The request for the extension came from the Citizens Coal Council, the second extension granted, because of concerns the DEP report and the comment period were not announced in a press release or included in a formal PA Bulletin notice and are not well known to the public.
Comments To Citizens Advisory Council
DEP’s Citizens Advisory Council is seeking comments on the analysis and conclusions in the report and also to some specific questions--
-- After three decades, is the current report format appropriate for its purpose?
-- Are there ways that the report could be streamlined for greater transparency and information circulation (e.g., online quarterly or semi-annually)?
-- Are there opportunities to improve accessibility, organization, and use of digital tools or information?
-- Can the information in the report be available, periodically or in near real-time, online?
-- Are there other ways to modernize the report?
-- With online updates, should the report summarize data, audit information submission, and look to the future versus a look to the past?
The Citizens Council "is particularly interested in recommendations that may help evolve the Act 54 Report and its processes to ensure it remains a meaningful, readable, and useful tool while balancing it with the demands that Act 54 places on DEP."
A copy of the report and supporting data can be found on DEP’s Act 54 Report On Damage To Structures and Streams Caused By Underground Coal Mining (2018-2022) webpage.
Public comments should be submitted to: Ian Irvin, CAC Executive Director, by email to: iirvin@pa.gov.
Citizens Coal Council Review Of Act 54 Report
On July 30, the Citizens Coal Council released an independent review calling the Department of Environmental Protection’s report documenting impacts of longwall and underground coal mining in Southwest Pennsylvania a 'haphazard complication of selected raw statistics containing little or no analysis' as required by Act 54.
The review-- Broken Streams, Broken System, Broken Trust - PA DEP's Failure to Protect Southwestern Pennsylvania from Widespread Longwall Coal Mining Damage-- calls on Gov. Josh Shapiro and the General Assembly to intervene directly in the Department of Environmental Protection's coal mining oversight program and require the agency to follow the law.
Here are the key findings from the independent review--
-- Longwall Mining Responsible For 98% Of Damage: Longwall mining is responsible for 98% of mine-liable structural damage claims reported between 2013 and 2023 (459 of 467), even though the technology was approved under Act 54 in 1994 on industry assurances that "planned, controlled" subsidence would be more predictable and less damaging than traditional room-and-pillar mining.
Three decades of Act 54 reports have shown the opposite to be true.
-- Only 5% Of Mining-Caused Damage Is Repaired: Despite Act 54's core "you damage it, you fix it" premise, repair status is almost never confirmed: historically only about 5% of documented underground-mining damage-- and just 3% of longwall-attributed damage specifically-- has been documented as actually repaired.
In the 5th reporting period, 52% of 486 mine-liable damage claims were resolved through undisclosed "agreement," and another 31% through outright purchase of the property by the mine operator; together, these two resolution types accounted for 83% of all outcomes, with no public information on whether repairs, demolition, or abandonment ultimately followed.
-- Non-Disclosure Agreements Hide Whether Act 54 Is Working: NDAs were never contemplated in Act 54's original design, which envisioned open settlement agreements that could be reviewed by DEP or recorded on a property deed.
They have nonetheless become the dominant tool for resolving mining-damage claims, and they systematically prevent DEP, the Citizens Advisory Council, the General Assembly, and the public from learning whether a given home, water supply, or stream was ever actually restored.
DEP has acknowledged it is not privy to NDA terms and has no mechanism to track outcomes independent of them-- even though its own field inspectors could, without violating any confidentiality term, simply note whether visible repairs exist.
-- Damage-Prediction Models Are Decades Out Of Date: The 35-degree Rebuttable Presumption Zone (RPZ), which determines whether a mine operator is presumed liable for water-supply damage, and the related 30-degree "angle of draw" used for structural damage assessments, both reflect mining practices from roughly 30 years ago, when longwall panels were far smaller than they are today.
DEP's own 4th Act 54 Report found that 50% of documented water-supply damages occurred outside the 35-degree RPZ, at angles as steep as 85 degrees.
At Ryerson Station State Park, Duke Lake dam sustained irreparable damage from mining at a 66-degree angle — nearly double the current presumption threshold.
The companion model used to predict stream flow loss, developed by Dr. Syd S. Peng in the 1980s, is now more than 30 years old and has never been recalibrated or validated against modern longwall panel dimensions.
A more rigorous streamflow-characterization methodology, developed by the U.S. Geological Survey and partly funded by DEP itself (Hittle and Risser, completed 2019), has never been adopted into DEP's technical guidance or permit requirements.
-- Stream And Wetland Damage Is Extensive, Slow To Recover, Poorly Tracked: In the 5th reporting period alone, 183 documented stream impacts affected at least 27.4 miles of Pennsylvania streams, 90% of them caused by flow loss-- a harder-to-predict and harder-to-restore impact than pooling.
Flow-loss damage can extend up to a mile from the affected mining area, and restoration, when it happens, typically takes five to ten years; pooling impacts took an average of nearly eight years to reach biological "release."
Some damaged streams have never been restored at all.
None of the streams documented as impaired by mining during the 5th Report period were listed on Pennsylvania's official Clean Water Act Section 303(d)/305(b) impaired-waters reports to the EPA-- evidence of a communications gap between DEP's mining program and its own Division of Water Quality that leaves state and federal regulators effectively blind to mining's water-quality footprint.
-- PA's Highest-Quality Streams Get No Special Protection From Mining: Streams designated Exceptional Value (EV) or High Quality (HQ) are entitled to heightened anti-degradation protection under state and federal law, but DEP's mining-permit review process does not specifically screen for these designations before approving longwall operations.
The 5th Act 54 Report did not mention Special Protection waters at all, despite documented damage at sites including the Enlow Fork and Harvey mines-- watersheds increasingly targeted for mining expansion even as EV/HQ designations spread across southwestern Pennsylvania.
-- Report Maps And Appendices Don't Hold Up To Scrutiny: The Appendix A maps meant to document each mine's impacts are illegible at the scale provided. For example, Cumberland Mine's map purports to show all 31 reported structure-damage complaints from the period, but only about 10 distinct symbols are visible because overlapping points render on top of one another-- and none of the maps display the "Problem ID" numbers used in the report's own tables, making it impossible to connect a specific mapped point to its written case history without filing a separate Right-to-Know request for the underlying shapefiles, as CCC had to do.
-- DEP Has Not Meaningfully Responded To CCC Or Its Own Citizens Advisory Council: CCC submitted 19 specific written questions to then-DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell in February 2021 and met with DEP staff over seven subsequent conference calls through early 2022.
The 6th Report states that "the Department reviewed and considered all comments and suggestions made by the CCC," but the independent review finds no evidence that any of CCC's substantive concerns were incorporated or resolved-- the 6th Report addresses CCC's original concerns even less thoroughly than the 5th Report did.
DEP's own Citizens Advisory Council, which by law reviews and formally comments on every five-year Act 54 report, raised many of the same concerns in more than 100 pages of comments on the 5th Report and specifically recommended DEP adopt the 2019 USGS streamflow methodology.
None of that input is reflected in the 6th Report, which does not mention the USGS study at all.
-- DEP Has Not Pursued Funding It Could Use To Fix This: DEP cites "fiscal restrictions" as the reason it could not commission independent expert analysis for the 6th Report, but has not visibly pursued funding sources available to it: OSMRE has historically covered half the cost of prior five-year reports and could be asked to contribute more; Pennsylvania's Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund holds an accumulated surplus of roughly $100 million; and EPA funding mechanisms exist for wetland and water-resource work that could underwrite relevant portions of a future report
Conclusion
“Taken together, the independent reviewers conclude that DEP's 6th Act 54 Report is "essentially a haphazard compilation of selected raw BUMIS statistics" containing "little or no analysis"-- a significant regression from the 2nd through 5th reports and a failure to meet the data-compilation and analysis obligations Act 54 imposes on DEP by law.
“Three decades after Act 54 promised that mining damage would be identified, tracked, and repaired, that promise remains undocumented, unverified, and in most cases unmet.”
Citizen Action Needed
The Citizens Coal Council has issued an action alert encouraging Pennsylvanians to submit comments to the DEP Citizens Advisory Council on the Act 54 Report by September 8.
“Act 54 of 1994 is the only law standing between coalfield families and unchecked damage from underground coal mining,” said the Citizens Coal Council.
“The Governor's office and the General Assembly have been receiving these reports for thirty years. They already have everything they need to know that this program is failing.
“What's been missing is the political will to demand better — from DEP, and for the people living over these mines.”
Click Here to review the Action Alert.
Resource Links - Act 54 Report:
-- Citizens Coal Council: PA Act 54 Promised Structures, Stream Damage From Coal Mining Would Be Identified, Tracked, Repaired - After 30 Years That Promise Remains Undocumented, Unverified And In Most Cases Unmet [PaEN]
-- DEP Citizens Advisory Council Invites Comments On DEP's Act 54 Report Documenting Adverse Impacts Of Longwall And Underground Coal Mining On Structures, Surface And Ground Water; Report Says 20% Of Undermined Streams Damaged [PaEN]
Related Articles This Week:
-- Governor’s Office To Brief DEP Citizens Advisory Council On Governor’s Data Center Executive Order Sept. 1 [PaEN]
-- PA Congresswoman Summer Lee, Westmoreland County Leaders Celebrate $1.075 Million Federal Grant To Cleanup Abandoned Mine Drainage In Turtle Creek Watershed [PaEN]
NewsClips:
-- The Citizens’ Voice: Small But Mighty: Eastern PA Coalition For Abandoned Mine Reclamation Celebrates 30 Years Of Revitalizing Region’s Coal Land [PDF of Article]
-- TribLive: Westmoreland County Mine Drainage Cleanup Project Gets $1 Million In Federal Funding
-- Observer-Reporter: Coal Miner Sues For Wrongful Termination Claiming Coal Company Retaliated After Worker Raised Safety Concerns
[Posted: August 29, 2026 ] PA Environment Digest
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