Fayette County residents worry about coal ash impacts
LABELLE, Pa. (AP) — Yma Smith, of LaBelle, lives 315 yards from a coal ash dump. When she bought her house 16 years ago, it was white.
Today, it’s gray.
“There’s fly ash all over my house. I’m so tired of washing my walls down. My windows are dirty all the time. I was so proud of my house. This is what my house looks like now,” she said, pulling out photos of her home. The grime on the once-white siding is evident.
Smith was one of more than 50 attendees at the environmental justice outreach meeting held by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Office of Environmental Advocate at the Luzerne Township fire hall in Fayette County Thursday.
The meeting’s purpose was to discuss the nearby mine reclamation site in LaBelle operated by Matt Canestrale Contracting Inc., and the company’s application renewals.
But Smith doesn’t want to see those permits renewed. She and her husband – Rudolph, a mortician – are both on kidney dialysis. In fact, she was just put on the donor list for a new kidney on Thursday, she said.
“My doctors think it could be environmental,” she said. “(They) said it’s uncommon for a husband and wife to be on dialysis at the same time.”
The LaBelle site has been an issue in the area for some time. In June, some local residents filed a federal complaint against Matt Canestrale Contracting, on claims of illegal disposal of coal ash and processing of coal mine waste over many years.
The complaint said the 500-acre site contains an abandoned coal refuse pile made up of about 40 million tons of waste, with two coal slurry ponds and millions of cubic yards of coal combustion waste, also called coal ash, that’s piled dozens of feet deep on top of the coal refuse.