Pennsylvania wetlands are being destroyed by the high-extraction (longwall) mining of bituminous coal underground. Quietly. Inexorably. Without regulation.

Pennsylvania protects wetlands from other types of construction activities. Its laws do not exempt longwall mining from wetland regulation. But wetland law enforcement is absent when mining permits are approved.

Damage to wetlands occurs in at least three ways as a result of longwall mining. First, surface activities (such as the construction of roads, waste piles, portals, and other facilities) may require fill or regrading in wetlands, thereby eliminating them. Second, when coal is removed from underground, gravity collapses the unsupported layers of rock into the mine void. The cracks typically extend all the way up to the land surface, which then subsides. This manmade disruption of the earth's surface by subsidence traps water in valley wetlands, thereby altering the composition of the plant community or drowning the plants to create open water. Third, the same cracks and fissures can intercept or divert springs or seeps that provide water to wetlands, thereby drying them up, along with the headwater streams they feed, or changing the quality of the water reaching them. In each case the result is impairment or termination of the functions of the natural wetlands. Fills in wetlands sometimes get at least lip-service attention from mine regulators; subsidence damages get none at all.

In its widespread surface effects, current longwall mining is dramatically different from traditional room-and-pillar coal mining. In room-and-pillar mining, pillars of coal are left behind to support the mine roof. The subsidence of localized areas may occur from time to time as a failure of mine design or where pillars are subsequently robbed. The location of such subsidence is not predictable, and the Commonwealth subsidizes the cost of insurance for subsidence damage to the homes and buildings of surface property owners.

In contrast, longwall mining removes all the coal from broad panels thousands of feet long. Tunneling by coal miners directly causes most or all of the surface land above longwall mines to subside, to an extent that varies locally. The change in surface elevation is greatest over the centers of panels, where it can reach 4 feet at the currently active mines in the Pittsburgh seam of Washington and Greene Counties. Longwall subsidence is less above the entries supported by pillars of coal left in place. The surface movement above longwall mine panels is comparable to a slow-moving but major earthquake, and its effects on wetlands, buildings, and roads are devastating to a far greater degree than those of traditional room-and-pillar mining.

Wetlands are small and scarce in the rolling, dissected plateaus of southwestern Pennsylvania, where they occupy only 0.2% of the landscape. Yet they are critical components of the natural ecosystem in this section of Appalachia, significant far in excess of their geographical extent both to wildlife and fish populations and to humans. Wetlands are a special class of bodies of surface water that have unique plant and soil characteristics. They protect the water quality of streams and provide space for the harmless, temporary storage of floodwaters. They provide habitats for many kinds of creatures, including waterfowl, amphibians, and many rare and declining species. Three quarters of the kinds of plants considered rare in Pennsylvania grow in wetlands.

Although swamps, bogs, and similarly muddy places often were regarded as waste lands in centuries past, explicit wetland protection has been required by law in Pennsylvania and in the United States for more than twenty years. Through our legislators this generation has recognized the exceptional benefits that our remaining wetlands provide automatically to their owners and to the public. Landowners are allowed to destroy wetlands only with good reason, after regulatory approval, and with compensatory mitigation.

Like floodplains, steep slopes, and prime agricultural soils, wetlands today are a natural constraint that must be addressed during the planning for any type of land development. Sponsors of new construction are obliged to examine their land carefully to find any wetlands at risk and then to apply for and secure permit approvals before undertaking work that would destroy the wetlands. They must identify the functions and values present in their wetlands. They must demonstrate that there is no practical way that the wetlands they propose to affect can be avoided, and that they have minimized the unavoidable damage. Finally, nearby replacement of the lost wetlands and functions is generally required.

The wetland regulatory process can be time-consuming and expensive. It usually entails the work of environmental professionals, because regulated wetlands sometimes can be difficult to recognize and improperly planned replacement wetlands often fail. Regulators routinely question whether proposed damage can be reduced through construction plan revision. Wetland protection by law applies to construction of all kinds in Pennsylvania---highways, housing, factories, shopping centers, industries, reservoirs, schools, quarries, utility lines, and coal mines.

The Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) is responsible for administering wetland permits throughout the Commonwealth. It has adopted regulations that set forth the steps applicants and reviewers must take in order for permits to be approved in a formal process subject to public review and comment. Administration of the wetland regulations for coal mines has been assigned to the PADEP Bureau of Mining and Reclamation (BMR), the Bureau that reviews construction plans for mining activities.

This report shows that BMR regulation of wetlands when permitting longwall mines is seriously flawed. The BMR staff at the McMurray District Office includes no biologists or other wetland professionals. If wetlands are acknowledged at all by applicants, they are identified only within the areas of surface mining activities (such as haul roads, buildings, portals, and waste piles). But these surface activity sites represent only a small fraction of the land affected by the surface subsidence resulting from high-extraction mining. Even when wetland impacts are acknowledged in permit applications, they rarely are regulated by BMR, and never in compliance with the regulations universally applied by PADEP to other kinds of construction activities.

The scarce wetlands found on many tens of thousands of surface acres are being damaged or eliminated by longwall mines without any review at all. Farms, homes, businesses, and recreational uses also are being disrupted, with hundreds and hundreds of surface owners inconvenienced or permanently damaged by the huge longwall complexes that undermine dozens of square miles. Techniques available to minimize or eliminate subsidence are not being used, and wetland replacement is unheard of in BMR permit conditions.

For decades BMR has refused to discharge its regulatory obligations to protect wetlands from longwall mining, in flagrant violation of the Dam Safety and Encroachments Act, the Clean Streams Law, and those laws of the Commonwealth pertaining specifically to bituminous coal mining. BMR apparently sees its duty as issuing mining permits, whether or not any wetland information is provided in the permit applications.

The BMR application forms for underground coal mining do not clearly direct applicants to identify all the wetlands at risk from mining activities, although wetlands are mentioned here and there. The application forms are fraught with inconsistencies that prevent the clear presentation of essential information on wetlands and potential impacts. BMR does not reject incomplete applications, or insist that partial submissions be completed, or require that wetland delineation and assessment methods used throughout the Commonwealth be utilized on mine permit areas. The consent of the surface owners of the wetlands to their alteration is never requested, secured, or deemed relevant by coal mine applicants or regulators.

The basic information necessary to make possible any meaningful review of applications by resource agencies and by the public is not developed when new longwall mines are planned or existing underground mines are expanded into previously unmined areas. As a result, wetlands are not recognized. PADEP permit fees are not collected. Impact avoidance, minimization, and mitigation are not attempted. Wetland replacement is not required and is not included in performance bonds. The often-expressed concerns of the public, of surface owners, and of resource agencies regarding wetlands and other resources in application after application are ignored when permits are rushed to approval. BMR never prepares the written findings concerning wetlands required by law prior to permit issuance, and it consistently fails to address the substantive mandates of those findings.

BMR clearly is either unwilling to comply or incapable of complying with its own regulations and those of PADEP requiring wetland protection. Consequently, wetlands are destroyed blindly or created accidentally in the coalfields, without plan or forethought, and no statistics are kept regarding the quantities lost or gained.

Wetland regulation has broken down at every step of the BMR regulatory process for longwall mines. Changes in the application forms recently proposed by BMR will make the situation even worse in the future. The new application for underground mining activities will provide even less information regarding wetlands than the current applications, if adopted as proposed by BMR in 1999.

This report shows that wetland regulation in Pennsylvania longwall mining has collapsed like the roof in the center of a coal mine panel. It identifies the legislative and regulatory bases for wetland protection in the context of underground mining. It highlights the significance of longwall coal production. It reviews the complex BMR underground mining application form in detail, module by module. It points out deficiencies relating to wetland protection, illustrates those problems using actual examples from recent permits, and identifies specific opportunities for positive regulatory changes. The report concludes by making many specific recommendations aimed at establishing a functioning regulatory process that could actually protect wetlands in southwestern Pennsylvania some day.

The production of coal by longwall methods has drastic effects on the natural and human environment of areas undermined, much more widespread than the localized impacts of traditional room-and-pillar mines. This report focuses on wetlands, but in so doing recognizes that the predicament of wetlands is but the tip of the iceberg of problems in the natural and social environment that result from the current BMR regulation of longwall mining in southwestern Pennsylvania. Environmental damage by longwall mining is far subtler than damage by surface coal mining. It has received far less public attention over the few decades that it has been in use, but it is comparably severe. The damage from longwall mining may not be obvious to travelers passing through the scenic landscape of Washington and Greene Counties, unless they happen to be caught in a traffic jam on a subsidence-damaged highway. But it is devastating to wetlands, to streams, and to residents' homes, their livelihoods, and their peace of mind, as well as costly to the public treasury.

Caged canaries once warned miners of the buildup of invisible, odorless gases in underground mines before it was too late for the miners to escape. Wetlands today can serve a similar function to alert the public whose environment, health, safety, and welfare are threatened by longwall mining.

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