Luzerne County manager checks out culm bank removal

Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo spent some of her time off last week visiting a massive Hazle Township culm bank motorists have faced for decades as they enter the county on Route 309.

Removal of the bank is underway to make room for a parking lot servicing one of several commercial development projects planned on former coal mining tracts throughout the county.

This particular bank is of special interest to Crocamo because it made a memorable impression when she was five and entering the Hazleton area for the first time due to her parents’ decision to relocate from California.

“I said to my father, in the only way a 5-year-old can, “Daddy, can we go home now?’” Crocamo recalled of seeing the hulking black mass. “Now, some 55 years later, I am proud to call Luzerne County my home.”

Fairfield, Connecticut-based Bluecup Ventures plans to construct a $120 million, three-warehouse project on a 360-acre site straddling Route 309, which includes the parcel containing the culm bank.

Lenny Rossi, of Rossi Coal Co., has an agreement to remove the culm bank and explained the process to Crocamo during her visit.

Rossi estimated the culm bank is 115 feet high and encompassing 6 acres. It was left there approximately a century ago by the Beaver Brook Coal Co., he said.

He started work at the bank in August and expects it will take six more months to clear the bank.

Crocamo asked how he ensures the bank won’t collapse since it is so close to Route 309. A resident who lived near the culm bank had said the mound was widening at the base over time as rocks tumbled down, making it creep closer to the highway.

Rossi said his company is clearing the side opposite the highway first. This will create room to tackle the highway side of the bank in a way that material stays on site and does not endanger motorists, he said.

An excavator has carved out a path and level pad and is pushing material down, he said.

“We work from the inside out instead of the outside in,” he said.

Loaders carry the material to an on-site “screening plant” he set up to separate rocks by size. The oversize rocks remain there to be used as fill for the development project, and the smaller rocks containing a higher percentage of coal are hauled to Rossi Coal Co. in nearby Banks Township for further processing in a breaker Rossi constructed in 1996, he said.

Typically 700 to 800 tons of rock are processed each day, he said.

Rossi, who marked the 50th anniversary of his business this year, took Crocamo inside his breaker, passing through a door containing a peeling sign that read, “Coal. No fuel like an old fuel.”

Climbing a series of open-grate stairs, he described the mechanics of components that spin, vibrate, sort and rinse the coal. Rossi said he chose an efficient and simple breaker design and is regularly visited by representatives of other entities looking to build their own.

Most of his coal — 99% — goes to mills across the country for the production of steel. The demand for domestic coal has increased due to the loss of coal supplies from Ukraine and Russia, he said.

Fees collected from active coal operators are placed in the federal Abandoned Mine Reclamation Trust Fund that helps pay for reclamation of abandoned mine sites.

On his own 55-acre property, Rossi dug out a coal basin and ran the material through processing, using the remaining rock to start leveling the land.

“We have to put the land back to the way it was,” Rossi said. “We’re more environmentalists than miners. We’re cleaning up.”

Crocamo said Rossi is helping to restore “the landscape and opportunities for Luzerne County.”

She does not necessarily agree with one friend’s opinion that the culm banks are beautiful but said she firmly believes beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Still, Crocamo respects that the black piles symbolize a “significant part of the history and fabric of Luzerne County.”

Local coal mines provided jobs for many, including her grandfather, she said. His hard worked helped a daughter and three granddaughters to obtain college degrees, she said.

”Not bad for a man who went deep into the coal mines and died of black lung,” Crocamo said.