New Sewickley Pennsylvania Coal Mine

The Next Page / Are yinz from Pittsburg?

Richardson Clover had a problem, and a pretty good idea how to fix it.

As assistant hydrographer in the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Navigation in 1889, Lt. Clover was in charge of producing its maps. He'd noticed that many place names were spelled several different ways, especially in Alaska, where there were 20 indigenous languages.

He suggested to Thomas C. Mendenhall, superintendent of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, that the two offices work together on standardizing place names on government charts and other official publications.

Thus was born, in 1890, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. One of its first acts, on June 2, 1891, was to take away Pittsburgh's "H." On Dec. 23, President Benjamin Harrison made it official. Merry Christmas, Pittsburg!

Nothing personal, mind you. The board ruled that all cities and towns with name endings pronounced "berg" should be spelled "burg."

In the case of Pittsburgh, this was not as capricious as it seems. Numerous 19th-century local history books omitted the H. Not even the city's newspapers, including the Pittsburg Telegraph, the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette and the Pittsburg Press, could agree on the spelling.

And although Pittsburgh's original city charter of 1816 spelled it with an H, the printed act omitted it due to a printer's error. The board believed the U.S. Post Office arbitrarily added the H at a later date.

So in the eyes of the federal government, Pittsburgh was Pittsburg for almost 20 years, until the board, prodded by two prominent Pittsburghers, reversed itself 100 years ago this week, on July 19, 1911.

In fact, the H was there from the beginning, a reflection of the settlement's British, not German, roots. When Gen. John Forbes wrote in a letter to William Pitt the Elder, then leader of the House of Commons, that his troops had forced the French to abandon Fort Duquesne, he added, "I have used the freedom of giving your name to Fort Du Quesne." The letter was dated "Pittsbourgh. 27th November 1758."

Forbes would have pronounced it Pittsborough -- Pittsburra, actually, in his guid Scots tongue. Had Pittsburgh retained that pronunciation, the spelling still would have been changed in 1891. The board also decreed that all places ending in "borough" use the truncated, inelegant "boro."

Further, it eliminated hyphens, apostrophes and in at least one case, the space between two words: It declared all places named New Castle should be spelled Newcastle. Now that's capricious.

High Density Sludge Process Reduces AMD Volume ... - Coal Age

By Robert Zick

For more than 100 years the Pittsburgh seam has been extensively mined in Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, including Monongalia and Greene counties. This has resulted in thousands of acres of abandoned underground mine workings, most of which are flooded from infiltrated groundwater and precipitation.

The Sewickley seam is located approximately 80 to 120 feet above the Pittsburgh seam. Both seams dip to the west from their outcrop. Due to this westward dip, the mine pool elevation in the Pittsburgh seam mines, west of the current Sewickley seam active mining operations, is at a higher elevation than that of the Sewickley seam.

Morgantown Energy Producing Co., LLC (MEPCO), a bituminous coal mining and processing firm in the northern Appalachian coal mining region of Monongalia County, W.Va., and in Greene County, Pa., controls the Sewickley seam reserve overlying the subject mine pools. In order for MEPCO to mine the majority of its Sewickley seam reserves, the company must pump the water from the Shannopin, Humphrey, Pursglove and Osage mine pools in sufficient quantity to lower the water level to an elevation below that of the Sewickley seam.

To accomplish this, MEPCO currently operates two acid mine drainage (AMD) treatment facilities at the Shannopin Mine Steele Shaft site in Dunkard Township, Greene County, Pa. The original AMD treatment facility (Phase 1) began operation in 2004 and draws polluted underground water to the surface through a steel shaft that remains from earlier mining operations. The plant treats the water and then releases it into nearby Dunkard Creek at a rate of about 3,500 gallons per minute (gpm).

To further maximize water recovery and minimize the associated sludge volumes, N.A. Water Systems, a business unit of Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies North America, was selected to design and procure a 4,000 gpm AMD treatment plant at the site. The new AMD treatment plant (Phase 2) is using the innovative technology, DenseSludge™ to maximize water recovery and minimize sludge volumes. The net results of the process are improved process control (particularly pH control), reduced gypsum deposition (i.e. less scaling) on system components, and drier sludge of less volume. The water removed from the sludge can then be discharged instead of being reinjected into the mine pool for re-treatment. Conventional water treatment for metals removal and pH adjustment can produce significant volumes of sludge for disposal. DenseSludge technology, however, can reduce sludge generation by up to 90% and improves sludge management by creating a dewatered material containing up to 70% solids.

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