Published: June 15, 2008 12:11 am      

Touring a coal mine

The Meridian Star takes a look inside the Ackerman lignite facility

"Clean coal" is a relatively new phrase. "Dirty coal" is a much more familiar utterance, and more in keeping with coal's bad reputation. The fossil fuel, which is removed from deep underground using various mining methods, has an ugly history and is associated with negative things like pollution and global warming, the coal miner's disease "black lung," workers trapped in tunnels miles underground, or dangerous abandoned surface mines left where a beautiful track of land once lay.

Like other fossil fuels, coal is ugly, kind of scary, and not very popular. But people in the coal mining and electric power industries are trying to change coal's image, and they're trying hard.

Recently, Mississippi Power escorted the Meridian Star on a tour of a surface coal mine in Ackerman, hoping to show off the reclamation efforts of the coal mining company and explaining, along the way, the new "clean coal" technology that Mississippi Power plans to implement in Kemper County, via a new power plant, over the next several years.

Pending approval from the state of Mississippi, Mississippi Power will build it's plant, which will generate electricity using coal in a complicated process called Transport Reactor Integrated Gasifier (TRIG) technology, in the small Kemper County community of Liberty, near DeKalb. A coal mine similar to Ackerman's Red Hills mine will also be built in Liberty, and will be owned by the same company, North American Coal (NAC).

In Ackerman, the mine itself looks like you might expect a coal mine to look: a gigantic, ugly, dirty gash, an ashy wound in the earth.

Riding into the gash inside of a gi-normous pick-up truck is an odd, but interesting, sensation.

Several hundred feet deep, and bearing numerous "seams" (layers) of a low-grade, high-moisture coal known as lignite, the mine is large enough to make trucks two or three stories high look like plastic tyco models. Until you get close to them, of course.

It isn't the kind of coal mine you see in the movies. It is an open to the air surface mine, which looks rather like a dirty, gray canyon; no tunnels to cave in, no guys with pick-axes and lighted helmets. The lignite is removed from between layers of dirt by huge machines - giant dump trucks with wheels the size of houses, huge digging machines called draglines with booms longer than a football field and shovels as large as a garage, electric shoveling machines that can transport tons of dirt or lignite at a time. Most of these machines are joystick operated, and the workers inside enjoy a climate-controlled environment. A far cry from the soot-covered, shovel-wielding coal miners portrayed on television, this is mining in comparative luxury.

The mine is navigated by ash roads, made from lignite burned at the neighboring power plant. These roads are extremely bumpy and dusty, but they get the job done. Most of the vehicles using the roads are too large to notice the bumps, anyway. The roads twist deep into the earth, and though it doesn't seem that far while riding in a truck, the surrounding earth has, until now, been buried for up to 60 million years.



Reclamation



During the mining process at Red Hills, NAC is, without a doubt, tearing the earth apart. But what makes the surface mines of today different than those of 30 or 40 years ago is that the law now requires that the mining companies put the earth back together once they've done tearing it to pieces.

The process of healing an environment turned completely topsy turvy by mining is called reclamation. Basically, it means that mining companies have to take all that dirt they dug up and refill the hole (usually a really, really big hole). Then they have to plant grass and trees, and make sure that all the streams and lakes and hills are put back, more or less, how they were before.

When driving through the reclaimed land at Red Hills, it's hard to believe it was ever in the same state as the deep gash in the ground immediately next to it, where mining is currently taking place.

Most amazingly, there is visible wildlife, especially birds, scurrying around all over it as if nothing ever happened. It does have kind of a "man-made" look - the shores of one pond are a little too straight, and the gray rocks used to prevent erosion are conspicuous and a little too carefully placed. But man-made ponds and man-placed rocks are common even in land that hasn't been violated to the point of being unrecognizable. Were there not mining going on so nearby, a layperson would never suspect that the reclaimed land had ever been torn apart and rearranged in such an extreme way.

According to Stan Theilling, a geologist for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, the Red Hills Mine has a very good reclamation record, leaving mined land in as good or better condition than that in which it was found before.

"I would categorize it as a little better," said Theilling, "before, this land was steep, eroded valleys." Now, it's a little less steep, erosion is negligent (NAC is required to take steps to prevent excessive erosion, and the land has been there long enough to erode very deeply anyway), and the soil has been loosened and aerated.

Because NAC leases the land that it mines rather than buying it, how close the reclaimed land comes to its original condition depends largely on the landowner. According to Theilling, about 96% of the land mined at Red Hills has been reclaimed as commercial timber land. Most of the landowners, it seems, would like to continue making money with their land after the mining is through. Even with landowner specifications taken into account, though, federal and state law both require that the land be reclaimed to its approximate original contour.

Red Hills has had five letters of violation from the state that are listed on the EPA's ECHO website, but according to Theilling, these were minor violations and were repaired immediately. The mine had several water violations that occurred during the adjustment of their waste management system, and which, Theilling said, were corrected within hours, and another violation having to do with the size of one of the roads inside the mine.

"They have had no impact on water quality," Theilling added, "This company has been very good. As soon as they get their grading (refilling) done they plant (grass)".

People from Mississippi Power and NAC are very proud of the deer, turkeys, quail, and other species of wildlife common to Mississippi that have returned to the reclaimed land, but Theilling said there hasn't been sufficient time to research the impact the mining has had on wildlife as a whole. Presently, though, the re-claimed land looks like a kind of dove-hunter's paradise, with NAC having planted grasses that attract the birds.

Theilling said there also hasn't been sufficient time to research how long it will take for re-planted trees to reach adulthood, although he did say that over the past four or five years some of the re-planted trees have grown as high 12 to 14 feet, and that he feels the soil is "normal to better than average" for supporting local plant life.

According to MDEQ geologist Mike Bograd, the proposed Kemper County lignite mine should be much less detrimental environmentally than the name "coal mine" makes it sound, "A lot of what you read and hear and see on TV about coal mining and problems associated with it come from Appalachian coal mining," he said. He added that Mississippi's terrain is so different than that of Appalachia that the problems with things like acid drainage and too-steep terrain that exist in places like West Virginia are not a factor here. He said the proposed mine will involve no blasting of any kind, saying that it's "a very much benign type of operation" similar to the sand and gravel mines that are scattered across the state, although operating under different regulations.

Anytime a hundreds of feet deep hole is dug and tons upon tons of earth are moved around, there is going to be an environmental impact of some kind, even if it's only temporary, but according to Theilling and Bograd, NAC has an excellent environmental track record, leaving the land it mines in as good a condition as can be done under the circumstances.



What is "clean coal"?



The term "clean coal", which may sound rather oxymoronic, actually has nothing to do with the coal itself. The lignite that Mississippi Power plans to use at its clean coal plant is just like any other lignite. It's the way they use the lignite to generate electricity that defies convention.

The proposed plant is still a coal-based plant and still creates pollution, but the amount of emissions created will, according to Mississippi Power, be significantly less than those of a conventional coal-fired power plant.

The way a conventional plant works is pretty simple. Coal is burned to heat water, which creates steam, which turns the turbines of a power generator.

With "clean coal", or Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), technology, coal is used to generate power in a completely different and infinitely more complicated way.

Mississippi Power's IGCC project coordinator Tommy Pinkerton attempted to put that complicated process into simplified terms, saying that the IGCC process works basically like this: Coal is put into a contraption called a gasifier, where it is heated in a low-oxygen atmosphere, converting it into a synthetic gas, or syngas, which is composed mostly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The syngas is then used to fire the turbine, working in a way similar to natural gas. This process also allows Mississippi Power to take undesirable materials like sulfur out of the fuel before burning it. The process also creates carbon dioxide that can be captured and stored, and which can be used to drive residual oil from spent oil wells.

Clean coal isn't an environmentalist's dream, but it's much less the environmentalist's nightmare than a conventional pulverized coal plant. IGCC technology doesn't really make coal clean, but it does make it cleaner. According to an article published by the Sierra Club earlier this year, the benefits of IGCC over conventional pulverized coal plants are numerous. IGCC "produces extremely low emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and particulates," the article read, "In contrast to the pulverized-coal technologies, the IGCC method uses less water, generates less solid waste, and can concentrate carbon dioxide emissions, making CO2 easier to capture and store."

For power companies, IGCC is a more practical option than building a nuclear power plant, for which is it much harder to gain permits, and which is more expensive and carries a stigma at least as bad as that of coal.

The proposed plant in Kemper County will use a specific kind of gasifier called a Transport Reactor Integrated Gasifier (TRIG). Currently, TRIG technology is being tested at a research facility in Wilsonville, Ala. by Mississippi Power's parent company, Southern Company, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root. The DOE did not return phone calls pertaining to the power plant.

TRIG, according to Pinkerton, is a more efficient version of clean coal. According to Mississippi Power, the TRIG plant in Kemper County will be the first commercial application of its kind. A similar plant in Orlando was planned by Southern Company, but fell through. Southern Company said the plans for the Orlando project were discontinued because "continuing uncertainty surrounding potential state regulations relating to greenhouse gas emissions"

Mississippi Power said it plans to build an a 600 megawatt plant, requiring a 1.8 billion dollar investment for both the plant and the mining operation. The project has been approved by the DOE and the IRS for $133 million in investment tax credits.



What's in store for Kemper County?



NAC estimates that the surface mine in Liberty, which will be similar to the one in Ackerman, though not as deep, will begin commercial operation in 2913. They estimate that the mine will bring over 100 permanent jobs to the area.

Mississippi Power plans to construct its power plant right next to the mine, and at around the same time. They estimate that the plant will create 90 to 100 permanent jobs.

Before beginning work on the project, both NAC and Mississippi Power must be issued permits from the state. Mississippi Power expects to apply for it's permit late this year, and NAC expects to begin the application process early next year.

NAC will be leasing land from Kemper County landowners, and will pay the landowners royalties on the lignite. Landowners will have use of their land except for the period of time in which the land is being mined or reclaimed, which Mississippi Power estimates will take an average of 10 to 12 years.

Kemper Lignite Project Timeline

Here's a look at the timeline Mississippi Power has made for the completion of the Kemper Lignite Project:

- Early 2008: Make financial, technological, and fuel assessments

Secure mining leases

- Late 2008: Seek approval from the Mississippi Public Service Commission

Complete environmental permits

- Late 2010: Begin construction

- 2012: Hire employees for lignite mine and generating plant

- 2013: Complete construction and begin commercial operation