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Thurs: Does NC <3 Mountains?
posted at 2009-02-27 00:19 | Last modified 2009-02-27 09:10
Greensboro Dem Pricey Harrison has introduced a House bill that would ban NC power companies from buying coal obtained via mountaintop mining. That’s a term I’d heard before, but I never paid much attention to it since NC doesn’t have mountaintop mines. I learned a few things at today’s press conference that changed my mind.
First, the name itself is kind of a misnomer. Geology types call it “contour mining,” but it’s best known for removing contours – as in the entire tops of mountain – from the Appalachian landscape.
Instead of drilling into rock to mine the veins of coal, miners just find the vein and then blow up everything on top of it so they can scrape it out. It’s faster, cheaper, and easier than underground mining, though calling it “surface mining” seems a bit euphemistic to me if you have to blow the top off a mountain to get to the “surface.” (If you want to know what it looks like, opponents of the practice posted a video here.)
Mountaintop mining isn’t a rare occurrence. It’s a huge business in WV, and it’s a big deal in NC, too. We don’t DO mountaintop mining, but we help make it profitable. This state is the second largest consumer of mountaintop coal (GA is first). Half the coal NC power companies buy is surface-mined. For Progress alone, that’s 14-15 million tons a year. That means one out of every four lights in my house is powered by mountaintop coal.
The unseen cost, according to Harrison, is the environmental and cultural damage done to economically disadvantaged rural WV.
WV native Bo Webb was one of the speakers today. His family has lived in the Appalachians for generations, but now his homestead mountaintop is arriving in pieces in his backyard. His harrowing story’s here.
Listen Now!
But like every good story, this one has two sides. NC power companies are required by state utility rules to negotiate the best fuel prices they can, because those costs pass straight through to consumers. So they look for the lowest price and the most reliable supply, generally in multi-year contracts to reduce market volatility. Surface-mined coal is generally slightly cheaper than underground coal because explosives are cheaper than labor.
Still, no one – not even power companies – seems to know exactly how much cheaper, or how much it would cost NC consumers to quit using the stuff. Proponents of the mountaintop coal ban say the difference to consumers would be cents per month. But Progress spokesman Scott Sutton warns it could cause a “dramatic” increase. He couldn’t say how much, exactly, but he says 350 of the 750 mines in Central Appalachia are surface mines, so a ban would halve the number of bidders for Progress’s contract
An isolated ban on an entire fuel source would put Progress Energy and our customers at a very distinct competitive disadvantage compared to other utilities in other states at a time when consumer costs are already rising.
The non-profit advocacy group Appalachian Voices is trying to even the odds by pushing mountaintop-coal bans in most mid-Atlantic state legislatures. But it’s not clear that even that would do the trick. Sutton says Progress competes with India and China for contract bids for Appalachian coal. So even if all the biggest US markets for mountaintop coal stopped buying it, there’d still be plenty of demand overseas.
Harrison’s bill (Sen. Steve Goss filed the Senate companion) is gathering bipartisan support, but this may not be the best year for any measure that could raise consumer prices even a little bit. The only way to stop the practice for good would be at the federal level, and that’s what activists are hoping for. On the campaign trail, Obama spoke out against it, and Bank of America said last December it would no longer fund those operations, but so far, there’s been no federal action.
Comments? Drop me a line.
