Apr 26, 2015 4 min read

Two stories appeared in this newspaper last week about the future of separate industrial landfills in Greene County, both heading in seemingly different directions.

One provided an update on the reclamation of the 70-acre Mather coal refuse dump; the other announced First Energy’s plan to ship coal ash and scrubber waste by river from its Beaver County power plant to a landfill at its closed Hatfield’s Ferry Power Station in Monongahela Township.

The reclamation of the Mather coal refuse dump after so many years, obviously, is a positive development. First Energy’s plan to ship coal combustion byproducts from its Bruce Mansfield Power Plant to Hatfield’s Ferry is not as easy to judge without further information.

The Mather coal waste dump has existed for almost 100 years. It was created by the Mather Mine, which began operations in 1917. The mine was the site of one of the nation’s worst mine disasters when, on May 19, 1928, an underground mine explosion took the lives of 195 coal miners.

The mine closed in 1964, and the property was abandoned, leaving a mountainous pile of gray coal waste that towered for years over the small village of Mather.

Efforts to reclaim the property go back many years. One of the latest attempts that actually made a difference was started by Greene County Industrial Development Authority in 2001. The work was done with $4.6 million in state grant money and resulted in the banks of the pile bordering Ten Mile Creek being terraced and much of the pile being leveled. Unfortunately, the project was halted after several years because of a lack of funding.

The latest efforts came about almost by chance and might never have happened if the state didn’t have to address another issue, which was where to take the silt that collected over time in the bed of Duke Lake at Ryerson Station State Park. The lake has been dry since 2005, when inspections revealed expanding cracks in the concrete dam.

The state Department of Environmental Protection determined the damage was caused by subsidence from Consol Energy’s Bailey Mine, an allegation the company denied. A settlement in 2013 to end litigation between the state and Consol provided the money that will be needed to replace the dam. Within the next year or two, it’s very possible the property might be the beautiful green space people have envisioned since talk of reclaiming the site began many years ago.

Just a few miles away from Mather is a much different plan by First Energy to ship by barge coal ash and scrubber waste from Bruce Mansfield. It’s a plan that’s easy to criticize. Why should Greene County be the dumping grounds for another area’s waste? Do we really know if there is a long-term danger of pollution from the site? But First Energy must find a place to dispose of the coal combustion byproduct from Bruce Mansfield, because its existing site, known as Little Blue Run, must close by the end of 2016 under a consent agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Bruce Mansfield is the largest electric power plant in Pennsylvania and one of the largest in the country, according to the company. It burns coal, and coal is still Greene County’s top industry, so there definitely is a reason people here might want to see Bruce Mansfield remain in operation.

We also should note if Hatfield’s Ferry were still in operation, the landfill would be continuing to accept waste from that plant without there being any issue.

We also assume, perhaps naively, laws have changed since the Mather coal refuse dump was created generations ago, and when it is time for Hatfield’s Ferry site to be reclaimed, it will be done properly and not solely at the expense of the taxpayers.