1/13/2004
James Kinney Farmstead main house longwall mining damage pictures.

Diary Entry:

Hughes came out to take down cables. Started to fill in the trench west of the house without having an archaeologist present. Dr. Jeff Reichwein PhD (ODNR) was livid. He called David Bartsch and told him that an archaeologist had to be here during the back-filling. Bartsch was upset but Reichwein told him that he had been notified of the conditions of the permit to mine under this historic property a year ago. Bartsch was trying to call Dr. Soldo on his cell phone to have them bring out a certified archaeologist to monitor the backfill. Reichwein told me that the whole 57 acres of the James Kinney Farmstead was considered to be "an artifact field". Also, any cracks from the longwall in the fields were not to be filled in without an archaeologist from the state present. Dr. Reichwein called me at 1:45 PM and said he was in Bealsville on another project but would drop that and come right over. He arrived at about 3:00 PM, in fact he came rushing into my driveway with his state car. He observed the last of the filling in of the 14 foot deep trench west of the house. He mentioned to me that no archaeologist was on site as required in the conditions of the permit. This was a pre-determined plan by ODNR that OVCC agreed with to be allowed to mine under the historic property. He stated that the report by Soldo had been received AFTER mining had been done and had only arrived in his office this week. This report was "incomplete" and "poorly constructed" and was due before mining and subject to approval by himself and SHPO before going to the Chief of ODNR DMR for a final OK. I asked why an archaeologist was needed during back-filling and he said that it was because it was nearly impossible to use a track-hoe to take dirt from the pile and put it into the hole without scooping up some of the surrounding (as yet) undisturbed artifact field.(my yard). This disturbance makes it impossible for future investigation of that area. I remarked that I had never had the chance to use a metal detector in that area before they dug the trench. Not much chance of finding anything now, it is all mixed into a 14 foot hole. The Hughes operator was in a snit for being slowed up, he said they never had him stop for an archaeologist to watch him fill in a trench in Pennsylvania. I told him this was OHIO and it is done differently here. Needless to say, Dr. Reichwein was very unhappy with OVCC about this violation of the mitigation plan. QES's David Rucker brought bad news about the historic wells. Both dug wells are going down at a rate of a foot a day now, they will soon be empty. The drilled well at the house and barn are holding steady. None of these wells are being used now as OVCC has a "temporary" water supply piped into the house.

Floyd Simpson