SHANKSVILLE, PA. 9/11 site plagued by mine drainage

A trust fund could be set up to deal with drainage problems.
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- Planners of the Flight 93 National Memorial are trying to determine who will be responsible for long-term treatment of abandoned mine drainage to prevent pollution at the crash site, officials said.
"I would characterize this as one problem among many complex problems," Randy Cooley, who heads the Flight 93 Task Force's resource assessment committee, told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat for today's editions.
Drainage from abandoned mines had been a topic of debate in the area long before United Flight 93 crashed into a reclaimed strip mine near Shanksville on Sept. 11, 2001, killing all aboard. Conservationists have urged treatment and abatement of discharges into Lamberts Run and Grove Run, tributaries of the Stonycreek River.
Pollution found
In the mid-1990s, Friedens-based PBS Coals Inc. and Roxcoal agreed to enhance mine-drainage treatment, but state officials found pollution seeping into a sediment pond at the crash site last year and asked PBS Coals to step up treatment again.
"They didn't want to degrade what is essentially a cemetery," said Len Lichvar, the chairman of the Stonycreek-Conemaugh River Improvement Project.
PBS Coals, which has pumped out water in underground shafts, is doing an "extremely admirable job taking care of its responsibilities," Cooley said.
Phone conversations with passengers aboard Flight 93 indicated that they fought hijackers for control of the aircraft after learning of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Flight 93, which was en route from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when it made a sudden turn near Cleveland, was the only one of four hijacked planes that did not take a life on the ground.
Designing a memorial
The National Park Service is leading the 15-member advisory commission in designing a permanent memorial to be placed at the crash site, a field some 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. President Bush has ordered that the design be completed and delivered to the Interior Department and Congress by 2005.
No one knows yet whether mine drainage sites will fall within the memorial's boundaries, but if they do, memorial planners will have to find a permanent way to treat the drainage because it will likely be a persistent problem, Lichvar said.
Some have suggested that planners start a trust fund with annual investment returns that would pay for treatment.
Officials of PBS Coals declined to comment on the issue, saying they are bound by a confidentiality agreement with the Arlington, Va.-based Conservation Fund, a nonprofit group working to preserve land for the memorial.
In December, PBS Coals agreed to sell 800 acres to the fund and donated an additional 29 acres, including the part of the site where the plane crashed.