STRIPPING THE STRIPPERS

Restoration, when strip mining is allowed at all, will raise the price of coal by at least 60 cents a ton. "A disaster" is what National Coal Association director Carl Bagge called the bill, pointing out that it prohibits improving the land, e.g." creating lakes with recreational facilities in abandoned strip mines.

"A disaster," said the environmentalists, and the Coalition Against Strip Mining immediately attacked the bill as not going far enough. Like most environmental organizations, they are interested in preventing coal mining, not in improving it.

As usual. better technology can provide the answer. True, strip mining is cheap and effective, so much more than deep mining that more than half of America's coal comes from surface mines. Also, West Virginian strip mining is not the only kind; there are some strip mines in Wyoming that are hard to criticize. But strip mining also has adverse side effects, of which unsightly gashes in the landscape are only one. Vegetation acts as a sponge like reservoir for water, and in arid climates it may not grow back automatically without help after the land is restored. More seriously, as pyritie material is exposed to air and water, sulfuric acid and ferric hydroxides are formed, and these noxious chemicals can work their way into streams, polluting them long after the mine is closed.

So what's the answer?

Longw all mining may be one. This is a method that has none of the disadvantages of strip mining and has long been used in Europe. Longw all mining works like this: A narrow open trench is dug along the coal seam, then an underground tunnel is dug horizontally at right angles to the trench to accommodate longwall machinery, including cutters, conveyers and roof supports. The coal is retrieved at the end of the conveyer through the trench.

The difference from conventional deep mining is that as the machinery advances into the coal seam, the supports shelter only the machinery at work; the supports left behind in the just depleted space are removed, and the roof, together with all of the land above it, is allowed to cave in. The surface of the land remains unperturbed, just like a hand smoothing a sheet under a blanket does not tear the blanket, but merely causes it to settle behind where the hand went through.

Restoration of the land after the coal has. been depleted therefore amounts only to refilling the initial narrow trench; the rest of the landscape, except for a tiny change in altitude, is untouched. Acid drainage is virtually eliminated, because the collapsing roof quickly smothers the pyritic material that would be exposed for long periods in strip mining.

How economic is the process? It is not as cheap as strip mining, but perhaps surprisingly, it is more economical than "room and pillar" deep mining. The reason is that in conventional deep mining, much coal is wasted because some of the coal seam itself is used to support the tunnels; longu all mining, on the other hand, supports only the ads ancing broadside of the tunnel as the machinery slices into the seam. and can therefore yield up to one third naore coal than the conventional method.

But there are snags. So far, US miners have used longw all mining only in very deep coal beds, where the surrounding bedrock makes supports comparatively easy. In shallow beds with soft overburdells, support is not as easy or safe. However, the Environmental Protection Agency hopes to solve the problem of longu all mining in coal beds lying 200 feet or less below the surface by simply modifying present longwall machinery to make the technique safe in soft overburdens. For the first phase of the $2 million program, EPA awarded a $280,000 contract to the West Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Association, which itself contributes $650,000 to the iouryear feasibility project.

Although the association was the only applicant for the job, EPA's award raised an environmental furor. "The ultimate insult," sulked the Charleston Cazette; "the fox in the hen house," said others. What galled them was that the experimental development work was entrusted to a mine engineering company (instead of, presumably, the Audubon Club or the Wilderness Society).