Jerome, Pennsylvania - Environmental Impact of Coal Mining Activities at Jerome

Environmental Impact of Coal Mining Activities At Jerome

The semi-bituminous coal bed at Jerome, part of the Upper Kittanning formation, was approximately six feet thick, capped by shale and limestone, with a smooth, hard sandstone floor. In 1911, the mine had a capacity of 1,700 tons a day, with an average daily output of 1,020 tons. The tipple had four loading tracks with a capacity of 80 cars. Within the tipple, coal was cleaned first by machine through shaker screens, then by hand, along a conveyor and at loading. Refuse coal and rock was dumped in a hillside to the south of the tipple.

For the first 70-some years of its history, Jerome's landscape was dominated by this black, man-made mountain of coal mining wastes. The "bony pile," as it was called, loomed from the hillside south of Penn Avenue and east of Cross and Fifth Avenues. Only a few plant species were hardy enough to survive the hot, dry, nutrient-deficient conditions on the pile. Heavy metals, including arsenic and mercury, leached from the pile into the immediately adjacent area. The pile was removed in the 1970s, when local electric generating stations found cost-effective ways to render additional coal out of the pile. A much smaller scar remains on the hillside, which can be seen as the bare spot, center in the photo here. A photo of a typical western Pennsylvania bony pile can be seen here. While the bony pile in this photo is believed not to be Jerome's, the bony pile in Jerome looked remarkably similar.

Most water runoff from the Jerome mine emptied into the South Fork of Bens Creek at Thomas Mills. Bens Creek formerly was a robust trout habitat. Mine effluent contained high concentrations of iron, which rendered downstream sections of Bens Creek effectively sterile from about 1900 to 1994. A remediation project (construction 1992-1994, re-engineered 2002) coordinated by the Stonycreek-Conemaugh River Improvement Project (SCRIP), a local non-governmental organization, restored Bens Creek by precipitating iron toxins from the effluent. The Bens Creek project, also known as the Rock Tunnel Project is home to SCRIP's first mine drainage effort (see facts sheet on Bens Creek). SCRIP subsequently went on to restore other creeks and rivers in Somerset and Cambria Counties. Supplemental to the efforts of SCRIP, the Mountain Laurel Chapter of Trout Unlimited, a non-governmental organization, completed a substantial habitat improvement project aimed at increasing the number of fish that Bens Creek can hold. Bens Creek today again contains brook, brown and rainbow trout. Some of these fish are stocked while wild species can be found in headwaters.