Coal Remains King
Beginning in the mid-1700s, coal mining in Pennsylvania fueled the Industrial Revolution in the United States. It began to support the Colonial iron industry, then Andrew Carnegie's steel mills in the late 1800's and finally electric power plants of more modern times. Pennsylvania is now the fourth largest coal producer in the United States, following Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky. Economically, mining contributes about 1 percent of Pennsylvania's gross state economic product through over $1.5 billion of direct coal sales, a payroll of nearly $350 million, a support service industry with a payroll of nearly $200 million, business tax revenues of over $1.5 million.
The environmental legacy of hundreds of years of coal mining in Pennsylvania includes over 2,400 miles of Pennsylvania's 54,000 miles of streams significantly polluted by abandoned mine drainage (AMD) from old mining operations. AMD is equal to erosion and sedimentation as the top sources of water pollution by far in the state. The Surface Mining Coal and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 requires that present day mining cannot begin if it might result in harm to the environment.
WPC's Watershed Assistance Center (WAC) works directly with grassroots watershed organizations to clean-up AMD impacted streams left behind by abandoned mining operations of earlier times. The Center has helped groups install several AMD treatment systems, and has assisted with the assessment of several hundred miles of impacted waterways. Currently WAC is completing AMD remediation plans for the Anderson Creek watershed in Clearfield County and the Blacklegs Creek watershed in Indiana County.
Today's photos are of coal being transported to a nearby power plant, taken in Blairsville near the Watershed Assistance Center by WPC Senior Director of Watershed Programs, Nick Pinizzotto; and an archive photo of acid mine drainage.
While you may not know it to look at today's eerie photo on the right, Naturally Creepy Places Week ended yesterday. View our five candidates and vote for your favorite creepy locale. The winning locale will be announced this Thursday, October 28th.
Play Know Your Western Pennsylvania Birds.
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