Opencast Mining Companies
Lynne Pruskowski
I was in Varteg, a tiny village on the eastern edge of Wales' old coalmine belt, in a hall packed with people from surrounding valleys who'd come to hear about plans for a new opencast coal mine right on their doorstep.
That decision was appealed, then finally thrown out by the Welsh government. But now the firm has resubmitted it, trying - it seems - to breathe life back into this corpse of a coal mine one last time. There was a sense of weariness in the hall amongst the residents who'd been fighting this zombie for the better part of a decade.
The Varteg proposal is to opencast mine some 256,000 tonnes of coal from an area of old deepmine workings, about 30 metres from homes in the village, and close to a primary school. As one might imagine, this has proved controversial with local residents.
Not everyone is opposed - a vocal minority in the hall last Thursday spoke about the need for new jobs in the area. Few would argue with that, and it's undeniable that south Wales owes much to its history of coal mining. But, those campaigning against the Varteg mine argue, it's surely now time to move on.
As one member of the audience in the hall pointed out, last week it emerged that five out of the UK's 10 remaining big coal power stations will close this year. Britain's last deep coal mine, Kellingley, closed in December.
This is largely down to a downturn in the coal market, with prices at rock-bottom - hovering around 30-35 per tonne of coal, when to turn a profit opencast mining really needs a price more like 45-50/tonne. That means proposals like Varteg just don't stack up.
And then there's a climate change deal finalised at the UN summit in Paris late last year. Its purpose, to limit warming to no more than 1.5C, essentially requires that 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves are left in the ground. That is especially true for coal.
"Clearly there have been big changes in energy policy", conceded one of the councillors sitting at the front of the hall, "but the mining of coal hasn't been outlawed in this country." Someone asked: "Didn't the Welsh Assembly vote for a moratorium on opencast mining last April?"
'MTAN2:Coal' is the minerals technical advice in Wales that provides a management framework for opencast mining. It contains the constraints, or safety net to protect communities from the worst impacts of opencast mining.
Theoretically it imposes a 500-metre buffer zone between opencast mines and people's homes. But that hasn't deterred the Varteg developers from proposing a pit that would come far closer to where people live - because the MTAN is in fact full of loopholes, allowing breaches of this buffer zone where the opencasting would involve clearing up old mine workings.
Local campaigners want to see MTAN2 strengthened to make sure residents are properly protected from the noise and dust that come with opencast coal mines. "The Welsh Government is going to come out with a new policy which we'll consult on before the May elections", promised Neagle.
Yet, whatever is proposed, it won't address the underlying problems - the science which is pretty clear that coal needs to be kept in the ground, and that the economics that are looking incredibly shaky.
When another member of the audience in Varteg asked about the low coal price making the proposed mine unviable, a councillor was sanguine: "That's a risk for the developer." But as was pointed out, it's not just a risk for the developer - it's a risk for the community and council too.
Fears of an 'opencast restoration crisis' in Wales are growing. Last year, MPs debated the failure of coal firm Celtic Energy to restore one of their old opencast sites at Margam. A report commissioned by the Welsh Government has warned of potential restoration liabilities in future.
After all, it was only a few years ago that the company Scottish Coal collapsed, leaving seven unrestored mines across central Scotland. This is particularly worrying if the companies involved are small, and lacking the requisite reserves of cash to clear up the mess they cause.
The developer for Varteg is Glamorgan Power - a firm which, according to Companies House, has 1.3m in assets. Yet Torfaen Council's estimate for the restoration costs of Varteg total 2m. There are similar worries about mining firm Miller Argent, who runs the huge opencast mine at Ffos-y-fran, a few valleys west of Varteg, and has applied for a new mine at Nant Llesg.
At the start of this year, the firm's wealthy backers sold all their shares to a mysterious new investor, Gwent Investments Ltd - a recently formed company with few assets, no experience of mining and, until last September, share capital of only 1 (and no published balance sheet). What confidence can we have in these firms having the money needed to restore their proposed mines?
Guy Shrubsole campaigns on flooding, fossil fuels, and climate change at Friends of the Earth England, Wales & Northern Ireland. Previously he worked at Defra. Here he is reporting from Varteg in Wales.
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The National Mine Map Repository (NMMR), established by the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, is charged with maintaining an archive of all closed and abandoned mine maps from throughout the United States. Through its expert analysis of mine maps and related information, the NMMR assists both the private and public sectors in evaluation of related data for economic valuation, risk assessment, industrial and commercial development, highway construction, and the preservation of public health, safety, and welfare. The NMMR strives to increase public use and accessibility of its unique information by transforming its archive into digital geo-referenced media.
In 1969, an act of Congress established the need for a national mine map repository. The repository was to be funded and assigned to the Department of the Interior (DOI), Bureau of Mines (BOM) in 1970. A repository was set up at a BOM office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that covered all states east of the Mississippi River with the exception of Louisiana and Minnesota. Those two states, together with most states west of the Mississippi River, were covered by a repository at the BOM Intermountain Field Operation Center in Denver, Colorado. Northwest states were covered by the BOM office in Spokane, WA.
In 1982, the responsibility for the repository and its staff was formally transferred to DOI's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM). Later, when BOM was dissolved in 1996, all of the maps from the BOM offices were consolidated into two separate OSMRE repositories, one each in the cities of Pittsburgh and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The Wilkes-Barre Repository covered only the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania. In 2011, the Wilkes-Barre Mine Map Repository closed. The entirety of the National Mine Map Repository's collection now resides in the Green Tree (Pittsburgh), PA office.
From the beginning, the mission of the repository has been to obtain authoritative maps on completed mining operations and preserve them for future generations, be they on microfilm or now digital. High priority is given to maps of mines in areas where the potential for adverse impact to the environment is most significant. The NMMR, in addition to being an archival entity concerned with the preservation of mine maps, is a storehouse of information on mines. The NMMR index system is a database of mining related information. It is a valuable resource for identifying mineral and energy reserves and for addressing mining related environmental issues. The information is made available to Federal and state geological surveys, state mining bureaus, mining companies, oil and gas companies, conservationists, research and planning organizations, water pollution boards, city and industrial planners, highway engineers, building contractors and real estate developers, and private citizens.
Today the NMMR is a modern high-tech facility with leading edge map scanning and archiving capability, and a state-of-the-art electronic map indexing system. The primary archive of over 400,000 .tiff images resides on over 30TB of storage space.
As maps are obtained at the repository, they are assigned a unique six-digit identification number (document number). Data sheets are prepared for each map giving all available information including: This information is added into the repository's database. The maps are then scanned into a digital format and stored on the repository's various mass storage arrays. The digital files are converted to microfilm for permanent storage in our archive.
We are always looking for donations of mine maps to add to our microfilm/digital collection. When maps are received from a donor they are scanned and converted to microfilm, and placed in the archive. The maps, along with a scanned images are returned to the donor. If you have mine maps that you would like to donate, please contact the NMMR.
The NMMR provides services ranging from retrieving mine related data for economic analysis to determining the potential risk associated with underground mining. We are not permitted to assess. The data from the archives aids the public & private sectors to do such things, but we do not. We will explain a map to novices (students, homeowners) including whether or not the area has been undermined. We determine which maps are suitable to be archived within the Repository - assessing the content & physical condition of the maps. We ascertain data from the map & enter it into a searchable database.
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