B.1.1
Geology
The Lackawanna River
Watershed in northeast Pennsylvania lies on the boundary between two
physiographic provinces, the Appalachian Ridge and Valley, and the Allegheny
Plateau provinces. The headwaters
of the Lackawanna River and its major tributaries are located in the plateau province,
the main course of the river lies in the ridge and valley province.
The Lackawanna Valley is
the northern portion of a large geosynclinal feature. The Wyoming Valley is the southern portion of the Lackawanna
syncline. The syncline is a
canoe-shaped feature approximately seventy (70) miles long and five (5) miles in
width. The eastern ridge line forms
Penobscot and Wilkes-Barre mountains in the Wyoming Valley and Moosic Mountain
in the Lackawanna Valley. The
western ridge is called the Lackawanna Mountains, West Mountain and Bald
Mountain, and the Back Mountain in the Wyoming Valley.
The North Branch of the
Susquehanna River cuts through the West Mountain at Pittston, the approximate
halfway point in the syncline. The
Lackawanna River confluences with the Susquehanna at this point.
The Lackawanna syncline
holds the northern anthracite coal field in the Llewellyn geologic formation.
The Llewellyn formation lays in the underlying Pottsville, Pocono and
Catskill formation like soup in bowl. The
anthracite coal beds outcrop at the Llewellyn Pottsville boundary, which runs
approximately at the 1400 and 1500' elevation line about half the distance from
the Lackawanna - Susquehanna river course to the top of the synclinal ridge
line.
The Northern Anthracite
Field along with the Eastern and Western middle fields and the Southern Field
are the largest concentration of anthracite or hard coal on the planet.
Anthracite coal has a higher concentration of carbon and lower levels of
volatile organic compounds than bituminous coal.
It is less friable and produces less dust than bituminous coal.
These properties helped to make anthracite coal a popular domestic,
industrial and metallurgical coal in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries.
B.1.2
Historical Development
The use of anthracite coal
was known by Native Americans but its discovery and exploitation by European
settlers did not begin until the time of the American Revolution.
By 1820, the use of anthracite as a power and heating fuel was becoming
widespread. The coal fields of
northeast Pennsylvania were at that time remote from the commercial and
population centers of the coastal cities.
As the utility of
anthracite grew, investment groups formed to improve transportation into the
anthracite region to reach and market the coal resources.
The Lehigh Coal and Navigation Canal, the North Branch Susquehanna Canal
and, the Delaware and Hudson Canal were all developed to reach the coal fields
during the 1820's. These canals soon yielded to the development of railroad
technology.
The development of the
anthracite coal industry in northeast Pennsylvania and particularly in the
Lackawanna and Lehigh valleys was an strategic element in the industrial
revolution affecting the economic, demographic and political landscape of the
United States.
The northeast Pennsylvania
region became a crucible for technological and scientific advances as iron,
steel, textile and manufacturing industries developed along with the coal
industry. The anthracite coal boom
also influenced the advance of the public stock corporation, business
organization, management and finance.
The environmental impacts
of coal mining became apparent early on as local groundwater supplies became
contaminated with mine waste and acidic drainage.
In the Lackawanna and Wyoming valley, the physical relationship of
geology, hydrology and topography provided a solution to the supply of potable
water for a rapidly growing population.
Since the anthracite coal
field was well within the physical boundary of the Lackawanna syncline, there
were numerous opportunities to develop dams, water supply reservoirs and wells
on streams along flanks of the synclinal ridges or on tributaries rising on the
adjacent plateaus and entering the syncline through water gaps in the ridge
lines.
The topographic and
geologic relationship set the parameters for the growth and development of the
urban centers of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, and the pattern of anthracite
colliery and smaller villages and boroughs that lie along the river corridors on
the floor and lower terraces of the syncline.
The ridge tops and the
watershed areas of the adjacent plateau province have remained predominantly in
forest cover with some agricultural uses and farming villages developing. In the
present these areas are experiencing some tendencies toward suburban sprawl.
By the beginning of the
Twentieth Century, the capacity for mining had advanced to allow both
traditional underground mining and large mechanized surface strip mining.
In the Northern Anthracite Field, anthracite coal beds in the Llewellyn
and Pottsville formations lie relatively parallel to the contours of the
synclinal fold. This results in the
beds being nearly horizontal under the base of the syncline and pitching to 12°
ascending towards their outcrop along the Llewellyn - Pottsville - Pocono
formation boundary about halfway from the floor of the valley to the synclinal
ridge.
B.1.3
Mining Methods and Impacts
Early mining methods
consisted of driving a horizontal “drift” or tunnel into a coal bed outcrop
where the strata of coal was exposed on a cliff face along a cut of river or
tributary stream bank. These
surface entries were soon supplemented by slope entries which are tunnels driven
into rock and coal strata at a 30° to 40° inclined pitch.
Inclined cable tramways would be used to transport miners and coal in and
out of the slopes.
Vertical shafts became a
predominant form of mine entry by the 1830's.
Vertical shafts could penetrate any number of coal and rock strata and
were often sunk to a depth of 900 to 1100 feet to reach the deepest seams of
coal in the Northern Field.
Once the drift, slope or
shaft entries were completed, underground mining proceeded from the point of
intersection with each coal seam where active mining operations began.
The “room and pillar” method was most common in the Northern Field.
With this method, horizontal tunnels were driven into the face of coal
perpendicular to the main carriageway, additional headings were then driven off
these secondary main ways. This
left a roughly rectangular system of rooms where coal was mined with a solid
pillar of unmined coal kept in place to provide roof and surface support.
When the mining reached the
boundary of a particular mine property, secondary or retreat mining would begin.
The remaining coal pillars would be shaved to the limits set by historic
mining regulations established in the Pennsylvania Mine Safety Act of 1871.
The mined area was then legally closed.
It was common for these areas to be illegally mined, a process
known as “robbing the pillars.”
This often accelerated the fracturing of overlying strata causing surface
“cave-ins.”
Where fractures or cave-ins
occurred in proximity to the river or tributary stream, infiltration of stream
flow into the mines would often result. Mining
also disrupted surface groundwater aquifers necessitating a substantial mine
drainage or pumping system. The
costs associated with pumping eventually contributed to the decline of the
anthracite industry in the Northern Field.
Other impacts to water
courses and resources were related to the processing and marketing of coal.
Run of mine coal was processed to remove rock, shale and slate in multi
story structures known as coal breakers. Coal
was also sized for different market uses and then loaded into rail cars or canal
barges for shipment to market. Early
coal breakers used a dry process, young men sat on boards along wooden chutes
and picked out rocks and shale which was known as culm.
This material was taken out to culm dumps, which gradually became
noticeable landscape features.
By 1900, a hydro mechanical
or wet process was introduced to separate coal from impurities.
Run of mine coal was introduced into large metal cylinders or cones where
water was circulated. The centrifugal force of circulating water worked with
differences in the specific gravity of coal and culm to separate and draw off
the coal, and then discharge the culm.
Mining activities, mine
drainage and the wet process consumed and polluted billions of gallons of water
on a daily bases across the anthracite region from the early to mid Twentieth
Century.
B.1.4
Peak and Decline of Anthracite
Anthracite coal production
peaked in 1917 as did total railroad mileage in the United States. By
the early Twentieth Century surface excavation technologies such as the steam
shovel and narrow gauge mine rail ways enabled an expansion of anthracite mining
by surface strip methods. Open
surface strip mines were more common for coal veins near the surface along
outcrops on stream corridors or outcrops along the geologic boundaries of the
Northern Field. By the 1930's diesel electric drag line excavators and
motorized dump trucks increased the capability of strip mine methods to reach
seams to a depth of two-hundred feet.
With the onset of the
Second World War and the need to increase coal production for the war effort,
strip mining soon exceeded underground production in the Lackawanna Valley.
Much if not all of this stripping was performed without backfilling or
reclamation. Coal stripping
operations would often interface with coal seams which had previously been mined
by the underground room and pillar method.
The strip mine excavations were often abandoned with exposed pits and
high walls surrounded by huge piles of overburden.
Strip mines would often
disrupt the flow of tributary streams. Many
water courses had been diverted around the workings or run through flumes.
Subsequent to abandonment of the strippings, the temporary water courses
and flumes would fail and stream flow would enter the strippings and infiltrate
into the underground workings.
By 1950 the flanks of the
Lackawanna Valley were extensively and rudely corrugated by strip mines, the
water courses of many tributary streams were interrupted by pits and overburden
piles, coal breakers and their associated culm banks and rock dumps blossomed
along the Lackawanna River and its tributary streams like bad apples on a long
abused tree.
The costs for electricity
to power the pumps to dewater the mines in the Northern Field and other costs of
coal production intersected with the market price obtainable for anthracite per
BTU when compared to competing fuels for domestic heating in 1957.
This economic intersection
was the beginning of the end for the anthracite coal industry.
The depression of the 1930's had accelerated a decline in fuel market
share, which briefly leveled during the Second World War only to decline
steadily into the 1960's.
The Knox Mine Disaster of
January 29, 1959 was a sad metaphor for all that was wrong with the anthracite
industry. The Knox Coal Company, a
subcontractor for the Pennsylvania Coal Company was mining coal illegally
beneath the bed of the Susquehanna River at Pittston. The river broke into the mines taking the lives of 12 miners,
nearly sixty others escaped and lived to tell very harrowing tales of life and
death in a rapidly flooding coal mine.
The sight of nearly
one-hundred railroad cars, and chunks of ice as large as houses disappearing in
the swirling vortex of river water as it flowed into the mine voids that bitter
January remains both sobering and awesome to this day.
The Anthracite Heritage Museum at McDade Park in Scranton features a
dramatic photographic and archival exhibit on the disaster.
The clean up after the
disaster necessitated building a coffer dam to divert the river away from the
fracture while an extensive reinforced concrete cap was installed in the river
bed to seal the fracture.
State and Federal
investigations into the disaster uncovered a conspiracy of greed and
racketeering which demonstrated that organized criminal activity had become
endemic in the anthracite industry. The
costs to the federal and state governments to respond to the disaster were in
the tens of millions of dollars. The
Knox Disaster effectively ended underground mining in the Northern Field.
By 1961 all mine pumping in
the Lackawanna Valley had ended. This
resulted in the creation of a huge underground water body known as the Northern
Anthracite Mine Pool. In the
Lackawanna, the pool is divided into two large basins and several smaller
sub-basins. The cresting of the
mine pool in 1961 began to cause basement and hillside flooding as mine water
began to flow from numerous bore holes and seeps along the Lackawanna Valley.
The Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, Department of Forests and Waters designed and constructed the Old
Forge Bore Hole to relieve the pressure and control the level of the main basin
of the Lackawanna pool between May and September 1962.
All underground mining ceased on November 1, 1966 with the closure of the
Continental Slope in the Keyser Valley West Mountain section of Scranton.
The Continental had operated in coal seams above the level of the flooded
voids. (Note: The Continental Slope
is today open as the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour at McDade Park.)
By 1970 the mining
activities in the Lackawanna Valley consisted of a half-dozen strip mines and
several culm bank reprocessing projects. The
mining companies and subcontractors were also engaged in federal and state
funded reclamation work.
An investment scheme
created a holding company known as The Great American Coal Company in 1968.
During the next few years, Great American acquired the Glen Alden ‘Blue
Coal’ Corporation, one of the largest Northern Anthracite operations as well
as many other Northern Field properties. By
1972, the Great American/Blue Coal combination had achieved a monopoly
in the Northern Field.
The real purpose of Great
American / Blue Coal may not have been coal mining. The complex house of cards began to default on mortgages,
loans, royalty payments, and taxes in 1973.
By 1976 it became the largest and most complex bankruptcy ever filed in
the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
The details of the Blue Coal bankruptcy are covered in the records of the
U.S. Department of Justice, Project Leviticus, an investigation into organized
criminal activity and racketeering in the coal industry.
Other related information is contained in the 1980 report of the
Pennsylvania Crime Commission.
The bankruptcy settlement
in the early 1990's yielded a liquidation of the properties.
The Luzerne County Blue Coal properties were largely (17,000-plus acres)
acquired by the non profit Earth Conservancy which has a goal of community
revitalization, resource management and environmental protection.
The Lackawanna County properties, known as the Raymond Colliery, were
acquired by F & L Realty, a private interest (11,000 acres).
There are a number of other coal holdings in the Lackawanna: Pagnotti
Coal Company, approximately 5000 acres; Silverbrook Anthracite, 3000 acres;
Carrier Coal, 3000 acres; Popple Brothers, 800 acres; Kaminsky Brothers, 800
acres. All maintain some aspect or
capacity to conduct mining related activities.
The prospect of remining
and culm bank fuel recovery remain as latent variables affecting the natural
resource and real estate management of significant portions of the Lackawanna
River Watershed.