Residuals with a Rhythm in Pottsville

For most of this generation-long program of reclaiming active mine sites within Reading Anthracite’s some 40,000 acres of landholdings, American Green’s offer to the biosolids community has been as an open door, available very nearly year-round, even during periods of dire weather. “Customers” have included principal biosolids service companies, private wastewater operators, and municipal agencies within an affordable reach, as far away as a day’s truck drive. A recent new offering by American Green includes its own fleet of dump trailer trucks for biosolids hauling services, the company’s response to unpredictability of contractors. Over the past two decades, American Green has tested several “bright ideas,” including several years of deep row trenching with hybrid poplars, blending biosolids with papermill residuals, trial plots of a variety of hardwood tree plantings, plantings of bioenergy crops such as switchgrass, and operation of a livestock ranch. With today’s PFAS issues confronting the industry, thought has been given to raising crops on reclamation lands that would be suitable for conversion to PFAS absorbents. But the backbone of it all for American Green is traditional surface application at reclamation rates, building on its access to specialized heavy duty land moving equipment customarily used in mining.
 
American Green recognizes that the opportunity to beneficially recycle biosolids to disturbed mine sites will continue to be an attractive option to agricultural uses in an unsettled regulatory arena where the ultimate shape of PFAS and phosphorus restrictions remains uncertain. As Chronister said, a good rhythm is a great answer to today’s risks.
 
Mobile Class A Biosolids

“Every man needs a hobby,” modestly comments Greg Barchey of Denali Water Solutions. If any single person in Pennsylvania can be credited with keeping the flame alive for biosolids recycling on mine lands, it is Barchey, and he has a long history to prove it. As a college student in 1980, Barchey attended a community meeting of angry citizens opposing Modern Earthline’s hauling of Philadelphia stuff 250 miles west to bituminous coal mining sites in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Barchey showed up at the company’s local headquarters soon after and was pretty much offered a job on the spot. “I thought it was the coolest thing.” He figures that now, 45 years later, he has overseen over 10,000 acres of reclamation: “It has been a rollercoaster, of ups and downs, straight over and over, but the good that has been done on land that would have never been reclaimed is amazing, and it will last forever.” Along with a dependable field hand Philip Will, Barchey has been the one constant in a story line that involves a string of such companies as Spectraserve, Hydropress, Mobile Dredging, and then his own company Kyler Environmental. As Kyler’s singular biosolids entrepreneur, Barchey developed a mobile lime stabilization rig that could make a Class A lime stabilized product at a mine site location, and for this system he received a special PaDEP permit for its operations. The uniqueness of this operation had WeCare Organics buy out Kyler, provided he would stay on, and so he did, even when WeCare’s operation was folded into Denali Water.

The “hobby” part is Barchey’s signal that he is satisfied that his Denali “bosses,” specifically including such energetic young blood as Ryan Cherwinksi (see Ryan’s profile in the SPOTLIGHT on Young Professionals in the MABA Region in May 2025). Denali and Cherwinski are content with letting Barchey manage a “hobby” scale operation of approximately 500 acres of annual reclamation that comprises the current demand in this coal region. In addition to the work on active mine sites required for release of bonds benefitting the mining companies, Denali has also returned to sites at which conventional revegetation had failed, using an “agronomic” rate of biosolids, far lower than the full reclamation rate, to the benefit of the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation overseeing old mine sites. Yet, Barchey and Cherwinski agree that the “politics” have not gotten better from the early days of biosolids reclamation decades ago, although the mobile Class A stabilization system, with no skimping on the rate of alkaline materials used in the process, helps ensure a biosolids product with little of the pungent odor that had given offense in the past.
 
One attribute that joins Barchey and Cherwinski together is their joy seeing the results on the landscapes. Cherwinski enthuses: “it is a no-brainer, it is so visual; such a perfect fit, when you take a moonscape and turn it into a meadow, with a beneficially used product like biosolids, and with a 100 percent success rate.” His operators have seen a bear with a cub. He has witnessed a herd of elk wintering on the fields. Hunters have been won over by the dependable deer populations that migrate to the reclaimed fields at the edge of the woods. Local wastewater agencies will find Denali’s sites an easy outlet. As for public concerns, Cherwinski does not flinch from the upset residents who show up, remaining respectful of their concerns and urging them to witness the environmental benefits. “I try to show them it is about the soil. We need to rebuild the soil.”
 
Manufactured Topsoil in Vermont
 
“I wanted a job after I graduated,” Mary “Lulu” Cook, environmental engineer at Cold River Materials (CRM), casually explains about her “capstone” research as an intern. The research project was applying scientific principles to optimizing a manufactured topsoil (MFT) from a blend of superfine rock dust and organic residuals. The rock dust is drawn from a settling pond used during the production of aggregate materials through rock crushing and washing. Organic residuals are supplied by Resource Management Inc. (RMI), a residuals services company in New Hampshire, in the form of carbon-rich ash from biomass energy production and lime stabilized biosolids.
 
Cook’s major in environmental science at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire had brought her to intern work at CRM. She was introduced to a project begun by sustainability manager Juli Simons at VINCI Construction USA, part of a global construction enterprise, of which CRM is a subsidiary. Simons had formulated a soil blend she devised with RMI’s assistance to help establish a grass cover for dust suppression along internal roadways and work areas. The viability of MFT as a replacement for the customarily prescribed, but scarce, natural loam on construction projects was questioned. Simons needed proof that MFT was preferred to loam as a medium for dust suppression. She also saw potential for the use of MFT for reclamation and green space improvements if she could objectively demonstrate its performance. Cook saw this need for scientific proof as an opportunity to marry her work for CRM to the capstone requirements of Franklin Pierce University’s environmental science program, while showcasing her skills and interest as a potential employee.
 
Cook applied statistical and agronomic research rigor to her study. She set up four 1,000 square foot plots, to create 4 treatments: MFT/Kentucky bluegrass, MFT/conservation mix, traditional loam/Kentucky bluegrass, and traditional loam/conservation mix. The MFT was a one to five volumetric ratio of organic residuals and rock dust. Soil consultant Andrew Carpenter analyzed the MFT, showing that, though low in organic matter, it was high in pH due to the high lime in both the wood ash and the biosolids, also with ample micronutrients and sulfur. The native loam soil is typically borrowed from riparian zones of farm fields and has a pH of 5.5 to 6, and its use robs the environment of an important soil resource. The application rate of each soil type was 4 to 6 inches. During the growing season, the plots were watered to ensure 1 inch of water weekly. Over the growing season, Cook sampled all subplots for both the percentage of vegetative cover and for fresh weight biomass.

The results were conclusive. The MFT outperformed the loam soil. The strong results are expected to support approval of the material for use on construction projects by state departments of transportation. Cook’s study was submitted by CRM to VINCI Construction’s global environmental competition for demonstration of the circular economy. On VINCI’s Environment Day September 24th, the MFT project was one of nine awards. What is more, Lulu Cook graduated successfully and got her job, naturally.
 
Bringing Clean Air to Princeton, BC
 
“I returned to Princeton (British Columbia (BC)) last year, and you can’t even tell this was a mine 30 years ago -- that’s why I enjoy reclamation work,” Curtis Navratil explains. As a senior project manager for SYLVIS, the pre-eminent residuals firm in western Canada, Navratil manages several SYLVIS reclamation projects in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. But one of the earliest and most memorable projects in his career took place at Copper Mountain near Princeton, BC, 170 miles east of Vancouver.
 
Navratil started with Metro Vancouver (formerly the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD)) in 1994 just as the Similco Copper Mine, now named the Copper Mountain Mine, was gearing up to undertake reclamation of a settling pond known as the Grandby Tailings, a pond that nestled along the Town of Princeton. At the time, strong winds blowing off the ponds would put down a layer of dust daily throughout the town. Applying biosolids to the site created a vegetative cover that dramatically reduced dust emissions, improving local air quality. The project was so successful that the British Columbia Lung Association presented GRVD with an award for significantly improving air quality and public health by reducing dust. This award remains one of Navratil’s proudest achievements.
 

Today, Navratil applies his thirty years of reclamation expertise in using biosolids to several coal mine closures across western Canada. Biosolids from the City of Edmonton, Alberta, are being used to reclaim the 31,000-acre Highvale sub-bituminous coal mine, no longer supplying a coal-fired electric generator. Also in Alberta, the Sheerness Coal Mine, with 17,000 acres under reclamation, faces a topsoil deficiency in meeting reclamation standards across 1,600 acres. Biosolids compost from the City of Medicine Hat, supplemented with manure compost, are being supplied to help meet reclamation standards. The Boundary Dam lignite coal mine in Estevan, Saskatchewan, likewise has a shortage of topsoil, compelling this province’s first biosolids-based reclamation -- 960 acres starting in 2024 with biosolids from the City of Estevan. Over the past two decades, Navratil has also worked on a copper mine in Logan Lake, BC, a gold mine in Hedley, BC, and an aggregate mine in Sechelt, BC, along with several other coal mines.
 
Work has restarted at the Copper Mountain Mine, now under ownership by Hudbay Minerals, which is planning to double copper production. Elsewhere in western Canada SYLVIS blends biosolids with other residuals including wood waste and rock fines to make amendments to “kickstart” soil development. Most of the mineral mines in western Canada are conventional open pit operations, with truck and shovel activity, not dissimilar to Eastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite mining, but with unique challenges. The region’s arid climate limits water availability and leaves the sites vulnerable to wind-driven erosion of the tailings ponds and rock faces. In many cases, there is often insufficient soil or overburden to meet reclamation requirements – and the material that is available lacks fertility, organic matter, and structure.
 
For more than 35 years, SYLVIS has researched, recommended and implemented biosolids-based reclamation and restoration to address these challenges. Biosolids are a valuable tool to support soil development and sustain the ecosystem services a healthy soil provides. SYLVIS continues to refine reclamation strategies to establish vegetation and improve site aesthetics, ensuring that reclaimed mines not only meet regulatory standards but also deliver long-term environmental benefits.

For more information, contact Mary Baker at mbaker@mabiosolids.org or 845-901-7905.