Canary in the Coal Creek Plaza

For days now, drivers who traveled near the Coal Creek Plaza in Saint Clair PA were desperate for a iced latte had to move to another DUNKIN DONUTS location..  UMA, the Japanese restaurant, turned its grills off.. VITO’s coal fired pizza went dark.. VERIZON turned its phones off.. GAME STOP is stopped.. No more pretzels.

The ten or so stores in the popular shopping and eating location have been shuttered all week.

Early in the week while heavy rains were falling, rumors were abounding on social media that the rocky and dirt mountain behind the shopping plaza was compromised.. was giving way.. the intensely heavy rains all summer coupled with the extremely dangerously heavy rains this week increased water levels in the creek flowing near the location.

While the initial rumors of the stone wall coming down didn’t appear to be completely true, something underneath was becoming an issue.

And now memorialized in John Usalis’ REPUBLICAN HERALD article, there are concerns that are keeping the plaza from reopening at this time:

he commerce center, developed by Brian Rich, president of Reading Anthracite, Pottsville, opened in 2001 with Walmart, with the other companies added over time.

Rich said the cause of the shutdown is being investigated.

“What’s happening is that the historic rainfall has impacted the quantity of water underneath the stores,” Rich said. “There is a concern about the mine pool rising, and I want to evaluate the situation and remediate it. There was such a tremendous amount of water. If you go around to the different mine sites, you can see the impact, such as Gilberton is flooding. The underground mine pool is at historic levels.”

Rich is working with the state Department of Environmental Protection on the problem.

“That’s really the extent of where we are right now,” Rich said. “We still don’t understand the complexity of what’s under this completely. Right now we’re trying to determine the integrity of the building. That integrity is important so that we’re not putting anybody in jeopardy. ”

A repair crew from the state Department of Transportation was on site Thursday to shore up the side at the edge of the highway and Mud Run Creek, which runs along the highway until it meets up with Mill Creek. The affected section of Route 61 is about a mile south of the entrance to the former Schuylkill Mall and the Interstate 81 exchange near Frackville.

“The creek washed it away on Monday,” PennDOT highway foreman Charle Cunningham said. “We’re just putting in big rock to hold it back and cover it up. We’ll have to do some guardrail work when we’re done.”

So now what?
The wait..
The see.

The businesses closed have been attempting to update their customers through social media.. a few hoped that they would be open by Wednesday. By Friday announcements were being made that this weekend–at least–would continue with no commerce in the commerce center.

The nearby Walmart? Still open.. Home Depot too.. And tractors are still being supplied as well..

Any conjecture at this point is unhealthy. The hope and prayer would be that the entire center becomes safe again for public perusal and that customers again can flow back into their favorite places.  It would be equally a shame if the location becomes completely unsafe, especially with the plans unveiled earlier this year to expand Coal Creek Plaza. The plan showed four proposed structures: a single unit at 4,735 square feet allocated for medical office use; a mixed-use three unit building at 11,984 square feet, which includes space for retail use and a hair salon; a single retail store measuring 10,352 square feet; and a two-unit building with 24,104 square feet for retail use. It will be built on approximately 6 acres. Parking was also indicated on the plan..

So what exactly is the Coal Creek Plaza built on?

The area was once the part of the Eagle Colliery, which then became the Herbine Colliery and later the St. Clair Coal Company. One of the largest train yards was once located in southern St. Clair along with a Roundhouse. The railroad bridge which once allowed trains carrying coal across Mill Creek is being used today to provide access from Terry Rich Boulevard to Aspen Dental.

Years ago, before modern environmental regulations, mine operators were not required to reclaim and restore mine lands to their original condition, or to remove hazardous and dangerous features once mining was finished. As a result, there are nearly one-quarter million acres of dangerous abandoned mine lands in Pennsylvania.

Abandoned coal mines present a variety of dangers including steep cliffs, abandoned buildings and equipment, water-filled pits, and unstable piles of waste coal and dirt..

Some more information presented by the American Geological Society sheds light on the backfill atop the former mine beneath the Coal Creek Plaza:

The historic coal-mining town of St. Clair is located at the foot of Broad Mountain on the north edge of the Pottsville Basin. Anthracite was first discovered on the south flank of the mountain in 1790. The first significant mining began in the early 1830s, about the time the town was laid out along Mill Creek, a south-flowing tributary of the Schuylkill River. Over the next 3/4 of a century, St. Clair grew into one of the important mining centers in the Southern field.

Geologically, St. Clair lies in the northern part of the complexly folded and faulted Minersville Synclinorium and is entirely underlain by the coal-bearing Pennsylvanian Llewellyn Formation. The most important coal beds mined are (descending order) the Diamond, Orchard, Primrose, Holmes, Mammoth, Skidmore, and Buck Mountain. Just south of St. Clair, the coals incline precipitously south into the basin, soon reaching uneconomical depths—a fact recognized as early as 1838 by H. D. Rogers of the First Pennsylvania Geological Survey (1836–58), but hotly contested by contemporary Pottsville boosters. In 1857, marine(?) invertebrate fossils were first discovered in the Southern field by the First Survey in “coal-slate” above the Orchard coal just inside the Ravensdale Tunnel near the Pine Forest Shaft, a mile east of St. Clair.

Between the mid-1820s and 1870s, numerous deep mines were established in the St. Clair area. Because of complex geology, incompetent mining methods, and numerous accidents, most of these mines operated intermittently. By the 1860s much of the settled area of St. Clair was undermined, with mine depths eventually reaching 500 ft or more. In the 1870s, the Reading & Philadelphia Coal & Iron Company (P&RC&I) acquired much of the area’s real estate, and the era of consolidation began. The most important later deep mines were the Wadesville Colliery of the R&PC&I Company in the west part of St. Clair, and the operations of the St. Clair Coal Company in the north part, beginning in 1885.

Most deep mining ended in the St. Clair–Wadesville area by the 1940s, though some continued until 1957. Strip mining began about 1900, with operations eventually developing at St. Clair, Pine Forest, and Wadesville (where activity continues)

And then it became WALMART in ’99!

Here is where the INTERNET takes over. Even before the advent of modern social media, an internet rumor floated around the Coal Region in 1999 through 2000.. a prediction, EVERYONE said, was made on Montel Williams. Rumor had it that Sylvia Browne, the late and not so great psychic, told Montel and a national audience that a Walmart being built on a coal mine somewhere in Pennsylvania would collapse. This was made, the legend goes, before the structure was built.

I distinctly recall being at the Walmart opening day.. and I also recall the feeling some had, including workers, of worry. They were watching the floor for cracks or any hint that the building was going to swallowed by the mine underneath.

And now, almost 20 years later, I cannot find any of these old internet references to the predictions.. Cannot find video.. Cannot even find old websites that hinted at the rumors. Sadly ICQ and AOL conversations, the main instrument of Chatting online at the time, didn’t save for the world to see.. these old memories just become memories sometimes. They say that nothing online ever vanishes. I wish that was true.

While the water levels are watched and integrity of structures are monitored, it has become my new mission to somehow mentally travel back in time and recall where and how this Sylvia Browne rumor came from..

Until then!? ….hope the water levels sink. And the ground stays in tact. And the rains stop.. and we can have coal fired pizza and hibachi again…