The honor was given to its Matoaka West Virginia property during the final luncheon of the WVCA’s annual symposium held Friday afternoon.

Consol also receive a deep mine reclamation award in the south underground mining division. Its Itmann No. 3 near Itmann achieved exemplary performance in reclamation of a deep mine facility, the WVCA said.

Central Appalachia closed operations manager Phil Forshey accepted the awards on behalf of Consol.

To receive one of the annual reclamation awards, an operation must be nominated by its local state inspector. Earl Holt was the nominating inspector on both of the winning projects.

“We consider being a good steward of the environment as one of the most important obligations we have,” senior vice president of environmental strategy and regulatory affairs Katharine Fredriksen said.

“These two recognitions from our regulatory agency build on our record of reclamation and demonstrate Consol Energy's commitment to environmental stewardship and returning the land to productive use following the completion of mining.”

Consol said the Turkey Gap reclamation project involved planting native vegetation and tree species as well as the reclamation of coal fines from the impoundment area.

Under that effort, Consol signed a lease with a third-party operator to process and sell the coal fines from the impoundment area.

The operator was added to the permit and began recovery of the coal fines in the impoundment area in 2005. Over the next five years it shipped about 736,000 tons of coal from the property.

Reclamation of the impoundment area began in 2011 following the completion of the coal fines recovery and was completed in 2012.

Also, the refuse disposal facility was regraded and diversion ditches were installed.

Post-mining land use of unmanaged forestland also was implemented along with the planting of 7070 pounds of wildlife seed.

“I believe this is one of the ultimate coal industry reclamation and recycling projects," general manager of closed operations Gary Miller said.

“First, we recovered more than 1000 tons of steel from the site and then we went on to recover almost 750,000 tons of coal lost during the cleaning process at the operation.”

That recovered coal was used in both the thermal and metallurgical markets.