Keep America Beautiful Gives Litter Office Excellence Award

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       An independent third party will be hired to probe any effect on the community if a permit being sought by CONSOL to discharge mine water into the Levisa River is granted.
         The Grundy Industrial Development Authority last week voted unanimously to seek an expert to examine the plan.
        “It would appear that it’s not going to have an odor and it’s not going to look offensive,” IDA chairman Ed Bunn said in reference to the mine water and the mechanism used to discharge it.
         CONSOL officials met more than two weeks ago with concerned citizens and town and county officials about the permit the company is seeking to discharge the water into the Levisa River near Poetown.
          Representatives from the mining company assured those in attendance that the water isn’t “toxic,” but rather contains elevated levels of chlorides.
         “What we’re talking about pumping is not toxic waste,” Gerald Ramsey, CONSOL’s supervisor of environmental permitting, said. “It will have elevated chlorides, which seems to be the only parameter we have concern with.”
          He said the level projected is 7,000 parts per million. The Atlantic Ocean, he said, contains 19,000 parts per million.
           Initially, the IDA, Grundy Town Council, and Buchanan County Board of Supervisors all opposed CONSOL’S permit application, adopting similar resolutions denouncing the proposed project.
          But after CONSOL’S meeting with the public, Bunn felt the IDA acted too swiftly in opposing CONSOL’s plan.
         “I think we acted prematurely in opposing the permit without fully looking into what they’re going to do,” he said. “If what they’re going to do doesn’t pose any harm, we shouldn’t oppose it.”
          Specifically, CONSOL has proposed to pump water from its Buchanan No. 1 mine to VP#3 and from there pump it via pipeline to the Poetown location. At Poetown, the pipeline, comprised of high density polyethylene, would feed into an automatic diffuser where it would come up into the river through four eight-inch ports in the streambed which would stand about a foot tall.
          The flow rate, CONSOL officials said, would be what amounts to 2 percent of the flow in the stream, or 384 gallons per minute at low flow and up to 10,000 gallons per minute at high flow.
          “That’s a swimming pool a minute,” Town Attorney Tom Mullins commented during the IDA meeting last week.
           “It’s a risky thing, either way you go,” IDA member Bob Hale said. “It all sounds iffy to me.”
            Marshall Miller and Associates, out of Bluefield, was mentioned as a likely candidate to investigate the project for the IDA, as the firm has its own hydrologist.
            The IDA plans to have the actual permit filed by CONSOL examined by an expert, as well as have the mine water itself tested.
             The IDA also planned to inquire about receiving financial assistance from the county to offset the cost of the third party examination.