Pennsylvania DEP awards Winslow Township mine reclamation project to P & N Coal Company

P & N Coal Company, Inc. recently won a bid from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to manage the mine reclamation project in Jefferson County’s Winslow Township.

The work will take place near Rathmel, on within the Redbank Creek sub basin north of State Route 1002. It will address parts of a deep mine from the 1920s, on the Lower Freeport coal seam, which is now abandoned.

P & N Coal Company will reclaim 35 acres of abandoned deep mine and subsidence areas and remove any incidental coal, the latter of which is allowable due to a 1999 amendment to the states Abandoned Mine Landfill Plan that lets contractors remove incidental and necessary coal from projects receiving less than 50 percent of their funding from the federal government.

The company’s work will benefit local communities by removing safety hazards, encourage positive drainage into Fehley Run and make the property a more suitable habitat for local wildlife. The project’s estimated time frame is 36 months, and the DEP expects that it will cost approximately $193,700.

“We continue to reclaim abandoned mine sites in Pennsylvania,” DEP Knox Office Section Chief Roger Bowman said. “This is another example of cleaning up old mines and restoring the natural habitat.”