DRYerson Festival set for Saturday
RYERSON – The eighth annual DRYerson Festival kicks off from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Ryerson Station State Park with games for kids, free food and folk rock singer-songwriter Mitch Bell performing.
DRYerson Festival is an annual community gathering to commemorate and rally for the restoration of Duke Lake, which has been dry since summer 2005. Duke Lake, which was the 62-acre gem of Ryerson Station State Park, was drawn down by the state because of subsidence damage to the dam from longwall coal mining operations nearby at the Bailey Mine.
In 2013, Consol agreed to replace the dam in Ryerson as part of a $37 million settlement with the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
This year’s theme, “Streams Under Attack, Let’s Fight Back,” was chosen in part because of Consol’s plan to undermine a number of streams that would feed the recreated Duke Lake. A recent permit issuance allows coal mining below 14 streams, with predicted flow loss or flow reduction in at least four streams, including North Fork Dunkard Fork, Polen Run and Kent Run, which all flow through Ryerson Station State Park.
The permit application predicted several years of stream damage so severe that “flow loss would most likely reduce, if not eliminate fishing opportunities” in Ryerson Station State Park.
Center for Coalfield Justice and the Sierra Club are presently in litigation appealing the permit.
“Ryerson Station State Park belongs to the public, not to Consol,” CCJ executive director Patrick Grenter said. “Each year, it seems Consol comes closer and closer to privatizing this land for their own use. We are here to show that this land is our land, not theirs.”
CCJ, The Allegheny Group of the Sierra Club and the Harry Enstrom Chapter of the Izaak Walton League are the supporters for this year’s festival.
For more information, visit www.coalfieldjustice.org, or call 724-229-3550.