Governor to let stream damage bill become law
Harrisburg Bureau
Gov. Tom Wolf gave his passive approval Friday to a bill that clarifies that the state’s underground coal mining law allows planned ground subsidence to damage streams as long as the harm is not predicted to be permanent and regulators approve a company’s plan to fix it.
The bill, which Mr. Wolf said he will allow to become law without his signature, was designed to answer the central question in an ongoing case before the state Environmental Hearing Board. The Center for Coalfield Justice and the Sierra Club are challenging permits that allow Consol Energy to mine bituminous coal beneath 14 streams near Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County.
The environmental groups argue that the mining law does not trump the state Clean Streams Law, which they say prohibits the kind of flow loss and other damage that Consol’s permits predict the company’s operations will cause to streams in and around Greene County’s only state park, requiring disruptive repairs.
The bill’s supporters say the change simply codifies the state’s existing interpretation of how the two laws interact. Without the clarification, they say, if the environmental groups win the case, temporary disruptions to stream flow could be prohibited and longwall mining in the state would be practically impossible.
“Nothing in the law will change existing environmental requirements,” the governor’s office said in a statement.
The bill was originally tailored to target the Consol case by applying retroactively to appealed permits that were the subject of hearings after June 30, 2016. The House shifted the law’s start date back to 2005 in an effort to avoid the constitutional prohibition against “special laws” designed to apply to specific people or entities.
State Rep. Greg Vitali, D-Delaware, said on the House floor during debate on the revised bill in June that he could still find no other case but the Consol appeal that would be influenced by the bill.
Veronica Coptis, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, said the governor “supported legislation that sacrificed the constitutional rights of his constituents for Consol’s private gain.” The center’s attorney said the amendments are unconstitutional.
The premise that mining damage to streams can be fixed is a key to the state’s coal mining subsidence law, which allows for planned sinking of the surface as long as mining companies restore streams to their previous quality and uses.
But the most recent state-mandated checkup on how well the expectations of the law meet the actual impacts of full-extraction mining identified at least six streams damaged by longwall mining that had been deemed unrecoverable and noted that mining companies’ ability to repair damage to streams “remains largely unknown.”