the allegheny front

Old Mines, Clean Energy

Reid R. Frazier

Air date: 05/20/2009

HOST: Abandoned mines are a black eye in Pennsylvania. They pose an environmental risk long after they are shut down. But some think these mines could become a dependable source of geothermal energy. The Allegheny Front's Reid Frazier reports on an inner-city church in Pittsburgh that's one of the first sites in the nation to turn polluted minewater into clean, renewable energy.

FRAZIER: JRR Tolkien may have had the hills of Western Pennsylvania in mind when he dreamed up the mythical mines of Moria in his hobbit's tale, the Lord of the Rings.
SARUMAN: Moria...you fear to go into those mines. The dwarves delved too greedily, and too deep...

FRAZIER: Just like in Tolkien's Moria, Pennsylvania's old coal mines harbor some evil spirits of their own. Water seeping out of old mines poisons about 5,000 miles of Pennsylvania's streams, and the state spends millions of dollars each year in cleanup. But the commonwealth, which has the most abandoned coal mines in the country, is looking at a way to turn this liability into an asset.

CASH: We thank you Oh God that you kept us through the night woke us to see this day. Now lord we ask you to bless all that we do today and make certain it gives glory to your name.

FRAZIER: The Rev. Calvin Cash is pastor of John Wesley AME Zion Church. The church was built in 1895. It sits near the top of Pittsburgh's historically black Hill District. 15 years ago, water from an old mine began pouring into the church basement. It nearly ruined the building. Chuck Williamson, a project manager for the church's non-profit arm, Wesley Charities, shows off the damage.

WILLIAMSON: At one time, you could just wring out everything, by the water being in the basement. everything was just getting moldy, and was crumbling.

FRAZIER: The state's Department of Environmental Protection eventually contained the minewater and piped it into the city's sewer system. That's when the church got a call from a US Department of Energy engineer named George Watzlaf. Watzlaf, who has since retired from the Department of Energy, specialized in cleaning up old coal mines. He and his colleagues would watch as water poured out of mines into collection ponds and that gave them an idea.

WATZLAF: I can remember being at sites on cold days and seeing steam rising up all this water being treated and thinking, that's a lot of heat there.

FRAZIER: Watzlaf's team at the DOE looked closely at mine water's potential as an energy source. They were surprised at what they found.

WATZLAF: Initially we did a white paper that looked at how widespread this tech could be applied, how many homes could be heated, how much water was available, and the economics, and at the time oil and gas prices were higher than they are now, and electric prices were a little bit lower than they are now, and the economics were unbelievable really, people went, why aren't people doing this?

FRAZIER: With Watzlaf's help, the church applied for and received a $100,000 grant from the state to implement a geothermal system that uses minewater for heating and cooling. Work on the project wrapped up this spring. In a secluded corner of a church classroom, Williamson stands next to the church's brand new geothermal heat pump.

WILLIAMSON: You see how quiet it is, the only noise you ever get from it is when it starts up and shuts down, but this hum is about what you're going to get.

FRAZIER: To the untrained eye, the unit looks a typical furnace. But there is one major difference - a coil filled with antifreeze runs between this machine and an underground basin adjacent to the church. That's where the mine water flows through before draining into the sewer system. Geothermal systems work in one of two ways, either by generating electricity from very hot water or air from the ground--think of a steam engine--or by using the steady temperature of groundwater to counteract the extremes of summer and winter. This is how the church unit runs. During winter, the minewater heats the coil up; during summer, it cools it off. The key is that the minewater stays at a constant temperature year round -- 55 degrees. It requires a small amount of electricity to run a fan, compressor, and pump, but the savings are undeniable, says Darwin Burtner, the geothermal contractor who installed the system.

BURTNER: For every dollar I spend on electricity to run those three components, I get about $5 of heat, so those other four dollars is coming for free, from the ground.

FRAZIER: With a new heating system, the congregation will be able to return to the church this month. Eventually, Wesley AME hopes to save about 75 percent on its heating and 50 percent on its cooling bills. There are challenges to working with minewater, which anyone with a nose can tell you.

FRAZIER: Smells like rotten eggs...
WATZLAF: Yeah. Hydrogen Sulfide.

FRAZIER: Watzlaf has taken me to a typical mine drainage site, in Upper St. Clair, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. A two-foot diameter pipe disgorges about 1,000 gallons of minewater per minute. The water goes into a small pond. The bottom of the pond is orange--bright orange, and yes, it really does smell like rotten eggs.

WATZLAF: All the iron is dissolved in water and as it gets aerated, the iron is oxidized and it precipitates as this orange material commonly called yellowboy. It's really orange -- I don't know why they called it yellowboy. But that's what old miners always called it.

FRAZIER: Yellowboy isn't the only byproduct in mine water. It can carry up to 26 heavy metals, and those can corrode pipes made of copper and iron. So to use mine water in a geothermal unit, you've got to make concessions, like keeping it away from expensive components, like a heat pump, and using pipes made from specialized materials. You've also got to deal with its environmental impacts. If you bring mine water to the surface, like the system used at the church, you need to either treat the mine water before releasing it into any waterways, or you need to pump it back into the mine. If you can clear these hurdles, geothermal proponents like John Lund of the Oregon Institute of Technology say the potential is large.

LUND: I think it's entirely feasible you could heat large complexes of buildings, probably best suited for industrial complexes school buildings, institutional buildings, not so much with individual homes because economics sort of, kill you a little bit.

FRAZIER: Back on the Hill, Rev. Cash hopes green energy projects like his will help the neighborhood recapture some of its former glory. Standing outside the church, he scans a street that's flanked on either side by vacant lots. It used to be much different here, he says.

CASH: They had a bakery shop, a barbecue stand, a bar, restaurants, everything was here -- this was a thriving community.

FRAZIER: There's enough minewater at the church to heat and cool several buildings, if the city decides to develop here. Who knows, Cash says. Some day there could be a Starbucks on the Hill, whose lattes steam with heat borrowed from an old mine.

For the Allegheny Front, this is Reid Frazier.