Acid Mine Drainage Treatment Plant in South Fayette is dedicated
The Pittsburgh Coal Company’s Montour No. 2 mine in South Fayette Township once provided jobs for legions of men and was a vital part of the region’s industrial backbone.
The deep mine has long since been abandoned, but its legacy has endured in the form of discharge that was gushing out at the rate of 750 to 1,500 gallons per minute. It made Millers Run and Chartiers Creek a repellant orange and inhospitable to fishing and other forms of recreation.
Both tributaries could become more inviting now, thanks to a $13 million acid mine drainage treatment plant that has been constructed in the vicinity of the Original Farmers Market off Route 50 in South Fayette. It was dedicated Tuesday morning, with U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Mt. Lebanon), state Rep. Jason Ortitay (R-Cecil) and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell on hand.
It is expected that the South Fayette Conservation Group’s plant will treat a little more than 2 million gallons of water per day, and remove 690 pounds of iron pollution from the Chartiers Creek watershed.
“These streams used to run orange, and now to see clean, clear water underscores the importance of these projects to restore local waterways,” McDonnell said at the Original Farmers Market pavilion. “We’re on our way to cleaning it up.”
Ortitay said he hoped the treatment plant would serve as a model “for other parts of the country where these problems exist.”
“Pennsylvania has more abandoned mines than anywhere else in the country,” Lamb said. He added that the plant is “an example of something that makes sense.”
Lamb also said he hopes Congress renews the Abandoned Mine Land trust fund, which helps clean up former mine sites. In existence since 1977, it is due to expire in September unless Congress reauthorizes it.
The treatment plant is expected to restore four miles of Chartiers Creek and four miles of Millers Run to a trout-stocked, warm water fishery. The plant has two pumping stations to extract the acid mine drainage water from the mine pool and bring it to the water for treatment.