Export officials eager to showcase mining history via site cleanup, pedestrian walkway

Export officials are excited about the creation of a historical area showcasing the borough’s mining history.

A $139,000 state grant designated to bring the project to life will likely pay only for the engineering work, but it’s a start, said borough Councilwoman Melanie Litz.

“This has been a long time in the works,” Litz said of the project, the roots of which go back seven years to 2018, when Boy Scout Troy Florian proposed clearing decades of overgrowth away from the former Westmoreland Coal Company’s No. 2 mine entrance as his Eagle Scout project.

The entrance is located behind District Court 10-3-02 on Washington Avenue, and aspects of the project have required coordination with county officials as well as a search to put together the funding.

The long-term plan is to clean up the area around the entrances and install a small crushed limestone path that will connect to Madison Avenue, to guide pedestrian traffic around the mine, the Export business district and the nearby Westmoreland Heritage Trail.

“We’ll restore the facade to the way it looked when the scouts cleaned it up, and make it even nicer,” said Bob Kudlawiec, a senior project manager with Tetra Tech, an international mining consultant with offices in Monroeville and Green Tree. “We’ll also use poured concrete a foot thick to create a ventilation barrier at the mine entrance. I went in there with some equipment, and it’s a low-oxygen atmosphere, so you don’t want anyone going in there.”

Kudlawiec gave a presentation to Export council at its Feb. 4 meeting alongside Michael Trevits, president at Xtraction Science & Technology in South Park.

“We also anticipate a retaining wall separating the mine portals from the magistrate parking lot,” Trevits said.

Kudlawiec and Trevits did not provide a timeline for when engineering work would be completed. Litz said the next official step is for Westmoreland County commissioners to vote on the project at their March 6 meeting, since the limestone pathway would travel through its district court property.

“It’s a great project and I’m excited to be part of it,” Kudlawiec said.

Trevits commended borough officials.

“A lot of Allegheny County is undermined, and a lot of people out there know very little about that history,” said Trevits, a Plum native. “They don’t even find out about until a sinkhole opens up somewhere in their neighborhood. But this community is more connected to the mining history of the area than any other I’ve seen.”

The Westmoreland Coal Company began mining in Westmoreland County in 1854. The Export mine was the first major mine on the Turtle Creek Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the borough’s first mines opened in October 1892 to ship coal to Philadelphia and New York.