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Money aids preservation of Consol mine maps, photos
Staff writer
sbeveridge@observer-reporter.com
Local and regional mining records that have been tucked away in files, some for nearly a century, are about to become available on the Internet.
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Consol made the decision to make its files public for their historical value as well as for the sake of mine safety, company spokesman Joe Cerenzia said Monday.
"We wanted them to be preserved for a safety issue from the standpoint of being able to know where old workings are in relations to new operations," Cerenzia said. "Mine plans can be better devised by knowing where the old workings are, or were."
Pitt's University Library System announced Friday that it received at total of $200,000 in grants from Consol, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and the state Department of Environmental Protection to catalog and preserve the collection.
Public access to the collection will help developers, homeowners and municipalities accurately identify areas that might be more prone to subsidence, DEP spokeswoman Helen Humphreys said.
"Companies don't have the same obligation to make public their records as the department does," Humphreys said. "They're not even set up to handle that."
The files include nearly 700 oversized maps called hardbacks because they are made with heavy paper adhered to canvas. Many of them are 5 feet tall and as long as 30 feet.
The maps contain the most complete, and sometimes the only, underground diagram of Consol's mines and those of its partners in Allegheny, Westmoreland, Washington, Greene, Fayette and Somerset counties.
Some of the files have been rolled up for a century and need to be placed in a humidity dome to allow them to absorb moisture before they can be rolled out. From there, they are being surveyed, cleaned, repaired and scanned into digital files.
"These maps are not only historically significant, (but) they also serve as vital sources of information to improve public safety, protect the environment, safeguard active miners, improve economic development and more," OSM Director Thomas Shope stated in a news release.
Consol has been donating its archives to Pitt for 10 years. The fact that the federal and state governments are now involved in the project illustrates just how important these files are to the public and industry, Cerenzia said.
"They are interested in preserving these as well," he said.
