COEBURN, Va. – Besides water pollution, gob piles have another claim to fame: They’re the source of a road-surfacing material called “red dog” once used on mine roads, driveways and even public highways.
A reddish, slate-like material, red dog is essentially heat-treated shale – baked hard by the coal burning inside the piles.
Richard Davis, abandoned mine land projects coordinator for the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, remembers his family driveway being surfaced with red dog – and a public road in the town of Coeburn, where he was raised.
“I’d walk up and down the road and look for fossils in the red dog,” he said.
It’s no surprise it was commonly used, Davis said, because it cost nothing. To use the material for a road, people would simply go to the nearest pile and dig some out.
“The corporate landowners either didn’t care or didn’t know about it,” Davis said.
Michelle Earl, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation, said the state agency used red-dog in building roads until roughly the 1970s, “probably because it was economical at the time.”
It’s been so long, she said, that no one in VDOT’s Bristol District office, which serves Southwest Virginia, could remember any details about its use for state roads – only that it had been used in the past.
Earl said she believes VDOT stopped using red dog for state roads for reasons that “had to do with environmental concerns.”
But at the DMME, a few people recalled more practical reasons.
All of the easy sources have already been used, Davis said. Plus, he said, there was an aesthetic problem when trucks would track the red-tinted material onto paved highways.
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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