BANKS TOWNSHIP -- Concerns over a mine fire in Carbon County have the Department of Environmental Protection planning to meet with residents who live around the scene.
That fire is burning in Banks Township near the Luzerne County line.
Smoke billows up from a fire burning in the Jeanesville Mine near Beaver Meadows as a steady stream of water is sprayed on it.
For the residents who live right next to the fire, they say some days the smell of it burning is more than they can bear.
“When you get a down pressure or a rainy day, the stench is so bad you've got to close your windows in your house. It`s horrible,” said Joe Ziller.
“It smells like sulfur. How many times my neighbors as well as myself thought that either the furnace was bad so something else to find out it`s under the whole town. And it gets worse in the mornings,” said Wally Bobowski.
The state Department of Environmental Protection says the fire is burning at both an abandoned mine site and an actively mined site off Route 93 near the Luzerne County line.
Now DEP plans to hire a contractor to find out just how far this fire has spread.
“We`re going to hire a contractor to drill holes to determine the impact of the fire, how deep, how intense it is, all that will happen in the coming weeks. That`s one of the reasons we`re having the public meeting in the first place,” said Colleen Connolly with DEP.
DEP will hold a public meeting at the Tresckow Firehouse next week to update residents on the mine fine, as well as to answer any questions they may have.
DEP says it has already done air quality testing.
“We didn't see any dangerous levels, any dangerous gasses, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, people can still smell something like a sulfur-like odor. That`s going to happen,” said Connolly.
But residents say they've had enough. Some say the fire has been burning for at least six months, while other say it’s been burning even longer than that.
Either way, they say it`s time to put it out.
“It`s getting bad. It really is. It`s not going to mediate itself. That`s the final answer. It`s not going to cure itself,” said Ziller.
That public meeting with DEP will be held next Wednesday, May 20, at 6 p.m.