Appalachia faces steep coal decline

Business owners like Howard, politicians and miners in the hilly coalfields of Central Appalachia blame the industry decline on tougher regulation from the Obama administration. They aren’t as ready to talk about something a change in administrations cannot fix. The region’s thick, easy-to-reach seams of coal are running out, forcing many operators to shift to cheaper and more destructive mining methods that draw heavier environmental regulation.

Coal here is getting harder and costlier to dig — and the region, which includes southern West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, is headed for a huge collapse in coal production.

The U.S. Department of Energy projects that in a little more than three years, the amount of coal mined here will be just half of what it was in 2008. That’s a significant loss of a signature Appalachian industry, and the jobs that come with it.

http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2011/sep/28/appalachia-faces-steep-coal-decline/

Not soon enough I fear…

We'll take more and more desperate measures for energy. & mountaintop removal needs less people so that's a money maker too.. for the rich industry people, not the people who live there.

Too bad they can't go back 20 years and start investing in wind or solar or tidal or something, but oh well!! I mean who could have predicted this? :shrug:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j0Og_1OUwhj_c3uBpZl-tGBfH-SQ?docId=287076de58ee48f898e4d46239af39a1

You could have warned us! You could have pushed United States' energy policies in new directions! Oh, wait...

It's mourning in America...

Are missing, as well.

And then there is the problem of the drinking water being polluted from all the mountain top drilling.

we need to get off coal NOW. hell we should have been working on alternative energy for the last 30 years. wonder what happened.. Reagan in 80, Reagan in 84, Bush Sr in 88, corporate Dem Clinton in 92 and 96, then Bush Jr from 2000-2008.. no wonder we are about 30 years behind where we should be in energy policy - as well as many other things. :(

Map of Pennsylvania Coal, notice it is mostly West of the Applacians Mountains (through some parts are in the Mountains):


http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/maps/map11.pdf


Here is a 1997 map of the Pittsburgh Seam of Coal, considered the best coal for Steel making in the World. If you look at the map, about 1/2 of the area with Pittsburgh Seam coal was being mined, or had been mined out in 1997. Most of the seam in Red are played out. The Seam in Southern Allegheny County and the Monongahela valley was played out by the 1940s, Northern Washington County by the 1980s, most mining is in southern Washington County and in Greene County, right at the South-west Section of Pennsylvania.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-280/pittsburgh.pdf

USGS cite where I found that map:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1996/of96-280/

It is somehow more appropriate for steel production than power plant coal.