Top Stories of 2023

NORTHERN SCHUYLKILL – This year was a busy year in northern Schuylkill County.

Join us as we look back on the top stories we covered in the past year.

Sale of Shenandoah Water Authority closes, despite controversies

Aqua finds quarter of hydrants inoperable, begins replacement

The sale of the Municipal Authority of the Borough of Shenandoah (MABS), the water system covering Shenandoah and the surrounding area, closed in the summertime.

Borough council voted 6-1 in November, 2021 to sell the authority’s water system to Aqua Pennsylvania, of Bryn Mawr, for $12 Million. Aqua is one of the largest private water utilities in the country.

For much of 2023, the sale waded through regulatory red tape before the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission, and the Sentinel was the only local news source following every step of the sale.

The sale proved controversial, as several residents, including a former chair of the authority, spoke out against it.

Aqua said in filings with the PUC that MABS customers would not see an immediate increase rates, though a hike of up to 45% could be possible later.

“The acquisition will not have any immediate impact on the rates of either existing customers of Aqua or MABS customers,” Aqua said in their application for regulatory approval to acquire Shenandoah’s water authority. “The hypothetical impact on rates is outweighed by the recognized benefits of Aqua’s ownership including its expertise and ability to raise capital; the furtherance of consolidation/regionalization of water services; and the spreading of costs over a larger customer base.”

Aqua promised several million dollars in system improvements to the MABS system, which they said was losing the vast majority of treated water it produced through leaks or the fire hydrant system.

“[The water] comes from the dams, goes through the plant, treated, but it either doesn’t get to the intended user or they don’t know if it got to the intended user,” Lucca said. “That’s a considerable amount of water loss from a reservoir.”

At a public hearing in March, nearly a dozen community members spoke out against the sale, some noting that the sale price came in at about half of the appraised value of the system.

“Shenandoah’s getting taken [advantage of],” Mike Uholik said at the hearing. “Aqua knows what this land is worth, what the water dams are worth. That’s why they have lawyers.”

Aqua President Marc Lucca told the Sentinel in an in-depth interview in March that he believed “the market spoke” on the value of the system, as both bids Shenandoah received were around $10-12 Million.

“Had it gone the other way, had the purchase price been $12 Million and the fair market value been, say, $8 Million, MABS would’ve still gotten $12 Million,” Lucca said. “I think [the public] can feel comfortable knowing that the market said it was between $10-12 Million and they will get all of that at close.”

Another controversial point of the sale related to fire companies and water service at their firehouses. MABS did not bill any emergency services entity in its service territory and Aqua was requested to retain that practice until its next rate case.

The state Office of Consumer Advocate, whose website claims they represent the interests of Pennsylvania utility customers, opposed such service, claiming “it would have a cumulative impact on existing customers,” and says “existing customers and the other acquired customers will not benefit from the Fire Companies contributing revenues through the [Distribution System Improvement Charge] during that period.”

William C. Rhodes, counsel for Shenandoah, said in the borough’s filing in support of Aqua’s request that the companies would only receive free service for “a relatively short period of time.”

“Shenandoah asserts that continuing the long-standing practice of offering free water to the enumerated fire companies just until such time as meters can be installed and Aqua’s next rate case is approved does not constitute an ‘unreasonable preference or advantage,’” Rhodes wrote.

Rhodes said the companies “serve an essential public benefit to the residents of the Borough and customers of MABS.”

“They provide life-saving service to the general public; therefore, supplying them with the tools they require to provide this service is not unreasonable,” Rhodes wrote. “The fire companies rely on this practice and understood it would be preserved (at least in the short term) following the sale of the System to Aqua until such time as the Borough and the fire companies could agree on alternate arrangements.”

The PUC approved Aqua’s request to continue the practice.

A last-ditch effort to rescind the sale was levied at a council meeting in June, which failed 3-2.

Aqua officially took over the system in late July and began evaluating the fire hydrant system, finding that a quarter of the hydrants in the system were inoperable. Three hydrants were replaced immediately and a second round began earlier this month and is still ongoing.

In November, the borough discovered that prior MABS management had apparently mishandled $277k in security deposits

“While the sale of MABS has proven to be a very contentious matter within the borough, it did bring to light several previously unknown issues, including the large number of out of service/inoperable fire hydrants and the underfunding of the MABS employees’ pension fund,” Borough Manager Tony Sajone said at the time. “The most recent issue involves the numbers requests to both MABS and borough hall for the return of monies collected over the years by MABS, which were considered security deposits.”

An investigation into that matter is ongoing.

MABS as an board continues to exist as several matters are still being resolved, including the funding of pensions, as well as the conveyance of easements, among other items, and will be dissolved at a later date.

Arson Fires Rock Borough

Fires remain under investigation

Borough firefighters handled four suspicious or intentionally set structure fires in 2023, along with another arson fire on Dec. 30 of 2022, and the investigation remains ongoing for all.

Flames wrecked vacant buildings on South Grant, West Arlington, East Cherry, and Furnace Streets, as well as an abandoned colliery building behind Boyer’s Food Markets.

Three of the blazes happened in about a week.

On Dec. 30, 2022 firefighters tackled a blaze at a vacant double-block home at 325-327 West Arlington Street in an alleyway.

A few months later, flames enveloped the second floor of a vacant home at 4 South Grant Street around 1:45am March 2, blanketing the east end with smoke. The glow from the blaze could be seen several blocks away.

The home was vacant and no injuries were reported. The home was purchased late last year by a Lehigh County man.

Days later, on March 7, flames broke out in a double-block at 301 Furnace Street.

All three fires were ruled arson, and no injuries were reported.

On March 10, the last remnant of a colliery complex burned behind Boyer’s Food Markets.

Flames and smoke could be seen across the west end as a building behind the supermarket, a former maintenance building for the Rosa Breaker and West Shenandoah Colliery, was engulfed in flames.

The building had been abandoned for decades and was the site of a trash fire in 2017, among other small fires over the years.

That fire was ruled suspicious.

On May 4, a vacant home at 215 East Cherry Street caught fire as well.

Firefighters were first called to the home, which has been vacant for several years, around midnight.

When crews arrived, smoke could be seen venting from the eaves of the roof and firefighters made quick work of the blaze.

No injuries were reported and State Police Fire Marshal Joseph Hall determined that blaze was arson.

Authorities continue to investigate all five fires, and ask residents to be alert for suspicious activity. Residents are asked to report suspicious activity and squatters in vacant homes to local police.

Anyone with information on any of the fires should call the fire marshal of the State Police at Frackville at 570-874-5300 or the Schuylkill County Communications Center at 570-462-1991.

Dollar General burns, rebuild gets underway

Store rebuild nearly complete

Thick, black smoke blocked out the sun in Shenandoah’s Turkey Run section in April as the borough’s Dollar General location caught fire.

The blaze broke out on April 3 around 4pm, and firefighters remained at the scene until 8:30pm.

The store was a total loss and the Gold Star Highway was closed during the firefight.

No injuries were reported.

A cause has not been released for the fire, though a rebuild is progressing on the store.

The Tennessee-based company, which has not commented on the fire, demolished the wrecked store in August and began laying steel beams in mid-November. Today, the store is nearly finished.

In addition to the Turkey Run location, Dollar General also has locations in Ashland, Mahanoy City, Ringtown, Barnesville, Lavelle, Mount Carmel, and Humboldt in our area.

Girardville man gets life in prison for brutal ambush, killing of Shenandoah woman

A Girardville man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for the brutal ambush killing of his ex-girlfriend in Shenandoah in 2020.

Nathaniel Kimmel, 25, was sentenced to life in prison on Dec. 8 after a four day trial.

“Thank you, Lord,” a member of April Mahmod’s family said as Judge James P. Goodman rendered his verdict.

Kimmel waived his right to a jury trial, instead facing a bench trial, in which his fate would be determined by a judge instead.

“April Mahmod’s will to live far exceeded Nathaniel Kimmel’s will to kill,” District Attorney Michael O’Pake said in his closing arguments. “She fought back with strength she probably didn’t know she had.”

After the trial, O’Pake said, “This has been a long road. The victim’s family has been going through a lot for over three years now.”

“This is one of the more heinous acts that I’ve ever seen as a prosecutor and I’ve been doing this since 1992,” O’Pake said. “This is a guy that showed no remorse. He still denies that anything happened, the judge felt otherwise.”

“The justice system played its part and he’s going to be serving the rest of his life in prison which is what he deserves,” O’Pake added

At one point, the prosecution intended to seek the death penalty, but O’Pake said, after consultation with the family and the current state of the death penalty in Pennsylvania, with no executions since 1999, they decided to drop that pursuit.

O’Pake expressed appreciation for the police work and his staff in helping the case.

Before rendering his verdict, Goodman said the case showed “brutal evidence of 61 stab wounds,” and he examined the prerequisites for a first degree murder charge.

He addressed Kirwan’s assertion that there were two suspects. Kirwan’s assertion was based on the reliability of Rosselli’s testimony and the drastic difference in clothing descriptions between his and the deceased neighbor’s testimony.

Goodman said Rosselli experienced the incident in a short time and also misidentified the attack as punches, not stabs.

He also said video evidence placed Kimmel arriving at the scene, leaving the scene, and heading to the burn pit, saying it was clearly Kimmel’s truck shown on video, citing an aftermarket utility box.

Goodman said the evidence was “very strong” in the case, including the DNA evidence, of which he said Kimmel’s was found on Mahmod and at the scene.

He also addressed the letters Kimmel drafted, which he said “might as well say ‘Mom, I killed April’” here’s how to cover for me, and that only the killer would have information contained in them.

Regarding the clothing discrepancy, Goodman said of the burn pile, “we don’t know what was in the pile, we know what was left.”

Goodman rendered a guilty verdict for first degree murder, aggravated assault, burglary, criminal trespass, possession of instruments of a crime, simple assault, and reckless endangerment.

“He’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Goodman said, noting the law gives him no discretion in sentencing, mandating a life sentence.

Republicans Sweep Shenandoah Council

New majority takes over in new year

Shenandoah Borough Council will have a new majority beginning Tuesday night.

Republicans Joe Boris, Mike Zeckie Uholik, and Joe Gawrylik swept the three open seats on council in the November election.

Boris is an appointed incumbent while Uholik and Gawrylik are newcomers to council, and Boris was the top vote-getter with 364 votes.

The contested local races were top-of-mind at the polls in November, as Shenandoah had the most crowded borough council race in Schuylkill County, and the Sentinel was the only local news source covering it.

“Like the old councilman Joe Valento said, ‘I love Shenandoah,’” Uholik told the Sentinel. “[This is] ‘I love Shenandoah Part 2′”

Valento spearheaded a fundraising effort, dubbed “I Love Shenandoah” in late 1980s to help a near-bankrupt Shenandoah pay its bills.

“There’s a lot of things that need change and there’s things that we’ve seen, we heard the voters’ concerns, and we hope to make the town better than it ever was,” Boris said.

Both Boris and Uholik expressed thanks to the voters of Shenandoah.

“A win for me is a win for the voters of Shenandoah,” Uholik said.

All three have been outspoken opponents to the recent sale of the Municipal Authority of the Borough of Shenandoah.

Man breaks into, barricades self in tourist coal mine

Man made way deep into pitch black, muddy sector of mine

A tourist attraction in Carbon County became the site of an unusual police incident in May, as a man broke into the No. 9 Mine and stayed put for 12 hours.

Police said David Eisenhower made his way to the second level of the Anthracite mine-turned-tourist attraction — beyond where tours are led — of the multi-level deep mine.

That level, authorities said, is pitch black and full of mud and water. There are two levels beneath that, they said, both of which are wholly flooded.

Carbon County Detective Jack Soberick, who retired last year as police chief in Lansford, described Thursday’s incident as being in “uncharted territory” and “one for the record books.”

“I’ve been on the job 38 years,” Soberick said. “I talked with some of the [PA State Police Special Emergency Response Team] members, 14-year guys on the job, they’ve never had to do something like this.”

“A deep coal mine, this might be one for the record books, definitely in the top three,” Soberick added. “[SERT trains] for confined space operations, and thank God they do, because that’s what went on today.”

Eisenhower was taken to a waiting Lehighton Ambulance, covered in coal dirt, and transported to a local hospital.

Authorities had no information on why he broke into the mine and barricaded himself, but said he did have outstanding warrants.

Eisenhower is still pending trial in Carbon County Court.

Borough Police shoot, kill alleged intruder

PSP says man charged officers with machete

A man was killed in December in what is presumably one of the first officer-involved shootings in the long history of the Shenandoah Borough Police Department.

State Police said a borough police officer fired a single shot, killing 32-year-old Byron Scheuring, of Shenandoah.

Troopers said he had broken into a vacant home at 309 West Coal Street, wearing a mask and wielding a “big knife.”

Police were called and officers from Shenandoah and Mahanoy City cleared the home.

They found Scheuring under a bed, directed him to surrender, and when he refused, they went to move the bed.

At that point, officers said he lunged at them with what they described as a machete.

The officers rendered aid and called EMS, to no avail. Scheuring was pronounced dead at the scene by the Schuylkill County Coroner’s Office.

The officers were not injured, and the officer who fired the shot was not identified but is on administrative leave.

The Schuylkill County District Attorney’s Office is investigating and has not yet determined whether the shooting was justified.

Auroras dance across northern Schuylkill skies, dazzle onlookers

The Shenandoah area is not Fairbanks, Alaska, which may be a good thing in the dead of winter, but it also means we rarely see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.

This year, though, we had that rare opportunity, several times.

On at least four occasions, Sentinel cameras captured the northern lights dancing in the skies north of Ringtown.

At the Ringtown Valley Scenic View on April 24, two minutes from Shenandoah, several onlookers, one who came from as far away as Lancaster County, had stopped by to try to catch a glimpse of the northern lights, having seen Sentinel posts about the spectacle earlier in the night.

The Space Weather Prediction Center had forecast a geomagnetic storm, with a Kp Index near 8, for Sunday. The Kp index measures the strength of a geomagnetic storm on a scale of 0 to 9. Generally a Kp of 6 or above comes with the chance the aurora borealis being visible in Schuylkill County.

Around 9pm, and until cloud cover blocked the north sky, they were, and the Sentinel captured them, posting photos to social media.

Shaylee Malinowski, of Ashland, along with Carol and Ryan Twardzik, both of Frackville, and a man from Lancaster County saw those posts and came up to the scenic view around midnight to try to see the lights.

The northern lights at that point were visible to the naked eye, with pillars crossing the sky across the valley.

Carol Twardzik described the “dancing pillars of light emanating from behind the clouds.”

“Red and green flashes, shimmers of color in the sky,” Ryan Twardzik told the Sentinel. “Really cool.”

“It’s so exciting,” Carol Twardzik said of getting to see the auroras in Schuylkill County.

Both said they had never seen the auroras before.

“I’ve always wanted to, and now I didn’t have to travel very far to see it,” Carol Twardzik said.

Borough Police officer saves child’s life

Hysock enters burning Heights home, rescues 18-month-old

A Shenandoah Borough police officer’s heroic efforts saved the life of a young child in Shenandoah Heights in December.

Patrolman Mark Hysock responded to a reported house fire with entrapment in the village in neighboring West Mahanoy Township on Dec. 22.

He immediately made his way into the home, crawling through smoke into the third floor front bedroom, where the fire was, and where an 18-month-old child still was.

Hysock rescued the child, made his way to safety, and the child was transported by Shenandoah EMS to the Shenandoah helipad, where they were flown to a trauma center in Lehigh County.

The fire remains under investigation.

Hysock, in addition to being a borough police officer, has been a Shenandoah firefighter for about seven years.

Shen. Valley a plaintiff in lawsuit which overturned state education funding system

The school funding system in Pennsylvania is in flux after a lawsuit Shenandoah Valley joined as a plaintiff led to a ruling they called “long overdue.”

The Commonwealth Court ruled in February that the way the state funds is public schools is unconstitutional.

“It’s long overdue,” Dan Salvadore, board president, told the Sentinel days later. “We were underfunded for years, and people like you suffered from it, because we didn’t have the finances to have any specials and electives. I’m hoping the future students won’t be deprived of what you were deprived of, or my kids.” This reporter is a Shenandoah Valley High School graduate.

Expert testimony presented to the court in the lawsuit explained the difference in tax income between a poorer school district and an affluent school district, comparing Shenandoah Valley to the New Hope-Solebury School District in Bucks County.

Matthew G. Kelly, a Penn State assistant professor, explained to the court that, if both districts had a tax rate of 19.1 mills, the state average in 2018-19, New Hope would bring in six times more than Shenandoah Valley.

“Their mills are [worth] way more than ours,” Salvadore said.

Shenandoah Valley joined six school districts from across the Commonwealth in suing the state to address funding inequities allegedly caused by the state, saying the state is not investing enough, particularly in the lower-wealth school districts across the Commonwealth and, as a result, “are not meeting their constitutional duties.”

Commonwealth Court President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled in favor of Shenandoah Valley and its co-litigants, saying the Commonwealth has “not fulfilled their obligations to all children under the Education Clause in violation of the rights of Petitioners.”

She said education “is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution to all school-age children residing in the Commonwealth” and that the constitution imposes an obligation upon the Commonwealth “to provide a system of public education that does not discriminate against students based on the level of income and value of taxable property in their school districts.”

“Students who reside in school districts with low property values and incomes are deprived of the same opportunities and resources as students who reside in school districts with high property values and incomes,” the judge wrote. “The disparity among school districts with high property values and incomes and school districts with low property values and incomes is not justified by any compelling government interest nor is it rationally related to any legitimate government objective.”

“As a result of these disparities, Petitioners and students attending low-wealth districts are being deprived of equal protection of law,” Cohn Jubelirer concluded.

A local legislator is at the forefront of the state’s effort to overhaul the funding system and visited Shenandoah Valley in December.

Senator David G. Argall is chair of the Senate education committee and heard from SV administrators about the struggles they face.

Waite said at a school board meeting in March that “We will continue to be grateful for any additional funding to help close the gap between the haves and the have-nots. We’re not going to solve the funding problem overnight, but it must be solved.”

“We simply want to be able to provide a thorough and efficient education to the students in the Shenandoah Valley School District and all Pennsylvania students,” Waite said.

Revitalization of Pumping Station Dam gains traction

Ex-recreation area in East Union had been inactive since 2010

Efforts to revive and revitalize a once-popular recreation area owned by Shenandoah borough gained traction throughout 2023.

The Pumpy, as locals know it, was a once-legendary fishing and recreation area until its closure around 2010, when the Commonwealth Department of Environmental Protection ordered Shenandoah Borough to make repairs to the dam, which would’ve cost nearly $2 Million at the time.

Dave Sarno, of East Union Township, and a group of Ringtown Valley residents began mustering support for the revitalization efforts in the springtime.

He said they envision the Pumpy becoming a “Sweet Arrow [Lake] of the north.”

The group of volunteers told Shenandoah council in April that they “aim to bring the dam back to the source of joy that it always was.”

Aboard a Kubota tractor earlier that month, Rick Grabosky spent several hours at the Pumping Station Dam, pitching in towards the efforts to revive the once-legendary fishing spot in the valley.

For every hour he spent working, he told the Sentinel he spent a half hour talking to curious passersby on Pole Road who observed the progress at the facility.

The Pumpy Association was formed to organize the efforts and a Facebook group created for the effort had over 800 members as of April, many of whom shared memories of yesteryear at the dam.

Shenandoah Borough has owned the facility since the early 20th century when it was a primary source of drinking water for the borough-owned Shenandoah Public Water Works, a predecessor to the current Municipal Authority.

When MABS was formed in the 1940s, merging the three companies, the Pumping Station Dam became a recreational area under the purview of the the Shenandoah Pumping Station Project Booster Club, the Pumping Station Recreation Committee, and most recently, the Shenandoah Pumping Station Preservation Association.

A 1961 article in the Shenandoah Evening Herald described the facility as “among the finest trout waters in the state.”

Following a brush fire which burned much of the grove at the dam, East Union Township Supervisor Kyle Mummey approached the borough about a potential revitalization. An agreement was drafted but not executed, and East Union briefly considered taking the dam by eminent domain.

Since the spring, the effort has received support from local municipalities, including East Union Township, Shenandoah, Frackville and Mahanoy City, along with the Northern Schuylkill Council of Governments and the Mountain Council of Governments from the Hazleton area.

Print papers sold, slashed

Papers see dozens of staffers lost, buildings listed for sale, coverage diminished further

A few months after an unpopular decision to stop printing on Mondays, the Times Shamrock chain of daily newspapers including the Pottsville Republican-Herald and Hazleton Standard~Speaker, were sold to an investment firm notorious for deep cuts.

The papers were sold in August to Denver-based MediaNews Group, which is owned by investment firm Alden Global Capital and has a notorious reputation for buying and gutting local newspapers, including the Reading Eagle and Allentown Morning Call.

Some such newspapers have been referred to as “ghost newspapers,” as their news staff was whittled down to one, like the Pottstown Mercury.

At the time of the sale, the paper had not been at township meetings in West Mahanoy, Mahanoy, or Union Townships in at least a year.

MediaNews Group claimed at the time that they were offering employment “to virtually all of the employees.”

A month later, several dozen staffers across the chain left, including the Republican‘s publisher, a photographer, and a longtime staff writer. More have departed since, including another photographer, leaving the paper with one photographer remaining.

Dissenting members of the Lynett family lamented the sale of Times-Shamrock to MediaNews Group. The Lynetts formerly owned the Times-Shamrock papers, and three of the four voting shareholders approved the sale.

“Alden does not reflect the business principles we feel are consistent with the stewardship of any newspaper,” the dissenting members of the Lynett family said in a statement, referring to MediaNews Group’s parent company, Alden Global Capital. “Most family newspaper sale announcements bear some variation of stock language regarding the new owner’s ability to ‘assume the families’ stewardship,’ ‘continue to provide strong local reporting,’ and ‘maintain the legacy’ of the selling family. Sadly, we feel that none of that will be true in our case.”

In a Facebook post, Sharon Lynett said that northeastern Pennsylvania was losing more than 30 “talented and dedicated journalists today due to Times-Shamrock’s newspaper sale to Alden Capital hedge fund.”

MediaNews Group has a well-documented history of deep cuts at local news organizations both in Pennsylvania and nationally and has been described as a “vulture hedge fund.”

Until the Times-Shamrock purchase, the nearest MediaNews Group-owned daily paper was the Reading Eagle, which they purchased in 2019.

A month after that purchase, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported that the company planned to cut more than a third of the Eagle’s employees, according to a WARN notice filed with the state.

“Owned by New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital, MNG has gutted most of the 50 daily U.S. newspapers it owns, including those in the local cluster: The Mercury in Pottstown, Times Herald in Norristown, Daily Local News in West Chester, The Reporter in Lansdale, Delaware County Times, The Trentonian and a series of weeklies on the Main Line and in Montgomery County,” the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. “According to the NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia, membership at the four [MNG] unionized papers has fallen from about 300 to below 100 since 2012 and circulation has continued to spiral while the company realized a 30 percent profit margin from the local cluster in 2017. It has also closed the offices at three of those papers, with editorial staff largely working remotely.”

In California, MediaNews Group purchased the San Diego Union-Tribune and a cluster of community papers over the summer.

The Rancho Sante Fe Review reported that, within days of the purchase, company officials said cutbacks would be needed to “offset the slowdown in revenues as economic headwinds continue to impact the media industry” before offering buyouts and threatening layoffs if they weren’t taken.

“Staff was notified that the new owner is offering buyouts through Monday, July 17. If the company does not ‘reach a sufficient number of employees’ taking buyouts, ‘the company will lay off additional employees,’ the staff was informed. It wasn’t immediately known how deep the potential cuts could be.”

The chain also listed its buildings for sale in October, listing the Republican-Herald‘s downtown Pottsville headquarters for $450,000.

Multiple attached buildings and a 48-spot private parking lot are included in the sale and “most areas have updated office space, central air and heat” according to the listing with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.

The offices were built for the newspaper in the late 1800s and had previously been home to the paper’s entire operations, including the printing press. Signage had never been updated to reflect the merger with the Shenandoah Evening Herald.

This is not the first time MediaNews Group has put newspaper offices up for sale within a few months of purchase.

When the company purchased the Reading Eagle in May of 2019, their downtown Reading headquarters were listed for sale by October.

The company has also closed and/or sold the headquarters of other publications, such as the Pottstown Mercury and the Kutztown Patriot, instructing employees to either work from home or from a printing plant nowhere near their paper’s coverage area.

While they claim it is an industry trend, most print newspapers outside of the MediaNews Group chain continue to maintain physical offices, including the Easton Express-Times, Shamokin News-Item, and the Valley View Citizen-Standard.

Area Smothered by Wildfire Smoke

This year saw the Shenandoah Valley blanketed in wildfire smoke from near and far multiple times, leading to one of the first air quality alerts in recent memory for Schuylkill County.

First, on March 22, the area was blanketed from Gordon to Mahanoy City throughout the afternoon, and Fire Forester Jake Novitsky with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Bureau of Forestry was in the area to determine the cause.

The Schuylkill County Communications Center reported they had received at least 10 calls regarding the smoke condition, and presumed it was related to a prescribed fire the Pennsylvania Game Commission is conducting in Lebanon County.

That prescribed fire was on state game lands 30 miles from Shenandoah borough, which was seeing a significant smoke condition.

Novitsky said he determined there was no active wildfire in the area causing the smoke, and said it was most likely from the Lebanon County prescribed fire.

Then came the big one.

On June 6, extraordinarily thick smoke rolled into the Shenandoah Valley, smothering the area and making it difficult for even those with the healthiest of lungs to breath.

That smoke came from Canada, where over 400 fires were burning at the time, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. About 150 of those fires are in Quebec, and the smoke from those fires has drifted south into the northeastern United States and into our region.

The Mahanoy Area School District cancelled summer lunches at their outdoor locations because of the smoke condition, and the Schuylkill County Office of Emergency Management asked residents to only call 911 if they see fire, not just smoke.

The smoke persisted into June 7, leading to a Code Red air quality action day statewide.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Air Quality Index (AQI) provides standardized color codes for forecasting and reporting daily air quality. Green signifies good air quality; Yellow means moderate air quality; Orange represents unhealthy pollution levels for sensitive groups of people; and Red warns of unhealthy pollution levels for all.

An Air Quality Action Day is declared when the AQI is forecasted to be Code Orange or higher. On an Air Quality Action Day, young children, the elderly, and those with respiratory problems, such as asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis, are especially vulnerable to the effects of air pollution and should limit outdoor activities.

The PA Department of Environmental Protection typically only issues air quality alerts for the metropolitan areas, including on June 6, when Schuylkill County and points north were dealing with Code Orange air quality and a Code Orange was only issued for the Lehigh Valley, Berks County, Dauphin County and points south and east.

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