Category Archives: Coal Mining

The Bad Ole Days

11 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Climate Change, Coal Mining, Environment

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I remember driving I-80 across the southern end of Lake Michigan’s industrial corridor without car air conditioning. We rolled up the windows, closed the vents, and took as few breaths as possible. The 1970s air was so bad we couldn’t believe people lived in the area. Coal plants and steel plants darkened the sky and fouled the air with particles that coated everything.

The EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt used to be Oklahoma’s Attorney General and sued the EPA several times for the fossil fuel companies that put lots of money into his campaign chest and speeches. Now he is running his most hated agency and has the power to cut the regulations for his fossil fuel friends want. Under the guise of creating jobs, Pruitt is, has and will cut regulations on coal fired plants, steel mills, and oil refineries. The cuts will maybe save a few jobs in those industries while polluting the air and water the regulations had cleaned.

Coal fired plants scheduled to close because of the cost of emission controls may now stay open. The Navajo five-unit generation plant will now stay open making the air over the Grand Canyon Park stay hazy.

A few years ago we talked with the Rangers of the Cumberland Gap National History Park about the wooded “mountains” in and around the park. They said the tops would be cut off, dumped into the valleys, damming them up until they break, and flood the downstream homes with mud and acid…all of this for a few feet of coal about 50 feet below the top. Pruitt is turning the clock back on mountain topping, too.

Coal Miners Days Are Numbered

10 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Coal Mining, Global Warming, Uncategorized

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Trump did not invent the idea that the EPA is responsible for the loss of coal mining jobs but he played to their beliefs. People who are out of work and don’t have any other marketable skills want to blame somebody or something. Since I come from a family involved in coal and oil production, I understand the mentality of the miners. The owners tell their employees they are going to lose their jobs because the government is over-regulating mining and burning of coal.

Today my home area has one of the few mines left in southern Illinois. Most of the other mines operate like the Science and Industry Museum’s exhibit. The horizontal shafts are six to eight feet high and fifteen to twenty feed wide extending out more than a thousand feet with side shafts. It requires over 600 miners. This type of mining usually means the surface isn’t affected because the shaft ceiling is supported.

The mine in my home area uses a super long wall technique and operates with a third as many miners while producing more. The mine uses a machine that grinds off a 1,400 foot wide seam of coal while allowing the shaft behind the machine to collapse. The coal is transported from the front of the grinders back to where it is sent to the surface by conveyors. The grinding machine can go 3.5 miles before needing to start another shaft.

The sulfur content of the coal is almost as low as the Western Powder River Coal but it has trouble competing against gas. How are the Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia mines going to compete?