Subsidence caused by longwall coal mining in southwestern Pennsylvania can happen in a matter of days, if not hours, as nine homeowners in Washington County found out last week.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Damage to the basement floor of Dina Popovich?s home on Coyle Curtain Road in Fallowfield caused by undermining. Click photo for larger image. PG Special Report Sinking History: A series of articles written by Don Hopey, who examined damage to historic structures in Washington and Greene counties caused by longwall mining.

But changes to the state laws and regulations that allow high-extraction mining operations to cause subsidence that damages homes, historic structures, water supplies and wetlands are occurring at a more glacial pace.

The state Department of Environmental Protection is working on federally required amendments to the state's 10-year-old Act 54 mining law, but those won't be final until mid-2005.

That's too late to help Fallowfield residents who saw their homes on Route 481 crack and crumble after the fully permitted longwall operation of Maple Creek Mining Inc. carved the 6-foot-thick Pittsburgh coal seam out from under them last week.

As Dave Whiding said after his home sustained such heavy damage that he had to move his family into a motel, mining that causes irreparable damage to homes "shouldn't be legal."

When the regulatory changes do occur, DEP Secretary Kathleen McGinty said, "important revisions" to Act 54 will include lengthening to more than three years the current two-year deadline for filing claims for home damage and water supply loss, and prohibiting mining companies from negotiating financial settlements in lieu of replacing water supplies except when the state determines replacement is impossible.

The revisions were mandated in December 2001 by a federal Office of Surface Mining review of the state mining law. It found that 47 provisions of the law and its supporting regulations were less effective than federal law in protecting property owners' rights after subsidence occurred.

The OSM will take over regulation from the state on several mining issues not covered or poorly addressed by Act 54, but that also will not occur until sometime next year.

McGinty said the state was preparing technical guidance documents that will increase subsidence protections for perennial streams and for the first time extend protections to intermittent streams, wetlands and springs that feed wetlands or streams.

"We are wholly revising our rules in this area to create a much more complete definition of what constitutes a protected water resource in the state," McGinty said.

There is no time frame for when those guidelines will be implemented.

George Ellis, president of the Pennsylvania Coal Association, an industry lobbying group, said it had submitted comments on the regulatory packages but hadn't seen any final language.

"We will continue to work with both the DEP and the OSM to ensure we have a mine-subsidence program that contains sufficient protections for the landowner while preserving our right to mine," Ellis said.

Longwall mining is a full-extraction, deep-mining technique that causes almost immediate surface subsidence of 4 feet or more over wide swaths of land. Act 54, a sweeping amendment of the state mining laws in 1994, allowed longwall mining to undermine houses and other structures as long as the mining company repaired the structures and replaced water supplies.

The DEP has made one mining-policy change not covered by Act 54. To improve subsidence protections for historic properties, the department now alerts the state Historical and Museum Commission when it receives a mine-permit application.

Before the change, the DEP relied on the mining company's applying for a permit to contact the Historical and Museum Commission and determine whether any historic properties exist in the proposed footprint of the longwall mine.

A series of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette articles in November highlighted the damage and destruction caused in Washington and Greene counties when historic houses, farms and barns, some more than 200 years old and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, were undermined.

The series found that hundreds of structures that meet certain historic criteria but that are not nationally listed or afforded protections are in the path of future longwall mining.

"We've set up a direct line of communication with the PHMC so it doesn't have to wait for the mining operator to make contact about reviewing a permit area," said Karl Lasher, a DEP spokesman. "It can contact us directly about specific historic properties."

Lasher said the DEP planned to review the past five years of longwall mining activity to assess its effects on both historic buildings and newer structures.

The study should be completed in the fall.

"We want to take a pretty hard look at the effects of longwall mining on all surface structures, including the types of damage and the effectiveness of repairs," Lasher said.

Two earlier state reports, released in 1999 and 2002, on the effectiveness of Act 54 and the effects of longwall mining found minimal long-term damage and little effect on property values.

Coalfield residents and environmental activists panned both reports as incomplete and misleading.

Beverly Braverman, chairwoman of the Tri-State Citizens Mining Network, said all the regulatory changes and study findings wouldn't be worth the time it takes to read them unless the Rendell administration is willing to deny or revise mining permits that could lead to damage to homes and waterways.

"If mining is proposed under a historic home and subsidence damage is predicted, will the DEP deny the permit or require that it be reconfigured?" Braverman said. "If springs and intermittent streams which feed most of our perennial waterways are degraded or destroyed by longwall mining, will the state stop the mining in those areas?

"Unless the DEP is willing to take the next step and change the end result, it shouldn't even bother with the study and all the changes."