Appalachia faces steep coal decline

[phantom power]

Business owners like Howard, politicians and miners in the hilly coalfields of Central Appalachia blame the industry decline on tougher regulation from the Obama administration. They aren’t as ready to talk about something a change in administrations cannot fix. The region’s thick, easy-to-reach seams of coal are running out, forcing many operators to shift to cheaper and more destructive mining methods that draw heavier environmental regulation.

Coal here is getting harder and costlier to dig — and the region, which includes southern West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, is headed for a huge collapse in coal production.

The U.S. Department of Energy projects that in a little more than three years, the amount of coal mined here will be just half of what it was in 2008. That’s a significant loss of a signature Appalachian industry, and the jobs that come with it.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/sep/28/appalachia-faces-steep-coal-decline/

[OKIsItJustMe]

1. Peak coal already?

Not soon enough I fear…

[stuntcat]

2. we'll just blow more mountaintops off

We'll take more and more desperate measures for energy. & mountaintop removal needs less people so that's a money maker too.. for the rich industry people, not the people who live there.

Too bad they can't go back 20 years and start investing in wind or solar or tidal or something, but oh well!! I mean who could have predicted this? :shrug:

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Maybe not that easy

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j0Og_1OUwhj_c3uBpZl-tGBfH-SQ?docId=287076de58ee48f898e4d46239af39a1

…

"The seams of coal that are left in this area are harder and harder to mine, and they're thinner and thinner and thinner," said Leonard Fleming, a retired Kentucky miner and union leader in Letcher County who worked in the industry for 32 years.

The thinner seams make it less cost-effective for a coal operator to send an army of miners underground, so surface mining with blasting and earth movers has often been the answer.

"I've heard of them getting little seams of coal as small as six inches," Fleming said.

…

Central Appalachia saw a boom in surface mining over the last decade, helped by industry-friendly regulation under former President Bush. Hiring in eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia doubled at surface mines over the last decade, yet overall production fell by 25 percent there in all mines under and above ground.

…

[Raster]

6. Damn you, Jimmy Carter!

You could have warned us! You could have pushed United States' energy policies in new directions! Oh, wait...

It's mourning in America...

[truedelphi]

4. It now is without much coal, and a lot of beautiful mountain tops

Are missing, as well.

And then there is the problem of the drinking water being polluted from all the mountain top drilling.

[slay]

5. Indeed

we need to get off coal NOW. hell we should have been working on alternative energy for the last 30 years. wonder what happened.. Reagan in 80, Reagan in 84, Bush Sr in 88, corporate Dem Clinton in 92 and 96, then Bush Jr from 2000-2008.. no wonder we are about 30 years behind where we should be in energy policy - as well as many other things. :(

[happyslug]

7. Coal has been mined in Western PA since at least 1790.

Map of Pennsylvania Coal, notice it is mostly West of the Applacians Mountains (through some parts are in the Mountains):


http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/maps/map11.pdf


Here is a 1997 map of the Pittsburgh Seam of Coal, considered the best coal for Steel making in the World. If you look at the map, about 1/2 of the area with Pittsburgh Seam coal was being mined, or had been mined out in 1997. Most of the seam in Red are played out. The Seam in Southern Allegheny County and the Monongahela valley was played out by the 1940s, Northern Washington County by the 1980s, most mining is in southern Washington County and in Greene County, right at the South-west Section of Pennsylvania.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-280/pittsburgh.pdf

USGS cite where I found that map:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-280/

[Kolesar]

8. They call it "Met Coal" or "Metallurgical Coal"

It is somehow more appropriate for steel production than power plant coal.