asking Commonwealth Court to throw out a controversial 1994 state law.
The appeal, filed last week in Harrisburg by People United to Save Homes, is the first constitutional challenge to Act 54, which expands coal companies' rights to undermine and subside homes and water supplies.
"It's a violation of due process to allow the mining companies to undermine our homes, damage them and cause us to lose our water, and after that occurs negotiate an agreement on how to repair the damage," said Charles Murray, treasurer of the citizens group.
"The state is essentially giving the coal companies the right to exercise eminent domain, and that's not right."
The appeal challenges a July 1999 decision by the Environmental Hearing Board that endorsed the state law and regulations that prohibit mining only if it results in "irreparable damages" to surface property owners.
In that case, the citizens group alleged that by issuing a mining permit to Eighty Four Mining Co., which has since been purchased by Consol Energy, the state Department of Environmental Protection had failed to require and enforce subsidence protections for homes, public utilities, water supplies, streams, wetlands and historic and archeological sites.
"Act 54 gives the mining companies greater power than the state itself has under the eminent domain code," said Robert Ging, attorney for the group. "The law hasn't worked and it's taken us eight years to see its impacts in home damage, water supply damage, highway damage, stream and wetland damage. I can't imagine the Legislature intended for the act to be used in this way."
Ging said that because surface property owners aren't compensated for destruction of homes and water supplies before the subsidence from mining occurs, it amounts to a "taking" of the property as defined by both the Pennsylvania and U.S. Supreme Courts.
"I think the case [the citizens group] is trying to make is without merit," said Thomas Hoffman, a spokesman for Consol Energy, which last month applied for a permit revision to expand its Eighty Four Mine by 7,204 acres and undermine Interstate 79 in four places. "It would surprise me if a court would find Act 54 unconstitutional given that it expands citizen rights."
Henry Ingram, the attorney representing the coal company, declined to comment on the specific issues of the case, and DEP mineral resources spokesman Ted Kopas said the department hasn't had an opportunity to review the filing and so couldn't comment.
Consol is using the high extraction longwall mining method at its Eighty Four Mine to remove coal from the Pittsburgh seam under more than 42,500 acres in Washington County and more than 600 residences.
Longwall mining uses a special machine that shears coal from the face of the seam, mining horizontal "panels" of coal that can be more than 1,000 feet wide and almost 2 miles long. As the machine moves forward, the roof of the mine collapses behind it, producing surface subsidence of 3 to 4 feet.
This method uses fewer miners and is therefore more profitable than the traditional room-and-pillar method, which leaves coal pillars to support the overburden of rock and soil.
Act 54 requires mining companies, which own the mineral rights to the Pittsburgh coal seam but not the surface property rights, to repair or compensate all property owners for any subsidence damage to their homes, and to replace or restore any water supply which is adversely affected by the mining operation.
But Ging said that the state's interpretation of the mining subsidence law allows mining damage to homes without due process of law and provides no guarantees that the property owner will be compensated for all of the damage that occurs to the home.
|
||||||||
