NEWTOWN - Local officials and project leaders toured an abandoned mine reclamation project Friday in Reilly Township to look at the results.
Starting June 10, 2011, and completing May 5, the project that took almost a year was to eliminate public health and safety hazards by dewatering hazardous gaps, closing mine openings, backfilling and grading strip pits and passively treating mine water using limestone beds and constructed wetlands.
The site of the work is about 4,000 feet east of Tremont, just south of Route 209, on land currently owned by the Indian Head Coal Co. and Pennsylvania Game Commission.
Among those who toured the area Friday morning were Reilly Township Supervisor Gerald Devine, state Sen. David Argall, R-29, and Ed Kleha, legislative aide to state Rep. Neal P. Goodman, D-123, along with project manager Rodney Webb, construction inspector Kent Pheasant, designer David Jansson, Matthew Blending from the game commission and representatives from Berner Construction Inc., Gap, who completed the construction.
"A little more than a year ago, Representative Goodman and I announced the funding for this important project," Argall said.
"These abandoned strip mines not only leave major eyesores, but also present grave safety concerns to local residents and visitors. I am grateful for the hard work and leadership of Mike Korb and his team at the Bureau of Mine Reclamation to get this important local project completed on time."
The project was funded by The Growing Greener 2 Program and the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Trust Fund, which is subsidized by the coal industry via taxes paid on each ton of coal mined.
It cost $707.1 million and was said to have completed under budget.
While Korb, environmental program manager for the Bureau of Mine Reclamation at DEP, couldn't attend, in a prepared statement he said that he wanted to thank Argall for calling local attention to the work of the bureau, whose projects have gained national recognition.
The site of the project includes nine stripping pits, five of which had dangerous highwalls and four contained hazardous water bodies.
Webb said that a total of 3,500 feet of dangerous highwall was reclaimed, while the project also included backfilling and grading the stripping pits with about 260,000 cubic yards of material obtained on the site.
There were also three mine water seeps addressed, passively treated using limestone beds and constructed wetlands, and three vertical openings were reclaimed by backfilling two of them and installing a bat gate in the third.
"The township has pursued this project for a while and we are thankful to see these much-needed funds, which are generated from the mining industry, being put to good use," Devine said. "I'm glad to see this project completed to restore the property back to its original landscape."
While explaining about the two treatment systems at the site, Jansson said Treatment System A, the smaller of the two with a flow of 10 gallons per minute, has changed the pH of the water from the mine from 3.4 at the intake to 6.1 at the outtake, decreasing the iron content 54 percent and the aluminum content 37 percent.
At Treatment System B, with a flow of 50 gallons per minute, the pH at the intake is 5.2 and then at the outlet is 7.2.
Through System B, the iron per liter of water has decreased 78 percent and aluminum has deceased 58 percent.
Both systems have a retention time of 19 hours and are flushed at noon twice a week on Monday and Friday.
"We always leave it better than it was before," Webb said.
While this project was recently completed, another mine reclamation project DEP is currently working on is the Saint Clair East/North Port Carbon Abandoned Mine Reclamation that began July 28 and is expected to complete in 2015.
Projects that have not yet started are the Stump Run project, located one mile west of the Ravine exit of Interstate 81, the Delano project, located west of Balsam Street, and another in Sheppton.