When watching the evening news today, I saw an image of coal barges lined up at the docks at the USS Mon Valley Steel Plant. Of course the news segment was about the White House blocking the sale of USS to Nippon Steel. My mind wandered to to dad's career at the Robena Prep Plant. I didn't think that it was still in operation but I searched for more information. I found that the Robena deep mines closed in 1983, but plant continued to operate until 2017 processing coal from surface mining for Consol Mining. It seems that reclamation of the site began many years before 2017, most likely mandated by local concerns about environmental damage from seepage from the three large slurry ponds and other surface contamination. Dad took me out one Sunday afternoon to inspect the dikes and berms around the ponds. We had to hop into one of the big company trucks to traverse the dirt roads around the site. I read a couple of articles about the ongoing l...
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