The Department of Environmental Protection Friday announced it will host an informational meeting on November 7 regarding Phase 1 of the Swoyersville Culm Bank Removal Project in Luzerne County.
The meeting will take place from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. at Swoyersville Hose Company No. 2, located at 299 Slocum Street. Representatives from DEP will be on hand to discuss the project and answer questions from residents.
“The start of this project is the first major step in removing an enormous pile of coal waste that has sat in this part of the Wyoming Valley for decades,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell. “DEP is committed to cleaning up old and abandoned mine land like this and seeing that land be used for progressive development, something the community can benefit from for years to come.”
The 5-year project involves removing more than 500,000 tons of coal waste and rock material from 18.3 acres of the 55-acre site off Main Street. The material was generated from the Harry E. Coal Breaker, which ceased operations in the 1970s and was dismantled in 1995.
Once the refuse is removed from this phase of the project, 7.5-acres will be re-vegetated for development and then, by 2020, donated to Swoyersville Borough for use as a public recreational area.
The work will also improve water quality in nearby Abraham’s Creek by reducing flooding and decreasing the possibility of acid mine drainage.
The material removed from the site in this phase will be used by Keystone Reclamation Fuel Management out of Northampton County as fuel for its cogeneration facility. An additional 3.5 million tons of material on the site will be removed at a later date.
This estimated cost is of this phase of the project is $8 million with $3 million of the cost funded by the federal Abandoned Mine Reclamation Pilot Project, which was authorized by Congress in 2017 and $5 million from Olympus Power, which will do the actual removal work on site.
The partners for this project include: Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, Keystone Reclamation Fuel Management, Swoyersville Borough, Pagnotti Enterprises, Foundation for PA Watersheds and the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.
For more information on mine reclamation, visit DEP’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation webpage.
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