Anthracite News

Coal Company to begin digging on other side of Route 125:

Burnside-Having pulled nearly all the anthracite coal it could west of Route 125 south of this village
Blaschak Coal Corp. has moved its operations across the Highway to begin anew.

Bob Kufta, Foreman with Blaschak, said the company is going to strip mine coal where equipment was moved last week to accommodate a need for the fossil fuel. Crews had to remove lines from nearby utility poles and bury them to allow large machinery to be moved to its new location.

"There's such a great demand for coal nowadays, and they (coal companies) just can't supply it all," he said. "We even have to turn some people away.

Currently, Kufta said site preparation work, such as small brush and tree removal, is being done on the east side of Route 125 on Big Mountain. Drilling will probably begin in about two weeks, Kufta said.

Although there is some minor work still to be done on the other side of the road, Kufta said most of what can be done has been completed.

"Just about everything that was feasible on the west side is done, planted and reclaimed," he said.

Kufta, who has been with the Mahanoy City company for 15 years, said the company has mined on the east side of Big Mountain for at least 20 years. However, the site has been quiet for the past four years.

Synagro Mid-Atlantic, contracted by Blaschak, has reclaimed the coal company's land in the west side of the mountain by using biosolids. In June 2002, Blaschak, Synagro and the state Department of Environmental Protection held a public tour of the lands to show where acres of grass and vegetation grow on a site previously scarred by decades of mining.

Kufta said Blaschak did a great job back filling and reclaiming land at the former site.

Although he could not provide figures - and the Northumberland County engineer, who would keep statistics, was unavailable Wednesday - Kufta said hundreds of thousands of tons of anthracite coal were retrieved from the site. He recalled a time when there were about 100 tractor-trailers hauling 23 to 24 tons of coal a day from the strip mine.

Kufta said he does not expect strip-mining on the east side of the mountain to adversely affect Shamokin Creek. In fact, Jim Koharski, president of the Shamokin Creek Restoration Alliance (SCRA), said mining will actually help the creek's watershed, thanks to the excellent reclamation work being performed by Blaschak.

By mining and reclaiming former mine lands, today's coal companies are repairing the damage done by past mining practices.

"It will be a help for the creek, as far as I'm concerned," Koharski said. "It's a plus all the way around for everybody."