DUBOIS – Sandy Township Supervisers approve the City of DuBois’ conditional use permit to excavate non-coal minerals from property near US Route 322 in Sandy Township.
The approval lists six conditions that need to be met for the City of DuBois to extract sandstone and shale from the property. This does not involve Marcellus Shale drilling. The extraction of minerals will happen in seven phases. One phase will be in operation at a time. The mining will take place on a 242 acre parcel of land near the six new water wells drilled by the City of DuBois giving the City of DuBois a vested interest in keeping any negative environmental impact of the operation to a minimum.
The first condition is that before starting DuBois has to provide written proof of all permits, regulations and requirements of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The second is simply that DuBois must keep up to those standards rather than just meet them before excavating begins. The third condition requires that the property be restored when the city is done and submit a plan for restoration. Condition four is that the operation must follow all township laws that aren’t pre-empted by state laws. Condition five states that work can only be done between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. The final condition is that vehicles using the access road are prohibited from using engine retarders.
The process began back on July 30 of 2010 when the application was first submitted to the township. In the intervening months two public hearings were held which attracted large public gatherings.
