...Increasing coal business...western Pennsylvania

[Modelcar]

...Recently info of increasing soft coal activity in western Pennsylvania has been noticed....Friend in coal business indicated it will continue as oil prices increase and remain high...Windber and Shanksville operations possibly increasing. Anyone else hear of similar new activity in that area....?

[adrianspeeder]

That would be great.

Dad and I still drive up to the northern PA coal regions to get the hard black diamonds to heat the house. Three tons, whole winter of heat, 20mins a day of work, 120bucks total, hot coal fire... priceless.

Adrianspeeder

[Modelcar]

Adrian: How much Anthracite {sp?}, coal is still produced up in that area...is it still a major business activity....? I was not sure if mining of the "hard coal" was still currently being done.....

[GP40-2]

Most of the deep mines (600-1200 feet underground) in S.W. Pennsylvania are in the process of, or have sumitted plan to the state D.E.P., for HUGE expansions of mining the Pittsburgh Vein.

The Bailey Mine alone has now become the most productive coal mine in the U.S.

CONSOL is reportedly going to spend $ billions on the mine expansions, but with coal production from the Pittsburgh Vein at 18,000 tons coal/ acre, and the high BTU Pittsburgh coal going for something like $70/ton, it won't take long for them to turn a tidy profit.

I've also heard stories of older mines in the Upper Freeport Vein located east of Pittsburgh reopening, or planning to reopen soon.

[Modelcar]

...Yes, the increased demand for coal really will be great for western and S W Pennsylvania...{my original home area}, and really glad to see it. Good for transportation systems too....including the railroad systems, many still intact into the valleys near old...and newer {surface, "strip" mines}.....

[Anonymous]

Thanks to technological improvements and investments made by the utility industry; power plants can also burn the "dirtier" coal, which opens up a much wider market for coal buying.

[GP40-2]

The increase in mining doesn't come without problems, however.

The vast majority of mining in Southwestern PA is longwall, with only takes a few miners per shift to remove massive amounts of coal (the longwall machines are larger than a football field!) The increase in mining will only result in a few hundred new jobs.

There is also the topic of potential environmental damage done by the coal mining.

The increase in jobs will only be until the coal runs out, and at the rate the longwall machines extract coal, this may only be 20-30 years until all of western PA is mined out.

In PA, coal reserves are taxed seperately from the land they reside under. For many of the communities/ school districts in the coal fields, it is better for them that the coal stays underground. They have a steady tax revenue from the coal, but once it is mined, the revenue is gone!

This will have no effect on the affluent communities in central/northern Washington County. Most of them have been mined out anyway, and they have a growing tax base from new residental/shopping/office park development expanding from Pittsburgh. There is a large concern that the rural school districs in southern/western Washington County and south to Green county may be bankrupted from the coal removal. They are too far from center city Pittsburgh to experience much new development.

[Modelcar]

...There generally are twists to many possitive achievements and sometimes it still works out with possitive results.....So, lets hope the new business on this one does too.

[Murphy Siding]

Originally posted by GP40-2


The Bailey Mine alone has now become the most productive coal mine in the U.S.



[/quote

More produtive than the big mines in the Powder River Basin?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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