Tim Pfaff, 51, never thought much of the basketball-sized rocks that would occasionally fall from the hill behind his Fort Street home in Athens.
But when a 100-ton boulder dislodged itself from that same hill and destroyed the front of his home, it all made sense: Something wasn’t right with that hill.
His instincts were spot on. And, as it turns out, two words — “Athens Block” — inscribed in bricks on his front doorstep had always hinted at what contributed to the boulder that caused so much damage.
The very companies that branded their names on Athens’ iconic brick streets used a mining practice that has caused rockfalls in Athens County, state and local officials have said.
Brick-making in the county, which started in the mid-1880s, lasted only a few decades, said Ron Luce, director of the Athens County Historical Society & Museum, so those companies aren’t around to be sued.
But residents are still feeling the effects of practices lawmakers have since made illegal.
Shale mining, also referred to as clay mining, extracted resources to create bricks by removing large chunks of a hill, creating “high walls” that are unsupported, said Mark Bruce, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The high walls are responsible for the rocks that damaged Pfaff’s Fort Street property in March 2012, as well as those that damaged the property of Tabbitha Huddy, 30, from the Glouster-Trimble area, in April 2013, Bruce said.
Just a week before multiple colossal boulders fell on Huddy’s property — one of which left an SUV-sized hole in the kitchen and knocked the house about 3 feet off its foundation — the Huddy family was celebrating 2-year-old Abigail’s birthday in the backyard.
“Thank God it didn’t happen then,” Huddy said. “We have another huge rock ready to come down. It’s been storming and stuff and we’ve been keeping an eye on it. The whole hill is ready to collapse.”
The Huddys have not been able to return to their home since the accident and are living in a house leased until September, she said. After her lease is up, Huddy is unsure of what she will do.
Bruce was able to call companies out by name: the Athens Brick Company, which labels its blocks with “Athens Block,” created the high wall that caused the Fort Street rockslide; Trimble Brick Company, which labels its bricks “Trimble Block,” created the high wall behind Huddy’s property.
‘It was very surreal’
Tim Pfaff, who works as a museum designer, said that when his son Colin, 22, dialed 911 after the boulder fell — destroying utility lines and causing damage to cars as well as the Pfaff home — police had trouble believing it.
“I think at first they didn’t believe him. They were going to send a police car over to check it out.” Tim Pfaff said. “It was very surreal. The neighbors thought we were setting off fireworks.”
In the case of the Pfaff property, the state broke up and removed the boulder with a large track excavator with a “rock-breaker.”
Statewide, ODNR has helped to reclaim 34 sites where falling rocks have caused damage, but the department doesn’t track all rockfalls; some are handled exclusively by local governments and property owners.
City gets involved, too
Athens city officials responded to the Fort Street rockslide because even though the rock fell from and onto private property, debris was on a public road and a water line was broken, said Andy Stone, director of Athens Engineering and Public Works.
Kimes Lane, less than three miles south of Ohio University, is an area of concern for Stone’s department, even though there has not been a rockslide on that road in 10 years, he said.
Other areas of concern include parts of East State, Fort and Union streets between Gibson and State Road 682.
Though city officials are monitoring those areas, rockslides tend to be very difficult to predict.
“There’s no way to tell when these emergency events are going to occur,” said Tim Jackson, the manager of the Abandoned Mine Land’s emergency program that deals with falling rocks.
One fix: federal, state reforms
Companies that mine for shale must now restore the grade of any hill they’re working on. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 set up a system to fund a federal reclamation program for abandoned mines.
Before that law was passed, each state had its own mining regulations and sometimes companies would go to other states with less stringent standards, said Bruce, the ODNR spokesman.
Coal mines, not shale mines, fund the Abandoned Mine Land’s emergency program. Shale mines are grouped in with gravel, limestone and other industrial materials, which pay a tax to a statewide fund.
The total budget for the federal program is $4 million, and that money goes to repairing damage to mines that cause falling rocks and to abandoned coal mines that cause sinkholes and other damages.
“Abandoned Mining Land and (ODNR) work as hard as they can to make up for the mistakes our grandfathers made,” Bruce said. “We need help from landowners to keep an eye on something that doesn’t look right and let us know.”
ld311710@ohiou.edu
@LucasDaprile
