By Angela Hatton
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-901172.mp3
Uniontown, KY – Kentucky's coal consumption for electricity is second only to West Virginia's. While not as productive as eastern Kentucky, the coal mines of western Kentucky turn out millions of tons of coal a year. Angela Hatton has the history of how technology and regulations have shaped the area geologists call the Western Kentucky Coal Field.
Mike Guillerman was a coal miner for 18 years in Union County and wrote a memoir about his experience.
"The first time town can be a frightening experience. I know it was for me. I think I was 29 years of age when I finally took a job at Peabody Camp 2 Mine. And it was a completely new world. I had never been underground before," said Guillerman.
To reach the coal seam, he had to go 350 feet straight down. "And," he explained, "you're back in the mine, you could go for miles and miles, as the seams advance. You're just continuously advancing."
But Guillerman quickly got over his fear to the point where he felt at home in a coal mine. "There's always air on the tracks in the unit," he said, "You can feel the air movement. The temperature's great. So, uh, yes. I did like the coal mining environment. To me it was almost like an adventure each day."
Guillerman started in 1974. In the early 70s, coal mining was undergoing significant regulatory changes. Congress passed The Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 or the Coal Act for short. The legislation established sweeping regulation reform in coal mining and ended three decades of slipshod health and safety standards.
"The interest was more on producing coal than anything else," explained Dr. Rick Honaker, Chair of the Mining Engineering Program at the University of Kentucky. He said coal production burgeoned in the 1940s and 50s to keep up with the post-war industrial boom.
Honaker said, "It wasn't until all the accidents that occurred in the 50s and 60s that led to the regulations that led to the acts that established MSHA."
MSHA is the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. It started with the second major regulatory reform in 1977. This one called the Mine Act. Under the Coal and Mine Acts, regulatory agencies had more power to enforce safety standards. Mine officials credit these reforms with reducing the number of US mine deaths from 272 in 1970 to 38 in 2009. In western Kentucky, 129 miners died between 1970 and 2009, an average of fewer than four a year. It was during this period of reform that Mike Guillerman was promoted to face boss, the mining term for a section foreman.
"I was considered, and I have to say to myself, a good face boss. I got good evaluations, kept my job," he said.
As face boss, Guillerman's job was to keep his crew of 15 miners working safely. Guillerman says to keep coal dust down, the crew was required to keep their work area damp. He admits though, not everyone wanted to follow the rules.
"Black lung is a terrible thing," Guillerman said, "And I think a lot these miners, my age and older, lot of times, back in those days on these loaders, which is the machine that loaded coal, they didn't use water. They were equipped with water sprays, but a lot of guys didn't want to fool with them. And of course the company provided dust masks, but nobody wanted to wear those either, so there you go."
Guillerman's first crew was a conventional mining crew. They were like an assembly line, drilling, cutting, and blowing out pieces of coal with explosives, putting them on a beltline toward the surface, and bolting the roof up as they went along to prevent cave-ins. Then it was 1986, and Peabody Camp 2 got its first continuous miner.
Guillerman described the device. He said, "It's a rotating drum, approximately ten feet wide, and about three feet in diameter. It weighs around eighteen thousand pounds and it's imbedded with carbide tip bits. Just imagine a giant electric shaver, OK? And it just goes into the coal, just up and down, up and down, up and down."
The miner feeds the coal into a shuttle car positioned behind it. Guillerman said the new machine eliminated four of his crew members. "So to me," he said, "It took something away from the camaraderie of a unit of mining coal, but they were much safer and productive."
In 2003, the Annual Coal Report estimated that a miner in the region that includes west Kentucky could mine nearly six thousand pounds of coal per hour. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports coal mining productivity continues to increase by an average four percent each year. Coal is also a relatively stable market. According to a 2006 EIA article, price fluctuations in the market have been typically minor. The US demand for coal remains high, with nearly half of electrical companies receiving coal-fired power. Coal insiders say, though, that increased environmental regulation has cut into their bottom line.
Joe Zaluski, Executive Vice President of Engineering Consulting Services Incorporated, a firm that helps mining companies comply with federal and state regulations, said, "A mining permit in the early 70s, early 80s, might be five to ten inches thick. Uh, in recent transactions that I've looked at for people trying to buy companies. Uh, it is not uncommon to applications for mining permits for underground operations or surface operations that are five to eight feet thick per application."
Zaluski said in the last fifteen years, he has seen a major increase in the roadblocks between coal companies and mining permits. He said the typical application wait period used to be two to three months.
"Now, I would tell you if everything went perfectly for you to get a run of the mill permit up and running it might be 18 months to two to three years. And it take a pretty substantial company to stand still that long, and go through the process. And really and truly at the end of the day you really don't know if you're going to get all the permits you need to operate," Zaluski said.
As regulations have become more strict, the number of mines and mine companies have gone down. In the Interior Region, over half of active mines have closed since 1973. Zaluski said opening a mine in today's world costs tens of millions of dollars, and only companies with deep financial reserves can afford to make that investment.
"There's a significant amount of risk involved with this industry that really hadn't existed in the past," he explained.
Another piece of 70s legislation, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, forced mines to return land that had been strip mined to as close to its original condition as possible.
"They set up the abandoned mine land fund. This is to reclaim lands that were mined prior to the federal law. And that fund is funded by the current coal industry," Zaluski said. Underground mines pay fifteen cents per ton, and surface mines pay 35 cents per ton. Since 1978, western Kentucky has received nearly 77 million dollars for direct reclamation, and indirect services like consultant design and inspection, and water supply projects.
Zaluski said, "From realistically, 83 forward, the reclamation plans, the science that goes into it, what's going to be planted, when it's going to be planted, etcetera, etcetera, is much clearer and they do a much better job."
David Williams with the Kentucky Geological Survey added most of the area reclaimed in western Kentucky is pasture land. Williams said an untrained eye would likely never know coal had been extracted there.
Coal companies also pay 4.5% of the price per ton back to the counties where it's produced. In the last quarter that coal severance money netted Hopkins County alone $800,000 dollars. Richard Tanner is the Executive Director of Kentucky Coal Coalition, and he keeps track of the money. He said, "All states that are mining coal are going to run out of coal and there'll be no economic livelihood at all in these coal producing areas and they have used this as a tool not only to generate revenue but to encourage other economic development things in the county to offset the reduction in production of coal."
Last year, mining employed approximately 2,000 people in the Purchase, Pennyrile, and Green River regions. UK Mining Engineering Chair Dr. Rick Honaker says many of those are aging baby boomers. He said, "Retirement has become a big issue. We're facing an entire changeover of the workforce in the next five to ten years."
Honaker said continuous miner operators would use their experience to train their replacements, but the replacements are becoming fewer and farther between. "As a result," he said, "That's sort of revived a lot of the programs at the community colleges and junior colleges to establish themselves as a training mechanism for continuous miner operators." Honaker added the programs aren't designed as recruitment tools, but rather as continuing education for miners already on the job.
The future of mining in western Kentucky is positive, at least for those in the coal business. Between 2008 and 2009, coal mining dropped in the US by 8.5%. But in western Kentucky production increased 8.8%, and the number of regional mines grew from 21 to 23. Analysts credit clean coal technology with allowing more widespread use of western Kentucky coal, which is dirtier than Appalachian coal. The state of Kentucky has also released a seven point energy initiative that will increase the use of clean coal in the Bluegrass's power plants. Honaker says while in Appalachia, coal seams are getting thinner and harder to reach, most western Kentucky seams are still wide, and easily mineable.