EPCAMR Makes GIS Presentation On Waste Coal, Anthracite Abandoned Mine Pools Study

Staff from the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation made a presentation at the ARIPPA Annual Technical Convention on August 25 promoting the use of the GIS tool for identifying waste coal piles and abandoned mine pools that could be useful to waste coal to energy co-generation facilities.

Robert E. Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director, and Michael A. Hewitt, Program Manager, did the presentation to the waste coal power plant owners and operator who since 1998 have reclaimed over 4,500 acres of coal piles and abandoned mine lands. Nearly 11 million tons of co-gen ash has being beneficially used to reclaim abandoned mine sites throughout the state. Over 2 billion tons of waste coal have been burned as an alternative energy fuel source in Pennsylvania.

EPCAMR's GIS mapping tool called RAMLIS, the Reclaimed Abandoned Mine Land Inventory System, includes dozens of datasets and geographic information system layers. The natural resource points of interest related to abandoned mines include: boreholes, mine tunnel entrances, stripping pits, dangerous highwalls, culm banks, waste coal processing facilities, active mining sites, streams impacted by abandoned mine drainage, watershed boundaries defined by areas that are covered by a community group in a particular region of Pennsylvania and water quality data points and databases as well.

Much of the presentation focused on the locations of where the co-generation facilities were located in the Anthracite Region, the environmental impacts surrounding those facilities due to past mining practices, mine discharge points, culm banks, stripping pits, and a sneak peak at the underground hydrogeological connections from one mine pool system to another, particularly, in the Western Middle Anthracite Coal Fields.

EPCAMR Staff were able to show 3-D models and video animations of the structural geology of the Buck Mountain marker coal seam and areas above this particular bed in the Mt. Carmel area that have been mined out. This allowed the participants to see where mine pool water exists and the approximate locations of the elevations of those pools based on accurate elevations of existing borehole data for the region and the elevations at which acid mine drainage flows from abandoned mine tunnels, shafts, slopes, and other boreholes in the area.

Software used by EPCAMR to create the accurate reflection of the underground hydrogeology was able to show underground contour elevations of some of the coal reaching nearly 5000 to 7500 feet deep, particularly in the areas of the Sharp Mountain range, outside of Pottsville, where dangerous cropfalls, extend deep beneath the mountain, into deep Anthracite Mines.

EPCAMR informed the ARIPPA members that what they do not have is an accurate reflection of the number of acres being reclaimed by the co-generation facility industry and that it would be very useful to have to assist, not only EPCAMR, but the Commonwealth in reducing the overall numbers of acres to be reclaimed of abandoned mines in the state.

Cogentrix, in Northampton County, and NEPCO, in Schuylkill County, were two industry representatives who would like to know more about EPCAMR services.

NEPCO is willing to provide EPCAMR with additional mine maps that we do not have at our fingertips to be able to add more accurate information to mining areas around McAdoo and the areas impacted near the Little Schuylkill River and Silver brook Creek, along State Route 309.

Harvie Beavers, Chairman, of the ARIPPA Board, commented at the end of EPCAMR’s presentation, “It was one of the best technical presentations that our Board has seen in a long time, and it was nice to see that these two young guys have found themselves a niche in the reclamation business.”

For more information, visit the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation website.