Groups dispute use of property
West Bethlehem Township is greener now than when coal was king.
A reclaimed coal refuse property along Jefferson Avenue is now owned by the township, and officials said they want to create walking paths on the 153 acres of land. But local nonprofit organizations have other plans, and a dispute broke out during a board of supervisors meeting this week regarding the future of the property.
A couple dozen members of Marianna Outdoorsmen Association, Western Pennsylvania Wounded Warriors and Izaak Walton League attended the meeting in support of a proposal to turn the property into hunting grounds for people with disabilities. Recreation group MOA wants the township to lease the property to them, but the township already shot down the idea several times.
The property has largely gone unused for 12 years, except for a building across from Meadow Avenue used to store township equipment. Board of Supervisors Chairman Bob Mercante said the township wants to establish trails, but the funds needed to hire an engineer to survey the land are lacking.
Mercante said the property is open to the public and the board won’t lease it because it “worked hard to get that for the taxpayers.”
The township purchased the land from Beth Energy Mines for $40,000 in 2003, and the deed stipulates it must remain an open space. A gate blocks the entrance to the property by the township’s storage building, but Mercante said residents can access it in other areas along Jefferson Avenue.
Jason White, president of MOA and a Deemston resident, said a fence surrounds most of the property and disputed the claim the property is accessible. White also claimed Mercante said in a phone conversation that people with disabilities did not need designated grounds on which to hunt or fish, and a member of the local Wounded Warriors organization said Mercante repeated those sentiments in another conversation.
Mercante said he served in the Korean War and it was unfair to insinuate he is against veterans.
“Jason (White) called me and kept pestering this township about that property up there for the Wounded Warriors,” Mercante said during the meeting. “I said, ‘What Wounded Warrior that’s crippled and not able to walk is going to climb that mountain up there, the slate dump, that you want them to go up to hunt on?'”
Hayes Harvey, vice president of the local Wounded Warriors organization, said the group invited Mercante to visit its hunting grounds in Eighty Four, which are not plains.
“Our property is very hilly, and there’s a lot of rough woods,” Harvey said. “We get the guys out on the edge of the woods and they shoot a lot of nice buck.
“If Bob wanted to open (the property) for the general public to hunt up there, there would be no Wounded Warriors there hunting because of the safety conditions and not knowing who else would be there.”
Paulette Benard, a member of MOA, also raised concerns about dilapidated properties in the township and said the board’s inaction is frustrating.
“I fill out a right-to-know (request) every month and ask for the minutes and I tape them,” Benard said, “and I just sat there one night just going through June, July, August, September, and I’m thinking, ‘Everything is a repeat. There’s nothing ever accomplished.'”
Mercante said there is only so much the board can handle.
“We’re a small township. We have 42 miles of road to take care of, and there’s only three supervisors and a secretary,” he said. “We don’t have the people to go out and do this kind of stuff.”