The "Navigation" in the name comes from the days when they took the coal to Philadelphia by canal boat.
Our area produced Anthracite - the clean burning metamorphic rock that powered the industrial revolution for 100 years. There are still millions of tons left there in Schuylkill and Carbon counties - but the market has dwindled. Today - it is too dangerous and expensive to make a go of it.
The rest is Copied from the Standard Speaker
by Peter Bortner -
Schuylkill County's oldest anthracite company is at least temporarily out of business, as state officials on Monday suspended its mining permit for what they termed an unwillingness to operate legally.
Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co., Pottsville, must bring its entire 8,000-acre mining business into compliance with its permit before it can resume operations, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger ruled.
"Basically, the operation is shut down," and 40 people's jobs are affected, DEP spokesman Tom Rathbun said Monday.
LC&N cannot even sell coal it already has mined, Rathbun said.
DEP's action halts mining in Coaldale and Tamaqua in eastern Schuylkill County and Nesquehoning and Summit Hill in western Carbon County on land that has been mined for approximately 200 years.
It also throws into question the future of a company that already is in bankruptcy.
DEP said it shut down LC&N because the company has engaged in illegal mining practices, violated water quality standards and failed to reclaim mined lands, thereby endangering the public.
"Our goal ... is to have somebody operate the sale profitably while bringing it into compliance," Rathbun said. "The current ownership has shown an inability to do that."
DEP said it cited LC&N twice this year for trying to develop unpermitted and unbonded mine pits.
DEP said much of LC&N's site does not have a sufficient reclamation bond that would ensure the land could be rehabilitated if the company cannot or will not do it. Mining on much of the property started long before such bonds were required, DEP said.
Additionally, discharge from abandoned underground sections of the mine workings affect water quality in the Little Schuylkill River, according to DEP.
"The current LC&N management has shown a persistent unwillingness and inability to mine in accordance with state and federal law or address the reclamation and water treatment needs of this mine site," Hanger said. "The department does not take this type of action lightly, but we cannot allow LC&N to continue to ignore the law and leave the bill for cleanup of this site to the taxpayers."
DEP said it has issued 24 compliance orders against LC&N since 2008, resulting in civil penalties of more than $91,000 and five three-day permit suspensions.
LC&N officials were unavailable Monday for comment on the matter.
Creditors filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against LC&N on July 15, 2008. U.S. Chief Bankruptcy Judge John J. Thomas, Wilkes-Barre, is presiding over that case, which still is open.
pbortner@republicanherald.com
