EMLS Tours Surface Mines

The following is a guest post written by one of the students in attendance at the Energy & Mineral Law Society's recent surface mining tour. All photographs are courtesy of Tori Herman.
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On Monday, TECO coal hosted a tour of 2 surface mines for the EMLS, its members, and interested community members. One of the mines we toured was an active mine and the second was a fully reclaimed mine that had been reclaimed using the Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) in 2009. First, we toured the reclaimed mine. Even though it was raining and muddy, I was surprised at how clean the entire area was at first. The roads were well-maintained as we entered and climbed to the top of the first ridge. From the ridgeline, our company guides explained that we were looking across the mine area. In the distance we could see areas that were still in the process of being reclaimed by the company. Even those areas, however, appeared clean -cleaner than most construction sites I've seen. The land in the reclaimed area was well-maintained and planted with various trees. It had the look of a large park instead of a former coal mine.

As we drove to the open mine, we stopped and saw a sediment pond being removed. Our hosts explained that as the mines were in operation, the ponds were necessary to keep the soil from washing away in the rivers. As the areas were being reclaimed, the ponds had to be removed and the streams restored to their natural state. Indeed, all of the property was to be returned to its original state as far as possible. Our guides explained that in many cases, it coal companies can create areas on private owners property that actually raise their property values. Depending on the owners' desires, reclamation has incorporated land uses from hardwood forests, to farmland, to orchards, to golf courses. If the pre-mining land use was as a forest and the land is not going to be used for anything else in the future, then it is returned to a natural state, complete with native hardwoods. The days when "reclamation" involved sowing ground with grass seed and a high number of locust trees are long gone.

The active mine site was also very impressive. The area was clean and well-maintained by TECO. We drove to the top of a ridge where the bulldozers were scraping coal from the ground, but even this area was impressively clean. Chris, one of our company guides, explained that the reason the mine looked so clean was that that reclamation takes place almost immediately after mining is complete in each section of the mine, Each section is reclaimed as soon as possible. As bulldozers remove the coal, others go behind and clean up the land, readying it for the planting that will come at the end. It was wonderful to see how TECO coal recognizes a responsibility to the land and the people that will use it once they are done mining.