Tag: mines

Mining the Minerals That Power Your Gadgets

  • Molycorp's rare-earth mining pit in Mountain Pass, California. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:

Transcript

Politicians like to show off pictures of wind turbines, hybrid cars, and other green hi-tech.
The idea is to get more of that in America, and maybe even make more of it here. Shawn
Allee found there’s a chance all of this could be complicated by the supply of key green-
tech ingredients:

I don’t know about you, but there’re a whole bunch of minerals I completely ignored in
high school chemistry.

Jack Lifton knows them by heart.

“… lanthenum, serium, neodymium…”

Lifton’s a market expert on these so-called ‘rare-earth’ minerals. And he says, even if you
haven’t heard of them, you might have them – even in your pocket.

“Without rare earths, we probably would not have portable computers and you
certainly wouldn’t have display screens today on anything – television or computer,
iPod, or iPhone, whatever.”

Rare earths make electronics light and they don’t need much power: just what wind
turbines and electric hybrid cars need.

There’s a problem in the rare-earth market, though. China’s the big supplier, but Lifton
says it might keep it’s rare-earth supplies for itself.

“In the next three or four years, you cannot make a device with a rare earth unless
it’s made in China and then the Chinese have made it very clear that their priorities
are to manufacture goods for their own consumer economy and keep the Chinese
employed.”

So, is the US gonna be left dry when it comes to green high tech? Well, there is a rare
earth mine in America, but it’s had some environmental problems.

The mine is trying to turn that around now.

Honan: “On the left is the overburden stock pile. Once you’ve seen one of those,
you’ve seen them all.”

Allee: “Big pile of rocks.”

Honan: “Big pile of rock.”

Mine manager Scott Honan’s driving me around the top of a mine in the middle of the
California desert.

He manages the mine for Molycorp. Honan’s showing me the mine’s waste water
ponds.

Honan: “Those two are fresh water.”

Allee: “Basically, you’re trying to recycle as much of this water as you can. Why is
that?”

Honan: “We have to confine all of our water activities on the site. We have to be
very efficient when we use water, we can’t afford to waste it.”

Gotta admit, this is not very sexy stuff, but Molycorp is crossing its fingers that
expensive water recycling and treatment investments pay off.

Molycorp uses water to process the rare-earth ore, and back in the 90s, the mining and
processing stopped for a while due to waste water leaks.

It’s desert, after all – and regulators didn’t want what little water there is contaminated by
a slurry of salts and mining byproducts.

Allee: “So where’re we heading, here?”

Honan: “The pit.”

Allee: “Is that what everyone calls it? ‘The Pit?’”

Honan: “Yeah. It’s about 55 acres if you look at the perimeter. From the top of the
high wall over there to the bottom, it’s about 500 feet.”

Honan says Molycorp will expand the mine in a few years – just in time for when China
might stop exporting rare-earths.

The company might be jumping a tad – regulators might clamp down on the operation if
Molycorp repeats some of its past water pollution mistakes.

Still…

“I think a lot of us at the mine have a big stake in the success of this operation going
forward. A lot of us feel it’s important for our country. What we produce here is
going to drive a lot of this energy efficient technology that people are anxious about.
It’s cool to be a part of that.”

And for Honan, what’s even cooler is that someone’s talking about building a wind farm
not too far from his mine.

Honan says it’d be awefully nice if his rare-earths are in those turbines.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Government Looks to Clean Up Coal

  • Energy Secretary Steven Chu says coal will have to be a part of the energy mix in the future, so the government is committing money to clean it up. (Photo courtesy of the USDOE)

President Obama’s Energy Secretary is talking about building a facility to find ways to burn coal more cleanly. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

President Obama’s Energy Secretary is talking about building a facility to find ways to burn coal more cleanly. Lester Graham reports:

Burning coal pollutes – acid rain, toxic mercury, soot. And lately the big concern – carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas contributing to global warming.

The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu told Members of Congress, despite the concerns about pollution, we still depend on coal for half of our electricity.

“So, it’s very important that we develop the technology that captures and also that safely sequesters carbon from coal plants.”

The technology does not exist today.

Chu says three-point-four-billion dollars in government stimulus money is now available to find a way to clean up coal.

An experimental plant called Futuregen was supposed to find ways to burn coal more cleanly and do something about carbon dioxide emissions. But the Bush administration killed funding.

Secretary Chu says the Obama administration is now negotiating with Futuregen partners again.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Mountaintop Removal Continues

  • In his last days, President Bush changed rules that made it easier to blow off the tops of mountains to mine for coal. (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)

The Obama Administration has
approved handing out as many
as 42 new permits to mining
companies for mountaintop
removal coal mining. Lester
Graham reports a lot of people
expected the Environmental
Protection Agency to block
new mountaintop removal mining
in Appalachia:

Transcript

The Obama Administration has
approved handing out as many
as 42 new permits to mining
companies for mountaintop
removal coal mining. Lester
Graham reports a lot of people
expected the Environmental
Protection Agency to block
new mountaintop removal mining
in Appalachia:

Environmentalists say this is the most environmentally destructive kind of coal mining there is. It blows off the tops of mountains, fills in valleys, pollutes creeks and water supplies.

But the EPA does not have the authority to block it with no reason. The agency has to follow the permitting process in place.

Oliver Bernstein is with the environmental group the Sierra Club.

“They are operating under a fundamentally flawed legal framework around mountaintop removal and so the Obama Administration will need to take the bold steps to enact the rule-makings that will help to end this process completely.”

Environmentalists are calling for the White House Council on Environmental Quality to step in and do whatever is necessary to stop the mountaintop removal coal mining.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Mountaintop Mining (Part Two)

  • Gary Anderson in Front of Coal River Mountain (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)

Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:

Transcript

Mountaintop removal coal mining blows off the tops of mountains to get to a thin layer of coal. Environmentalists say there’s a better way to extract energy from mountain tops. They want to put up wind turbines. Sandra Sleight-Brennan reports they believe it will mean more energy in the long term and less environmental destruction:

Coal River Mountain is one of the last in Raleigh County West Virginia, and it’s next in line for mountaintop removal mining. A local group, the Coal River Wind Project, wants to build a wind farm along the mountain’s ridges.

Lorelei Scarbro has lived most of her life in the West Virginia coal fields. She’s the daughter, granddaughter and widow of coal miners. She knows her opposition to coal mining is seen by her neighbors as a direct threat to their jobs.

“It has been difficult. But people begin to understand that we’re not trying to take something away from them. You’re trying to add something to the area.”

She says mountaintop removal coal mining is short-term gain with long-term damage.

“The pace we’re going; it will be nothing left. I have a five-year-old granddaughter, and I can’t imagine what the air and water will be like when she is at childbearing age if we continue at this pace, because they’re covering headwaters streams, they’re starving off the water supply, they are destroying the air.”

And the next mountain in Scarbro’s home area to be mined is likely Coal River Mountain.

That’s why Coal River Wind Project commissioned a study to see if wind turbines would work. It turns out, the mountain has industrial strength wind. Enough to power 164 turbines. The project would create 200 local jobs during construction, and 40 permanent jobs. Rory McIlmoir is the project coordinator.

“The wind farm would generate an average of $1.74 million a year for the first 20 years. In year one it would generate over three million dollars. That’s the property tax. Blowing up the mountain for coal, on the other hand, would only bring $36,000 back to the county.”

That’s just the property taxes. The wind farm would make about $1.75 million dollars a year in revenue according to the study.

But the wind project has hit a stumbling block. A recent Bush administration rule change allows mining waste to be dumped into streams. That’s cleared the way for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to approve a permit for Massey Energy to do mountaintop removal mining here. If the mining occurs, the mountains would be lowered by several hundred feet. That would scrap the wind turbine project.

Activist Lorelei Scarbro thinks the wind project is the one thing that can stop the destruction of Coal River Mountain and others targeted for mountain top removal coal mining.

“It will save the mountains, it will save the wildlife and the hardwood forests and the vegetation and the water. It’s something that is desperately needed. Of course, our biggest obstacle is the fact that that the land is leased to the coal company.”

But the people who own the land say, if coal mining were stopped by the government, they’d consider the wind farm. The wind farm project coordinator, Rory McIlmoir, says they’d benefit for a lot longer if they did.

“Because, if they can make a few million each year from royalties then they’re interested in that. But, the choice right now is easily coal.”

The Coal River Wind Project has presented the study to West Virginia’s Governor. And 10,000 people signed a petition asking the state to think beyond coal and think about the future of energy, the economy, the mountains and the people.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sandra Sleight-Brennan.

Related Links

Dirt on the Coal Supply

  • This coal fired power plant sits at the corner of the SIU campus in Carbondale, Illinois. It has sulfur scrubbers and other technology that allow it to burn Illinois coal. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

Transcript

Presidential candidates John McCain
and Barack Obama are trying to sell us on a
clean energy future. And they’ve got a laundry
list of ideas, including conservation, solar
and wind power, and safer nuclear energy.
But they both want to tweak an old reliable
fuel, too. That would be American coal.
Shawn Allee looks at why McCain
and Obama are gung-ho on coal:

One reason McCain and Obama tout coal is they’re convinced we have plenty of it.

And they even agree on how to make that point.

McCain first.

McCain: “Our coal reserves are larger than Saudi Arabia’s supply of oil.”

Obama: “We’re the Saudi Arabia of coal, we got more coal than just about
everybody else.”

The Saudi Arabia of Coal.

That’s a sexy political metaphor – it sounds like coal’s just waiting to be scooped up.

Where do politicians get this idea?

“It is really based on data published by the Energy Information Administration.”

That’s Mike Mellish. He crunches coal projection numbers for that agency.

Politicians cite a government figure that we have 250 years worth of coal.

Mellish calls that a very rough estimate. Mellish says we get that number by estimating
how much coal we can get out of the ground economically.

Then, analysts compare that to how much we burn in factories and power plants right
now.

“So that’s really the basis of that statement of 250 years.”

Mellish says, if we use more coal, we’d literally burn through the supply faster.

There are critics who pounce on the idea we have plenty of coal. One of them’s Richard
Heinberg.

Heinberg studies energy for the Post-Carbon Institute, a green think tank. He says
politicians should not expect cheap coal for centuries.

“It assumes we can continue extracting this stuff out of the ground at constant rates
until, one day, it all just runs out.”

Heinberg says America does have lots of coal, but the amount under the ground isn’t the
only thing that counts.

“We tend to get the cheap, easy stuff first, then the production peaks and tails off
afterward.”

Heinberg predicts companies will have to invest money to keep finding new coal, and
that will raise coal prices – not in centuries – but in a few decades.

And Heinbergs says there’s another reason Obama and McCain shouldn’t have so much
faith in coal.

Coal plants put loads of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that makes the global
warming problem worse.

Both candidates want new technologies to put coal’s carbon emissions in the ground.

“But there are a lot of questions as to whether this is really going to work. The cost
of capturing all that carbon dioxide and moving it around and burying it will be
enormous and they will add to the cost of electricity we can make with coal.”

For Heinberg all this talk about the Saudi Arabia of coal, and that 250 year figure, it’s all
a big bet – and it could have a high cost if we’re wrong.

“If we’re going on the assumption that there’s plenty of coal out there for many
decades to come at current prices and we build infrastructure accordingly and then
a couple of decades from now, suddenly coal becomes much more expensive and
scarce we will have gotten ourselves in a very difficult place, sort of like we’d done
with oil.”

A lot of energy experts are more upbeat on coal than Heinberg.

They admit it’s not clear how much coal we have, but it’s a heck of a lot, and we know
how to get it.

They say they don’t blame Obama and McCain for giving clean coal a chance. It’s just
that we should have started testing it a decade ago.

Hmm, a decade ago?

Politicians don’t like to say we’ve missed the mark by a decade.

It’s no wonder we haven’t heard that on the campaign trail.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Coal: The Comeback Kid

  • Memorials to miners and past mining disasters dot the public spaces in rural parts of southern Illinois. This granite obelisk is in honor of mining near West Frankfort, which is in the heart of Illinois coal country, and close to several operating mines. In 1980, Illinois had 18,000 coal miners - now, the workforce is less than 4,000. Mining experts say new digging permits, new hires and new investment in Illinois coal signals a comeback, though it's unclear mining employment will reach former heights. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

America has a love-hate relationship
with coal. We burn coal to make half our
electricity, but we’re always fighting coal’s
air pollution. Some regulations decimated
the coal industry in one key state. Shawn
Allee reports miners there are caught
between a slow comeback and another round of
regulation:

Transcript

America has a love-hate relationship
with coal. We burn coal to make half our
electricity, but we’re always fighting coal’s
air pollution. Some regulations decimated
the coal industry in one key state. Shawn
Allee reports miners there are caught
between a slow comeback and another round of
regulation:

Coal was once king of the Southern Illinois economy, but no longer.

Nathan Threewitt lives in the area. He explains mining jobs evaporated.

Nathan Threewitt: “Eighteen years ago, give or take a couple, people went from
making a nice, upper-class living to nothing at all. Couldn’t find work, everybody
had to move.”

Shawn Allee: “Did you have that happen in your own family?”

Threewitt: “Yep. My dad’s got ten brothers and sisters. They went from, everybody
had clothes for school, everybody had food to eat, to, we don’t know how the hell it
was gonna happen.”

Even though Threewitt has a tough history with coal – he’s actually trying to get into the
industry.

In fact, I find him while he’s taking a break from a coal mining training class at Rend
Lake College.

I know at one time, classes like these had been canceled.

I track down instructor David Colombo to see what’s changed.

David Colombo: “This room is where I train miners for the most part.”

Shawn Allee: “What’s this?”

Colombo: “Ugh. This is a high voltage cable.”

Allee: “This is almost as thick as your arm.”

Colombo: “This isn’t the biggest of the bigs, either.”

Right now, only about four thousand Illinois miners need to be familiar with equipment
like this.

But Colombo gets calls from mining companies in the area who need trained workers.
So, his school’s growing to keep up.

Shawn Allee: “Why have faith that you’re going to need space for miners to be
trained?”

David Colombo: “With the mining permitting that’s going on, is the highest it’s been
in thirty years.”

Colombo: “Gentlemen in this afternoon’s class will start sinking a mine within the
next week or two. Right now it just employs ten people, but in a year from now, that
same mine’s probably going to employ a hundred and ten people.”

People use words like rebound and comeback when they describe the Illinois coal
industry. To understand what happened, you have to dial back a little.

“It was really the effect of Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.”

This is John Mead. He heads coal research at Southern Illinois University.

He says Illinois coal is blessed with high energy, but it’s cursed with sulfur that caused
acid rain and lung disease. The amendments aimed to cut that.

“Most utilities were able to switch to lower-sulfur coal, and that’s just what they
did.”

In fact, utilities opened new mines out West where the coal has less sulfur.

As for an Illinois coal turn-around?

“Today, sulfur and other materials in the coal can be controlled pretty effectively
with technology.”

So, now Illinois coal can better compete with lower-sulpher coal.

But here’s the thing. There could be another pollution clamp-down in the works.

You know about global-warming, right? Well, carbon dioxide’s a big cause, and coal
produces carbon dioxide in spades.

Scientists say cutting coal emissions would be a quick way to cut carbon.

So, miners in Southern Illinois get mixed messages – the country wants their coal again,
but maybe not for long.

Miner-to-be Nathan Threewitt says he’s thought this through.

Nathan Threewitt: “Well, if anybody looked at the economics of it, it’s gonna go
back. Coal used to be fifteen dollars a ton, it’s now 65 dollars a ton. You’re gonna
have these coal companies with coal left in the ground, it used to not be worth it to
get the money out, now it’s worth it.”

Shawn Allee: “You like those odds.”

Threewitt: “Yeah, I do. I’m rolling the dice on it.”

Threewitt figures, he’s got time to build a career from coal, while America makes up its
mind just how clean it wants its coal-fired electricity.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Inner City Church to Turn Water Into Heat?

Underground mines that were abandoned long ago are coming back to haunt the people and places above them. The voids and toxic metals left behind are posing new kinds of environmental challenges. But one church that was almost destroyed by a mine is now trying to turn it into a new kind of green resource. Katherine Fink reports:

Transcript

Underground mines that were abandoned long ago are coming back to haunt the people and places above them. The voids and toxic metals left behind are posing new kinds of environmental challenges. But one church that was almost destroyed by a mine is now trying to turn it into a new kind of green resource. Katherine Fink reports:


John Wesley A.M.E. Zion Church is on a street where cars don’t stop. Crime rates are high here. A faded sign with graffiti on it indicates where a convenience store used to be. Most of the church’s stained glass windows are either missing or covered with plywood. Pastor Calvin Cash says he remembers when things were different.


“This was once a thriving community. Stores, residential homes, businesses, the whole bit.”


Cash was first assigned to the church in 1996. It had been closed for a couple years. He found 18 inches of orange water in the basement. Moss was growing on the walls. Cash says church leaders had known about the water problem, but thought they had it under control.


“For years, they had sump pumps down in the basement. And when the water reaches a certain level, the sump pumps would come on, and carry it away.”


Meanwhile, state environmental workers were investigating another mysterious pool of water down the street. They suspected an old underground mine had filled with water and was starting to burst. One of those workers, Charles Johnson, noticed the church nearby.


“I left a card inside of the mailbox with my number on it and said if you are having any water problems in your basement, give me a call… so within two days, reverend Cash gave me a call and said, ‘you got to see this.'”


Mine-related issues are not new for the Pittsburgh area, which has one of the largest coal seams in the country. But water problems like these are becoming increasingly common as more and more mine voids fill to capacity. Johnson says in the church’s case, the need for a fix was urgent.


“The pressure on the building from the water; it was just a matter of time before the pressure would just collapse the whole building.”


Workers redirected the water into local storm sewers, relieving the pressure on the church.


Since then, Johnson says they’ve learned that mine water can actually be useful. Its constant 57-degree temperature makes it an attractive candidate for geothermal heating, which uses the earth’s natural warmth.


George Watzlaf with the National Energy Technology Laboratory has studied the idea.


“We could probably reduce their heating and cooling costs 60, 70, maybe 80 percent; the annual cost.”


Geothermal heat is becoming increasingly common as a lower-cost alternative to natural gas. Pipes filled with an antifreeze solution carry heat from deep in the earth up into buildings. Instead of using antifreeze, Watzlaf says he wants to build a system that draws in mine water:


“We’re trying to put together a small project where we price everything out to say, okay, all we need is $10,000 to go out and put in a small system somewhere, heat a shed or something like that. Just to, no pun intended, get our feet wet and just learn some things about some of the potential problems and how we can overcome those problems.”


Reverend Cash wants his church to be that demonstration project. Since learning about geothermal heat and its potential cost savings, Cash is convinced it could save his blighted neighborhood. He’s become a convert to all things green.


“We are responsible for this world, and God expects us to take care of it.”


On this night, Cash is holding a workshop at the church to help residents learn how to make their homes more energy efficient. Only one person came. Trays full of untouched sandwiches, fried chicken and cookies are being wrapped up for another day, but reverend Cash says he’s not discouraged. Sometimes, he says it takes something big to get people’s attention:


“One of the best proofs of it, when they were taking that water out of there, we had all that heavy equipment active out there, and if 10 cars went by, nine of then slowed down or stopped to see what was going on. And I think when we start building back this community, that curiosity will grow, and benefit us. So we’ll hold on and see.”


Cash is hoping to convince the state to have faith in geothermal heat. His church is applying for a grant this year.


For the Environment Report, I’m Katherine Fink.

Related Links

Universities to Tackle Hazardous Waste

22 colleges and universities around the country, including three in the Great Lakes region, will be sharing $22 million in grants to help address hazardous waste problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

Twenty-two colleges and universities around the country, including 3 in the Great Lakes region, will be sharing twenty two million dollars in grants to help address hazardous waste problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

The U-S EPA is providing the funding for a variety of research projects. Some of the funding will go toward finding better ways to dispose of hazardous waste, both in groundwater and soil. Other projects will focus on ways to find more effective and efficient ways to remove hazardous waste from sediment and at mining sites.


Nearly a third of the total funding will go to outreach programs to help people in low-income communities. The money will be used to help them take an active role in cleaning up waste sites, and to prevent the addition of any more problem areas in their communities.


Purdue University will head up the grant projects in the Midwest. Michigan State University and Central State University in Ohio will also be involved.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Shipping Season Docks Early

Much of the shipping on the Great Lakes is expected to end early this year. The economy has reduced freighter traffic and some ships are already docked for the winter. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:

Transcript

Much of the shipping on the Great Lakes is expected to end early this year. The economy has reduced freighter traffic and some ships are already docked for the winter. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The last couple of years, the shipping season has lasted longer. That’s because ships have been forced to carry lighter loads because of low water levels in the Great Lakes. And that meant more trips to carry the same tonnage. This year, though, some ships are tying up for the winter early. The slower economy has hit Great Lakes shipping, particularly those ships carrying raw materials for the steel industry. According to a report in the Toledo-Blade, iron ore mines have cut production and steel mills have produced significantly less steel. While only a handful of ships are berthed for the winter right now, a spokesperson for the Lake Carriers’ Association was quoted as saying they expect to see more early lay-ups. The shipping companies are hoping for an economic turnaround next year. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Toxin Eating Geraniums

Canadian scientists are applying for a patent on using geraniums to clean up
toxins. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports it’s
controversial because the patent would control the use of a naturally
occurring flower: