For decades, mammoth piles of waste coal deposited throughout the coalfields have been polluting waterways and killing fish because of that contaminated runoff.
Some groups, such as the Sierra Club, want to see these “gob piles” left alone, because they oppose burning coal to generate electricity and the associated mercury released in the process. But the damage to the regional watershed because of generations of runoff from these mammoth coal piles is considerable. Throughout the region, the sedimentation and acid mine drainage have killed many species of native fish and mussels.
Mining these gob piles and turning this previously considered waste coal into profit would mitigate those losses, by reducing water pollution as well as creating new mining jobs and generating more energy. When the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center – Dominion’s new 585-megawatt coal-fired power plant – opens in 2012, it will be possible to generate electricity from millions of tons of waste coal that was never marketable in the past.
And because the power plant will be able to burn gob, supporters believe it will be the most significant thing to come along in decades toward cleaning up Southwest Virginia’s polluted watersheds.
Walt Crickmer, who once ran Clinchfield Coal Co., is leading a new company focused on cleaning up those piles. His company – Gobco – is the largest of eight in Virginia that mine gob and sell the coal to be burned for electricity.
The Nature Conservancy supports efforts by companies that remove gob piles because it improves water quality. Brad Kreps, the Clinch Valley program director for the Nature Conservancy, has called the piles a “serious threat to water quality in Southwest Virginia.” And a short term fix – grading, adding drainage controls, covering the pile with soil and vegetation – is like “putting a Band-Aid over a deep wound,” Kreps told the Herald Courier's Debra McCown.
The lasting fix is to truly clean up the mess, and the only way to do that is for companies to profit by selling and using the coal.
We recognize the objections offered by the Sierra Club and similar groups. Burning coal to generate electricity does release mercury into the atmosphere. And coal plants are the largest human source of mercury emissions, estimated at about 40 percent according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
But the plant under construction in Wise County will meet the most stringent air-quality standards ever placed on a coal-fired power plant. For a plant built in our backyard, we want strict health standards.
Yet we also want to finally address the water pollution caused by thousands, if not millions, of tons of waste coal piled on the ground in that same backyard.
So we support companies that aim to remove these gob piles. They are helping to repair past environmental damage and turning the waste into cash. They deserve credit for their ingenuity.
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