New mine portal proposed
Entry would shorten travel for Emery miners
By Donna Kemp Spangler
Deseret Morning News
Coal miners in Emery County are facing a 12-mile commute. And that's after they get to work.
In the canyons above Huntington, the coal-mining tunnels that worm their way into the rich coal deposits have expanded to the point that the tunneled area is now about the size of Salt Lake City. And miners find themselves riding as far as 12 miles underground to start their work day.
So Energy West, a subsidiary of PacifiCorp and operator of Deer Creek Mine, wants to build a portal in nearby Rilda Canyon, that would provide an entry to shorten the commute inside the mine.
"This would help reduce the travel underground," said Mary Ann Wright, associate director of mining for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas, and Mining (UDOGM), the agency overseeing the project, delegated by the Interior Department's Office of Surface Mining (OSM).
"It will take about five miles off underground trip time," added PacifiCorp spokesman Dave Eskelsen.
The portal, used only for mine entrance, would consist of a 10-acre concrete pad to allow for parking and a shower facility for the 225 miners working different shifts throughout the day. From there, workers would travel underground by small diesel trucks to load the coal onto a conveyer that takes it to the other end at the Deer Creek portal. There, it is loaded onto trucks and sent primarily to PacifiCorp's Huntington Power Plant.
Company officials say the portal is necessary, not only for worker safety but in order to extend the life of the mine for another 15 years. The mine produces about 4 million tons of coal annually, which is used to produce electricity at Carbon, Hunter, and Huntington power plants.
"The reserves available in the Deer Creek mining lease are approaching an end," Eskelsen said. The company acquired additional coal leases in nearby Mill Fork, allowing the company to access the coal from a different direction.
"It's an opportunity for the company to construct an access portal to better reach active mining areas," Eskelsen said. "The development of the Mill Fork lease is essential to keeping the power plant running."
But environmentalists are wary of the project, which is in the early stages of environmental analysis.
"The historical evidence is that these two lead agencies, OSM and UDOGM, are so closely tied to the oil and gas industry it's impossible for them to be objective about it," said Stephanie Tidwell, executive director of Utah Environmental Congress. "We're beginning to see in the Rocky Mountain West an explosion of oil, gas, and mining, a push by the Bush administration, and nobody is addressing the cumulative impacts."
Wright said a highly qualified team of scientists will conduct the environmental analysis.
Constructing a portal means having to divert 1,200 feet of Rilda Creek into a culvert, which potentially could disturb the "macro-invertebrates," tiny bugs that fish eat, at the headwaters of the creek. The facility also may impact the nesting cycles of the raptors that occupy the area, an issue that Wright said should be examined.
The project is a multi-agency effort that includes the Forest Service because the proposal is located within the Manti La-Sal National Forest. The Bureau of Land Management controls the mineral rights on federal lands.
Yet Tidwell fears the scientists most intimately familiar with endangered species and other wildlife at the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources would be left out of the loop. State regulators say there are plans to bring them in as consultants.
"Their expertise will be brought to the table," said Jim Kohler, minerals chief for the BLM's Utah Office. "There are various alternatives being looked at as part of the environmental process."
Wright agreed.
"We will look at innovative ways for stream restoration, like placing a geo-textile fabric that would save the current stream configuration," she said. "We'll have to look at raptor use at any and all critical times, like nesting, sitting on eggs, feeding activities — the life cycle of high-interest species. All of those considerations will be looked at."
The springs that flow into Rilda Canyon already are being siphoned off as drinking water for people living in Emery County. Old historic mines in the canyon have been reclaimed. And, the area is identified in the Manti La-Sal's forest plan as appropriate for mineral development, Kohler said. "A lot of land has previously been disturbed."
Eskelsen agreed. He said that 40 percent of the lands that would be impacted have already been disturbed by previous mining. After the company completes the mining operations, the earth would be restored to better than pre-mining conditions.
"We'll have a full restoration plan that will be agreed to before we start this," he said. "When we are finished there the company will have completely restored the area."
Tidwell isn't convinced.
"To have the permitting agencies in charge of environmental analysis is an obvious conflict of interest," she said. "Frankly, we don't believe they are qualified enough and we don't feel comfortable with them analyzing the impacts."
E-mail: donna@desnews.com
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U.S. judge
approves mining in forest
By Donna Kemp
Spangler
Deseret
Morning News
A federal judge has
ruled that President Bush's push for more energy exploration outweighs
environmental concerns over a coal mining proposal in the Manti-La Sal National
Forest.
In a much anticipated ruling, U.S. District
Judge Dee Benson on Wednesday lifted a temporary injunction that put the brakes
on coal mining in the Manti-La Sal forest after Utah Environmental Congress sued
over the project.
"The amount of coal lost would provide
electricity to 476,796 households or (1.5 million) residents for one year,"
Benson wrote in his 28-page decision. "This is especially adverse to the
public's interest in light of the president's energy policy that elevated the
public interest in energy resources."
Benson also denied
UEC's request to halt the project completely.
Conservationists were disappointed but not surprised and will appeal the
decision to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"The Utah courts have historically not been up to speed on environmental issues
and have been consistently overturned in the 10th Circuit," said Stephanie
Tidwell, executive director of UEC. "We come into this fully prepared to
appeal."
UEC sued the Bureau of Land Management for
approving Canyon Fuel's proposal to mine underneath a 143-acre portion of the
East Fork of Box Canyon Creek drainage of the Manti-La Sal forest. In October,
UEC won a temporary court injunction halting part of the project, but a big
portion of it already has begun and, the group asserts, has damaged a
10,000-year-old prehistoric structure.
UEC attorneys
argued that BLM, which controls the mineral rights on the Forest Service land,
should have conducted additional environmental studies and disregarded the
Forest Service's concerns about mining underneath a perennial stream, which
could cause shifting and cracking that would alter the flow of water.
Lawyers for the U.S. Attorney General's Office argued that BLM did
address the concerns and determined that additional environmental analysis
wasn't necessary.
Canyon Fuel attorneys focused their
arguments on the importance the project has on the local economy. About 27
percent of Emery County's tax base is a result of the mining
operations.
Benson sided with Canyon Fuel and
BLM.
"When weighing the above alleged financial losses
to the United States, state and local governments, not to mention Canyon Fuel,
that would result . . . against the speculative claims of environmental harm
alleged by UEC if the mining were permitted to go forward, the balance of the
harm weighs in favor of denying the permanent injunction," Benson ruled.
E-mail: donna@desnews.com
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