HARRISBURG – Gov. Edward G. Rendell announced an agreement between Pennsylvania and the U. S. Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining to contain and extinguish the Dolph Colliery underground mine fire that has been burning since 2004 in Olyphant Borough, Lackawanna County.
The fire was started when flames from a burning automobile spread to a coal refuse pile, which eventually ignited the #2 and #3 Dunmore coal seams on the site of the abandoned colliery. The fire has been growing steadily and threatens to destroy a new sewer line, and could affect the new U.S. Route 6/Gov. Robert P. Casey Highway if left to burn unchecked.
“Pennsylvania has 38 underground mine fires, the most of any state in the nation,” Rendell said. “This is just a small part of the $5 billion abandoned mine problem we face that hinders economic growth and threatens public health and safety. Waste coal piles and exposed coal seams are an invitation to disaster, and I am pleased we have been able to work out an agreement with the Office of Surface Mining to put out the Dolph Colliery mine fire before it grows any larger and threatens local infrastructure and nearby communities.”
The Wilkes-Barre office of the OSM began monitoring the fire in September 2004 and excavated a cutoff trench to try to isolate fire in the waste coal, but discovered that it had already jumped into the underlying coal seam and abandoned underground workings at the Dolph Colliery. This threatened the viability of the newly-constructed Jefferson Township sewer line, which has a daily flow of 100,000 gallons and sits in the immediate path of the fire.
Because there are no houses in the path of the fire, OSM indicated that the fire might not be eligible for emergency funding from the Department of Interior, which would have placed the burden for fighting the fire on the commonwealth. Pennsylvania’s limited abandoned mine lands funding would have been insufficient to perform the task, thereby allowing the fire to continue to spread and threatening to interrupt funding to the state’s other ongoing abandoned mine projects.