Hi all,

Recently, our county board sold off all the coal rights in the county to a company who plans to use longwall mining to extract the coal. I had never heard of that type of mining before recently, but apparently they take out complete sheets of coal by grinding away several feet in one pass and letting the ground settle behind it causing subsideance on the surface of up to 6 feet. The coal company is supposed to pay for any damage done to the foundations of bulding or roads, but i have a hard time believing that foundation problems can ever be truly repaired. Sorry for the long post but i was just wondering if any of you great folks out there had any experience with this sort of thing and can share any advice or experiences.

 

I know nothing but google:



http://www.uow.edu.au/eng/current/longwall/

If they did this under roads or buildings near the surface there is sure to be trouble.

 

No mining company should be allowed to collapse shafts under roads and buildings. It's bad for business. My advice would be to learn what you can from the papers and library, and don't miss the chance for the public comment period. Typically the info is buried in the newspaper in that small print that we all skip to get to the sports or comics.

The deeper the mine, the less the surface is disturbed. IF the coal is near the surface, open-pit mining is usually the method of extraction. Long-wall mining is getting more and more cost-competitive with open-pit, even for shallow ore. Our phosphate mine is open-pit, and we're moving up to 30' of overburden. But as the ore goes deeper, we're looking into long-wall technology.

We've got subsidence in our town due to all the coal shafts under the city that were dug in the 1800's and early 1900's. The outfits that dug them are all kaput, so the county and city have to pay to drill and pump grout under all these homes. 'Course there were no records of where all the shafts went, so if you live in the east side of town, your house could be over an old coal mine and you'd never know until your house started to shift. In Wyoming, there is coal everywhere - it's just a matter of how far down underground.

 

I definately agree that it shouldn't be allowed. When the county sold the coal rights there was hopes of bringing jobs and economic prosperity to the area. But the ammout of damage it will cause to the agriculture community will offset any economic gains. If the company isn't able to drain the area properly after the subsideance, alot of the ground will become un-farmable. It hurts the value of the land, which hurts the property taxes, which comes back to bite the county in the butt. According to the meeting they had last night, the only things they are not allowed to mine under are cities, churches, and schools. Everything else, including rail roads, cemetaries, and highways can be legally mined under. Our own property might be ok since i believe we still have the subsideance rights as our coal rights were sold off in 1907 (and the contract says nothing about subsideance or using longwall technology), but i won't guarantee anything right now. Once again sorry for the long post but the whole situation is very frusturating.