Coal Co. gave us $1,300

each.

It cost us almost $6,000 and

The $6,000 was with our own labor. The cost would have been

double if someone else would have done it.

No one can ever repay the amount of mental anguish we went through for three months without water.

Your property is worth nothing

without it. I realize that coal is a valuable mineral and a source of

energy

but in my opinion WATER is essential to life.

Just for one day, turn off your water in your home and try living without it. I'll bet you can't do it.

I urge you to do all you can to protect the rights of property

against water loss from mining.

Thank you.

environmental

diPretoro. I am an independent

consultant and land surveyor in Morgantown, West

Virginia. I have been a resident and landowner in the coal fields of northern West Virginia for 16 years. For three of those years I was a rank and file underground coal miner.

My comments here today will be divided into brief discussions of 1) Geology, 2) Hydrology, 3) Mining Process and 4) Effects on Water Supplies. My experience is drawn from Central Appalachia, mostly in West Virginia. The brevity of this presentation requires simplification of the topics.

Geology

Coal is the preserved remnant of peat swamps which flourished millions of years ago. It is found in nearly horizontal layers sandwiched between other horizontal layers of rocks derived from the erosion of pre-existing land forms. Those other rocks are predominantly of two types: sandstone and shale. Sandstone is composed of sand-sized grains from ancient river channels and shale is composed of much finer mud-sized grains from associated ancient floodplains beside the rivers.

The peat and associated sediments were buried, compacted, hardened, and eventually uplifted from near or below sea level into their present elevations. In the process, ubiquitous fractures were induced, particularly in the sandstone and coal and to a lesser extent in the shales.

Hydrology

Some of the water falling on the surface of the land as rain way past the soil and plants into the

and snow, finds its

fractures in the rocks.

horizontally down gradient in the fractures to discharge from the

There, it moves slowly and mostly

On the way, it

fractured,

the

The water is

rocks in the form of springs and base streamflow. can be intercepted by wells drilled or dug into water-bearing rocks, which are called aquifers. kept in the aquifers and forced to flow horizontally by less permeable rocks, usually shales, called aquicludes. Water reaches the aquifer during the recharge period November-May. From May-November, the discharge period, heat, dryness and vegetation keep water from reaching aquifers. It is important to note that there is no sharp permanent distinction between ground and surface water: each can and does become the other depending on the circumstances.

Mining Process

Coal is mined underground by two basic high-extraction methods: 1) retreat room and pillar and 2) longwall. The effects on overlying rocks are considered similar in both methods.

are

Room and pillar mining. Sets of parallel entries or rooms advanced horizontally into the coal and connected to each other by perpendicular cross-entries. Rectangular pillars are thus left to support the roof over the entries. The roof is also supported by bolts and other systems. After advancing a

predet mined distance, the operation reverses extracts the pillars as completely as possible in phase. The roof is allowed (indeed encouraged)

direction and

the retreat

to

collapse

during retreat to take pressure off the next pillars. Once the retreat is complete, a new advancing room and pillar section is started next to the mined out area.

Longwall mining. Parallel sets of mile-long room and pillar entries are completed leaving a wide (>500-foot) block, or panel, of solid coal between. A self-contained roof support and shearing machine is then assembled which cuts back and forth across the entire 500+-foot face between the room and pillar entries. As it advances through the panel, mechanical roof support is kept near the face and the mined out area behind is allowed to collapse. Vertical subsidence on the surface reaches a fraction of the height of the mined coal seam. Most of the movement is over within a few weeks, but coal field residents have reported ground movements up to three years and more after completion of mining. Mining in the area continues to alter stress patterns in the rocks.

Effects on Water Supplies

coal

The sagging of strata above mined out high extraction panels causes vertical and horizontal movement in rocks near the surface. Such movements open new fractures and widen existing

natural fractures both in the aquifers and in the aquicludes, draining water from higher to lower levels.

Some of the induced

and widened fractures close somewhat as subsidence runs its course but they cannot close completely because of crumbling into the fracture of chips of rock. Fractures resulting from tension at the edges of panels do not close. It is often stated by coal and regulatory personnel that water supplies will come

operators

back after high extraction mining.

There is, to date,

not a

single thorough pre- and post-mining study of water

supplies

including measurement of yields under seasonal conditions which supports this contention. On the contrary, there are

studies

(see below) which demonstrate that high percentages of water supplies, once affected by high extraction coal mining, do not fully recover. Anecdotal reports by citizens indicate the water supplies affected by high extraction may still be dry up to twelve years or more after the mining.

Aquifers and their recharge areas are

renewable resource

lands. Once damaged by mining they cannot be restored to a supporting the uses they could support

condition capable of

before mining.

Literature Review

Cifelli and Rauch (1986) studied a high extraction mining operation in north-central West Virginia. They concluded in part:

of

Ground water sources having at least 50 percent their recharge areas impacted by complete extraction mining...have had a significantly greater frequency of dewatering effects. At least 90 percent of such supplies were partially or totally dewatered. This trend was highly statistically significant.

three

Only three of the accessible dewatered wells surveyed have shown significant recovery one to years subsequent to mine induced dewatering. represents only about 20 percent of the dewatered in mine subsided areas.

This wells

Baseflow streams were significantly impacted where at least 10 percent of their watershed was undermined and subsided, and had dried up where at least 25 to 30 percent of their watershed was so affected.

Tieman and Rauch (1986) studied a high extraction mining operation in southwest Pennsylvania. They concluded in part: