PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Given its reputation as the biggest pile of coal waste east of the Mississippi, the Champion Processing gob pile in Washington County has had a remarkable number of hopes built on top of its black dust.
So far, none have been achieved.
The latest, treading carefully and warning of the early stages of the idea, is a plan being developed by Copia Power and Tenaska to build 215 megawatts of solar and, possibly, up to 100 megawatts of energy storage on the site.
Tenaska, a Nebraska-based energy firm that built and operates the 940-megawatt natural gas power plant in South Huntington Township, has spent the past few years securing solar leases in Robinson and neighboring North Fayette. In 2021, the company sold a large pipeline of solar and storage projects to Copia Power, which was formed by investment firm Carlyle to develop such projects. Copia and Tenaska are working together on the Beech Hollow project.
Waste coal pile
Site of proposed solar farm project
“Our current focus is on confirming the feasibility of this site — both environmentally and economically — for renewable energy development,” the parties said in a statement to the Post-Gazette.
If it materializes, the project would “continue the energy tradition of the site,” they said, “by taking a brownfield development and remediating it to bolster southwestern Pennsylvania’s clean energy economy.”
Pennsylvania’s environmental officials are pulling for it, too.
During a recent meeting of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s citizens advisory committee, Louie Krak talked up a large solar project being planned for an old mine site that could be used as a model for turning old energy’s graveyards into new energy’s fertile soil.
Mr. Krak, the DEP’s infrastructure coordinator — who said his “job is to chase after the Biden bucks and the Kamala cash” in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 infrastructure bill — said the project is vying for funding under a $450 million program for clean energy demonstrations on current and former mine land.
The Department of Energy, which administers the program, estimates there are about 17,750 such sites scattered across 1.5 million acres in the U.S. The mine lands often leach pollutants into groundwater and contaminate local air. Some catch on fire.
According to the federal government, locating clean energy projects on these sites could produce enough power to supply 30 million homes.
Piling on
As far back as 1981, Robert Cummins, whose Geary Farm abuts the 1,000 acre waste coal property, told the Pittsburgh Press that the mountain of coal garbage is just a fact of life in Robinson Township, left over from decades of surface mining, coal processing and dumping.
”It can never be reclaimed,” he said.
{hat year, Consolidated Coal Co., which owned the property, shuttered the coal preparation plant at the site. The company was already under pressure from state and federal regulators to remediate the giant pile and was pitching a plan to spread sewage sludge from Alcosan’s treatment plant on top of the waste coal to encourage vegetation. Champion Processing, owned by the Bologna family, bought the land shortly afterwards.
”That was 42 years ago,” said Robert Cummins, who was born that same year and took over his father’s farm. And the pile remains.
As it sits, uncovered, acid discharge drains from it and Champion operates a series of water treatment systems to keep the leachate from polluting nearby water resources.
The amount of coal waste in the pile has been estimated to be between 30 and 70 million tons. In the 1980s, Champion’s president Ray Bologna courted an effort to use the waste coal to produce electricity.
n 1994, site work began to build an 80 megawatt waste coal powerplant on the site. But the effort faltered and was never completed.
By 2005, another proposal to build a 272 megawatt powerplant fueled by the waste coal secured a state permit, but it expired when no construction had begun by 2010. Around that time, the scope of Pennsylvania’s shale gas boom was coming into view. The Robinson Power Co., as it was then called, refashioned the project as a combination of a 148 megawatt natural gas plant and a possible waste coal plant. Again, its permit lapsed with no ground action.
The next attempt, at an even larger natural gas plant, was submitted then withdrawn, in 2015.
Two years later, Robinson Power received a permit to build a 1,000 megawatt natural gas plant. After a series of extensions, that permit was terminated in 2021 with no construction started.
Cathy Lodge, who moved to Washington County in 2000 and got her start in environmental activism there by opposing every powerplant proposal on Champion’s site, was delighted when she heard that Mr. Cummins was approached by Tenaska to sign a solar lease.
