The Best-ever Symbol of Government Incompetence?

American Thinker ^ | May 08, 2011 | Alan M Aszkler

[neverdem]

America's largest coal mine fire is the marquee for government ineffectiveness and environmental activism's false pretense.

Centralia, PA is home to America's largest coal mine fire -- still burning today since May of 1962.

Forty-nine years of government folly, environmentalist demonization, and media sensationalism have managed to fan the flames under Centralia, escalating the costs to end this ecological disaster from under $100,000 in the early sixties to over $600 million today.

Bureaucratic half-measures started in the 60's with a planned town dump in an old mine pit.  Regulations required that any openings to the mine be properly sealed with non combustible material. 

In May 1962 the local Volunteer Fire Company had been hired by the town council to clean up the landfill.  As was done in the past, Firemen set the dump ablaze, let it burn for a while, and then doused the fire, or so they thought.  Several days of flareups followed.  Finally to their horror they discovered the fire spread through an improperly filled hole in the rock pit, ignited a coal seam and flared into the coal mines below.

The first action by PA's Dept. of Environmental Resources in July 1962, was to drill bore holes to monitor the fire.  However this misstep provided a natural draft, aiding the fire's combustion.

By May 1969, the fire threatened homes.  Community leaders proposed surrounding it with a trench, but officials and agencies frittered away time, while failing to fund the $50,000 needed to complete the plan.  According to Tony Gaughan (quoted in the book Slow Burn), if the trench had been dug in three shifts per day instead of one, and if they had worked through the Labor Day holiday, the fire would have been contained. 

In 1978, state and federal governments expended $3.3 million attempting to douse the blaze to no avail.

National attention descended on Centralia in February 1981 when the ground collapsed under a 12 year old boy playing in his grandmother's backyard.  Todd Domboski survived by holding onto exposed tree roots in a 150 foot deep sinkhole until pulled to safety. 

Network media, Ted Koppel, and Time magazine led the environmentalist charge, blaming the disaster on the scourge called strip mining.

Although burning for over 19 years, environmentalists with their willing accomplices in national media quickly passed judgment and assigned blame to Interior secretary James Watt.  Eco-activist Joan Quigley (in her book The Day the Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy) wrote that Watt's resignation "accomplished more for Centralia than Todd Domboski, Concerned Citizens and three decades of federal mine reclamation laws combined."  One would think putting out the fire would do more for Centralia.

Watt was destroyed, yet no further activist effort was put forward to resolve the disaster.  In 1984 Congress appropriated $42 million for voluntary acquisition and relocation in Centralia.  By now $7 million was spent fighting the fire.  Eleven years later in 1995 $53 million was spent moving residents and fighting the fire with no resolution.

Today the Centralia fire burns under the town and in the surrounding hillsides on several fronts.  There is nary an eco-activist or carbon crusader in sight.  No, their new eco-hysteria is focused 90 short miles away in Dimock, PA.  Websites like ProPublica spread the rhetoric of fear for their new energy demon:  fracking.  Green minions blog with quotes like "stop these people before all of their creeks and ponds are filled with carcinogenic sludge," this while standing upwind of the noxious fumes and toxic gases released up through the back yards, basements, and streets of Centralia.

Websites like the Union of Concerned Scientists tout the new mantra, "Join the Cause," "Take Action," and most important "Donate Money."  Not money so they can clean up current environmental disasters.  No, they need money to lobby Congress to legislate further restrictions on the American domestic energy industry.  Yes, money so we can all pay more for our energy yet feel good about ourselves while funding nation states who despise the USA.

Carbon Crusader Superhero Al Gore neglected to mention the inconvenient truth that coal mine fires in China alone are producing 3% of the world's industrial CO₂ emissions.  The largest fire in northern China produces the same carbon footprint as all the cars in the US.  Yet Mr. Gore would give China a pass on the Chicago Carbon Exchange.

What I find most astonishing is the lackluster zeal from the eco warriors.  Websites propagate a global demise from the black death of coal production, yet they are in lockstep support of Alfred Whitehouse, chief of the Reclamation Support Division of the federal Office of Surface Mining who said about the Centralia Fire, "It's too expensive to tackle, and we're not sure we can do it anyway."  We can't stop the fire yet they think it'll burn itself out in about 100 to 300 years.

Global scientists and the USGS don't fare much better.  Throwing out figures such as it would have cost $663 million to put out the Centralia fire in 1983, yet today they say $650 million would douse all the coal mine fires in America.  China contributes 3% of global CO₂ caused by 20 million tons of coal fires burning annually -- or is it 200 million tons producing 12% of global greenhouse gas?  The USGS is currently estimating CO₂ output from American Coal fires, yet they know the mercury output is equal to 25% of the output from all American Coal fired generators?

Centralia is a metaphor showcasing government failure while exposing environmental activists' true agenda.

Government's inability to solve the problem has extended the crisis and escalated the costs.  Their best effort is to put up a few warning signs and hope it goes away.

Silence is also deafening from the Green crowd.  When confronted with a real environmental disaster their inaction is morally repugnant.  Can't let toxic fumes or scorched earth stop them from their true purpose, fundraising!

Perhaps we should try a different solution before the golden anniversary of Centralia's great mine fire.

Deed this land over to the first group of American investors willing to build a Clean Coal generator in Centralia and allow them to mine the coal onsite economically to run it.  In less than one year the phoenix will rise in Centralia, the fire will be out, the generator will be running, toxic emissions will be reduced and hundreds of good paying jobs will be created in the plant and the soon to be rebuilt town, fueling a local economy, once again producing tax revenue.

AlanAszkler@aol.com is a God, Family, Country, Reagan Conservative who believes its time to get the politicians out of Politics and allow American Ingenuity to restore our economy with American exceptionalism.

Resources:

Website http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

Slow Burn, A photodocument of Centralia, PA", by Renee Jacobs and Intro by Margaret O. Kirk

Bloomberg News Article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=azAK4k7Q4vRU&refer=muse&cid=0&ei=3WATRraJHpDQqQPEopnnAw

"The Day the Earth Caved In: An American Mining Tragedy'', by Joan Quigley, published by Random House

Associated Press Article: "Centralia, the Pa. village above burning coal seam, is down to 5 houses"

Published: Friday, February 05, 2010 by Michael Rubinkam,

The Charleston Gazette Article: "The fire still burns: Centralia's last days"

Published February 8, 2010 by Ken Ward Jr.

Bloomberg News Article: "James Watt Fiddled as Mine Fire Burned Below Pennsylvania Town"

Review by Joan Oleck - April 4, 2007  

Time Magazine Article "Environment: The Price of Strip Mining" Monday, Mar. 22, 1971 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,904921,00.html#ixzz1KYwJAH9Z

Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

TreeHUGGER.com  http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/underground-coal-fire-centralia-started-1962-burns.php

Bismark Tribune Article: "Earth is on fire, douse the flames"

By KIRSTEN PETERS | Posted: Tuesday, December 1, 2009 7:05 am

ProPublica Article: "Frack Fluid Spill in Dimock Contaminates Stream, Killing Fish" by Abrahm Lustgarten Sep. 21, 2009, 5:09 p.m.

www.eoearth.org/article/Coal_fires:

Published: March 23, 2007, 1:44 pm Lead Author: Claudia Kuenzer

Published: September 14, 2006, 3:08 pm Lead Author: Ida Kubiszewski Contributing Author: Cutler Cleveland

Discover Magavine Article: "Earth On Fire" by Kristin Ohlson http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jul-aug/28-earth-on-fre/article_view?searchterm=Centralia&b_start:int=2

[muawiyah]

Fortunately we've got most of the names from almost all of the stones, and they are now immortalized in digital formats.

They're working on the Chinese family and village memorials now, plus the genealogy books ~

I just found 4 more generations of ancestral women today. They were there once you figured out how to read the names.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#27: I see a 1958 Chevy - on the left. Possibly a DeSoto or Chrsyler two spaces behind it. A Corvair in the middle of the road, and on the immediate right, a Plymouth (Fury?, Charger), about a 1962 or 63.

We made great cars back in those days. I drove a 57 Chevy 210 with overdrive, 145 HP, and 8 girls on the bench seats.

[Trod Upon]

Can’t we just stuff Democrats down the vents until the fires are smothered?

[Vigilanteman]

I'm not a fan of Big Government or Collectivism, but this column neatly ignores the fact that it was a basically unregulated private enterprise that created this disaster.

Correct. So was the Johnstown flood.

But in the case of Centralia, it was the enviro-whackjobs which turned it from a small disaster into a mega disaster.

In the case of Johnstown, it would also be easy to envision the revenue hungry local government seeing a private fish pond for the wealthy as creating more taxes than a bunch of tenements downstream and approving its construction accordingly as in the Kelo case.

Most conservatives (such as myself) support balanced regulation which includes holding private industry as well as government accountable for any environmental messes which they make.

[Explorer89]

I’m sorry, but I think Centralia already has enough hot air.

[668 - Neighbor of the Beast]

Don’t waste your time and fuel, there’s nothing to see. Looks like a ghost town, but largely no buildings (ie, no “town”). You can tell there was a community, the way you can tell there was once a house where an empty lot sits: sidewalks and entrance paths disappearing into the weeds. There’s no smoke I ever saw. Just lots of weeds and brush.

FWIW, the last time I talked with a local about it, maybe a year ago, they said what they always say, follow the money. Somebody wanted the land, somebody sold out, somebody holds out. Tales of endless corruption, make your head spin.

For $4/gal, I’d do Gettysburg, not Centralia.

[kearnyirish2]

That’s great that you’re able to do that; I take pictures of these stones when I can because someday in the not too distant future they’ll be gone or illegible (many already are). The GPS coordinates are handy too, for the abandoned cemeteries.

[kearnyirish2]

Thanks for the heads up!

[NativeSon]

From what I heard there were people there still but I didn’t see from where I was. There were other ‘explorers’ roaming about picking their way through the vents

[this_ol_patriot]

Laurel Run in Wyoming Valley (Wilkes-Barre) has been burning since 1915, that was started by a carbide lamp. What I understand the coal seams in the Centralia-Ashland area run at steep inclines making the fires go real deep compared to the more eastern anthracite fields where the seams are flatter.

I lived in Hazleton when this started and remember one in Asley and we had one in Hazleton off of RT. 940.

[Gondring]

There are dozens of coalbed fires in PA, but Centralia is famous because of the surface threat and the borough being condemned.

I wasn’t in PA until several years after the excitement. It must have really been something, from Hazleton!

[Elsie]

Senator Stevens came from the old neighborhood (Brightwood) in Indianapolis.

Now THERE's a tourist attraction!

[Elsie]

It was a little unsettling to think that some 166 year-old woman (Lavinia Lewis) could still be prowling the park...

I've noted a LOT of gravestones like this out west.

My take is that the first one in the ground left a spouse, who probably remarried and moved away, to be buried somewhere else.

[HonestConservative]

That’s what I was thinking. I’m no engineer, but why not capture it instead of trying to kill it?

[muawiyah]

Just looking at the statistics on 46218 the other day and I thought of doing a story that starts with the Big 4 Railyard, McKamey coal yard, and Cohen's Department Store. Then we run through the 30s, and John Dillinger's visits to his dad's, and how all the guys went off to the military and saw the world.

There would be murders, street thugs, guys working in factories, guys working the rails, the Stevens family, the trips to Brown County (down home for all so many of them), and finally the big breakthrough for the African-Americans who got to Brightwood just in time for houses to literally fall apart and drop into the basements.

The statistics around there were always bad; today they're worse; I think I might have gotten accepted to Harvard as an Affirmative Action case (so I'm glad I didn't go there).

[kearnyirish2]

“My take is that the first one in the ground left a spouse, who probably remarried and moved away, to be buried somewhere else.”

I’m sure it was something like that; these are family burial grounds for settlements that were taken over by the park service and razed. In some cases cemeteries were relocated (for example, two of the settlements were covered by new lakes; cemeteries would be relocated for that); in other cases, they were just left to disappear in the woods.