![]() This place has changed for good Your economic theory said it would It’s hard for us to understand We can’t give up our jobs the way we should ... — “We Work the Black Seam,” Sting, 1985 Please take a few seconds to read the above lyrics. This melodic sonnet, written 24 years ago, summed up the end of an age. The song was relevant then and even more pertinent now. This will not be one of my more cheery columns. Coal needs to stay where it is — underground! Aside from its fallacious economic value, coal is simply not an economically viable fuel anymore. The hard facts are:
Then there is the unintentional burning of coal in its natural environment. In Centralia, Pennsylvania, the entire town was ordered to evacuate because of a fire that started in an open pit mine. It began in 1962 and continues to burn today. There are several fires which still burn as the result of open pit mining. Then there’s the issue of fly ash, which is a highly toxic concentration of the aforementioned toxic elements. Today it is mixed with cement as a filler and binder. Otherwise, it must be contained when it is buried. It is called fly ash for a reason, the ash literally flies away under the slightest disturbance. At modern coal fired plants electrostatic precipitators and (careful now) flocculation are used to reduce the air particulates during the incineration process. Well, also less known to many people is that these precipitators and flocculators occasionally get turned off at night when nobody can see the exhaust. This is illegal and when caught, the owners may lose their license and/or be heavily fined. It costs the company and its share holders approximately 10 percent of the plant’s profits to run these emissions systems. As for the ignored environmental issues, all one has to do is to take a trip to the Mt. Carmel region of Pennsylvania. The water in the streams is a disgusting yellow color with a putrid smell. The growth of the trees in the area is stunted. Once abundant wildlife has all but disappeared. The countryside has been laid to waste where the mines once were. Is it jobs or protecting a way of life? Back in the mid- to late-1800s coal was king. Large numbers of eastern European workers immigrated to Pennsylvania to mine coal. Not even one generation passed before many died from black lung disease, pneumonia, emphysema and TB. The industry died down, not because of regulation but because of new coal mining techniques (mountain topping), modern machinery, and cheap natural gas prices. (See interview of Bo Copley by Katie Couric.) Here is a curious note, the major employer in West Virginia is not the coal industry but the health care industry. This is, in part, because of the aforementioned health fallout from the coal industry. The health care industry employs over three times the number of people as compared to the coal industry. For a state that voted 3 to 1 for the current president, this is curious. If the planned cuts in health care go through, then the net number of jobs in West Virginia will be negative. The alternate energy comparison If instead of mountain topping for coal, wind turbines were placed in those devastated mountain tops more energy would have been produced and would continue to be produced for decades to come. The cost of the wind turbines would have been less than the cost of the current cleanup. The consumers would save on their power bills and the local consumers would be a lot healthier. That is where the true monetary value would be. It will be interesting to see how much regulation will be imposed on alternate energy not to mention the disparity in “research funding” for the fossil fuel industry.
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AuthorJames Bobreski is a process control engineer who has been in the field of electric power production for 43 years. His “Alternate Energy” column runs monthly. Archives
June 2020
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