Help keep toxic coal waste out of our hillsides and valleys. Join Mountain Watershed Association in requesting that DEP host a public hearing for the proposed 131 acre Shaw Refuse Disposal Site by October 19th, 2020.

This proposal would create a permanent home for coal refuse along the Casselman River, outside of Myersdale, PA near the Great Allegheny Passage Bike Trail. The project partially overlaps an existing coal mine operation and an abandoned mine with a long history of environmental degradation, including a devastating blowout from the abandoned mine in 1993. The blowout caused a massive fish kill in the Casselman for 42 miles until the river was diluted by the Youghiogheny River.  

The 74 acres of proposed storage for coal refuse will create an additional discharge into an unnamed tributary of the Casselman River. Heritage Coal, the company who submitted the permit application, says that the new treated discharge “will only improve the quality in the stream” because the stream is “essentially a mine drainage discharge”. However, Mountain Watershed Association spent years working with several partners to design and propose a treatment system for the abandoned mine discharge at the Shaw Site. Unfortunately, funding was ultimately denied for the project because active coal mining is still happening at the same location. In order to treat the abandoned mine discharge and improve the water quality of the stream, we need to put a halt to active mining operations - not dispose of thousands of tons of coal refuse in our river valleys.

Let’s clean up the messes from our past and put clean water in our future! Request that DEP hold a public hearing today.