In an effort to keep reclamation efforts on Sharp Mountain running smoothly, the City of Pottsville plans to hire a contractor to repair an access road, reinforce some crumbling hillsides and build a staging area for trucks carrying fill.
Phase VIII of the Sharp Mountain Reclamation Project will focus on this kind of maintenance, Kenneth J. Levitz, the project's mine reclamation project manager from Jim Thorpe, said at a meeting with local contractors on the mountain Wednesday.
"One of the key things is you need to have access up to the mountain, and what's not going to be covered by private donations is a lot of road maintenance," Daniel J. Koury, a watershed manager for the state Department of Environmental Protection, Pottsville, said Wednesday.
Contractors who plan to bid on the project followed Koury, Levitz and Thomas A. Palamar, city administrator, on the mountain tour Wednesday. The convoy was made up of 15 vehicles.
Palamar said a bid may be approved at the city council's next meeting, slated for 6:30 p.m. April 8 at City Hall.
The city will pay for this project using a $467,748 state grant it received in 2012, Palamar said.
On Feb. 3, 2012, state Sen. David Argall, R-29, and state Rep. Neal P. Goodman, D-123, announced that they had helped procure this "Schuylkill River Water Quality" grant from DEP.
"It's actually administered through Growing Greener," Koury said.
Phase VIII has three parts:
- Stabilize slope above an alternate access road near Gordon Nagle Trail.
- Maintenance of an alternate access road from Gordon Nagle Trail to the reclamation sites on the north face of Sharp Mountain. That includes cleaning roadside swales and surfacing a section of that road that is 1,300 feet long, 20 feet wide and a half-foot high.
"When you look at the first two parts, they're about maintaining the road we spent quite a bit of money on to use as access to get up there," Koury said.
In 2009 and 2010, the city developed the alternate access road as part of Phase V. A switchback road, it starts at the entrance to RS&W Coal Co., just off Gordon Nagle Trail. It was financed by a $940,000 state Growing Greener grant the city received in July 2007.
- Develop an alternate access route to the Buck Mountain vein crop falls and establish a "staging area and work pad," to allow trucks to bring fill to a deep hole.
"This is to prepare an area so we can start addressing other holes," Koury said.
On the tour, Levitz pointed to the area where the staging area would be established, and the hole near that.
"You can't get too close to these holes because the ground around them isn't stable. I won't go near them," Koury said.
This area is south of The Gables At Sharp Mountain Condominium and on the south side of the switchback road, Koury said.
In 2000, DEP officials determined there were at least 43 acres of crop falls on Sharp Mountain a quarter-mile south of 20th Street and stretching west.
Crop falls are subsidences along vertical coal seams. The subsidences are perilous to the hikers, joggers, bicyclists and dirt bikers who use the mountain for recreation, Palamar said.
To date, 21 acres have been reclaimed, Koury said.
"We're about half done but there's always more to address, if you want to, or have the resources to," Koury said.
Since the reclamation project began in 1999, the state has invested $3,941,258 in it, Palamar said. The state grants were given in the following years and amounts: 2000, $350,000; 2002, $457,000; 2004, $500,000; 2006, $422,510; 2007, $940,000; 2009, $504,000; 2011, $300,000; and 2012, $467,748, Palamar said.
Over the past few years, the city has relied on private businesses to continue reclamation efforts on the mountain.
"Basically, the city's been fortunate to have donated material and delivery costs. I'm sure there's been hundreds of thousands of dollars of donated services. The private sector is pretty much covering the backfill," Levitz said.
"The government doesn't want everything to rely on state funding. That's why we established partnerships with businesses like Fabcon. And over the years, there have been several partners who have brought in fill material like panel materials and we're at a point now where we're able to supplement a lot of the reclamation with those materials," Koury said.
Two private businesses have contributed much of the fill.
Fabcon Precast Concrete, Mahanoy City, delivers scrap concrete wall panels and Porter Associates, Porter Township, delivers coal ash, Koury said.
On the tour Wednesday, Levitz showed the contractors an area south of 22nd Street that Fabcon filled with scrap concrete.
Porter Associates will be dumping coal ash on the site to restore the contour of the mountain, and eventually dirt and grass will be planted on top.
"With Phase VIII, we're hoping to do the necessary support work to maintain access, but we're hoping to save money out of that total grant funding to be able to pay for the top cover that would have to be imported and the materials to reseed the area," Levitz said.
In February 2012, tons of rock slid down near the switchback access road the city made in 2010, according to Daniel E. Kelly, city superintendent of streets.
RS&W Coal Co. took responsibility for the subsidence and backfilled that hole with coal ash, Levitz said.
Since then, other subsidences have occurred in that area. Levitz pointed them out on the tour and said RS&W will also backfill those.