Crafton panel recommends tighter rules for mining, advances zoning draft toward council review

The Crafton Planning Commission on Tuesday voted to treat mining as a conditional use in the borough's draft zoning code and advanced the larger zoning rewrite for further steps toward borough council review.

The commission's action came after staff and the commission's legal consultant said an advocacy group had alerted the borough to an omission in the draft use table that could have left mining effectively unregulated. Mike Pascoe, the borough economic director, told the commission the draft now contains “two and a half, three pages of very strenuous regulations for mining,” shifting mining from a straight permitted use to conditional use with detailed standards.

The change matters because, as the commission heard, under the current code a property owner who secures a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) permit can begin mining operations via permitting; the amendment would require an additional borough conditional-use…