West Virginia's coal industry is hoping federal coal regulators will have guidelines for approving more extended-face, or deep-cut, coal mining plans as soon as spring.
West Virginia Coal Association Vice President Chris Hamilton has been advocating the use of remotely operated continuous miners with a face operation as far away as 40 feet. Though most machinery is designed to operate at that distance, Hamilton said, approval for deeper cuts have not been approved often.
Hamilton said extended cuts are safer because they require fewer moves of the mining equipment.
"Extended cut mining also prevents upwards of 50 percent of equipment moves in an underground working section, which means not only the continuous miner, but the roof bolters, the scoop operators or the shuttle cars," Hamilton said. "It's aimed at reducing the exposure a lot of the miners have to these large machines being moved around from place to place in underground working conditions."
However, MSHA officials have expressed doubt that safety issues are the biggest concerns. Kevin Stricklin, MSHA's coal administrator, said the main concern with extended face mining is maintaining compliance with respirable dust standards.
"Personally, I think you can move equipment safely," Stricklin said. "You just have to have practices and policies in place to be able to do that. I do think it hurts the amount of production when they move the equipment. That's not as much as a concern to me as what it is to make sure we not only move safely, but that we stay in compliance with the dust standard."
Compliance with dust plans, Stricklin said, was historically a major problem for Southern West Virginia coal mines.
"It starts with respirable dust, but it gets into ventilation and roof control plans pretty quickly," Stricklin said.
When he first began at MSHA, Stricklin said, national non-compliance with dust standards was about 5 to 7 percent. In West Virginia non-compliance was as high as 25 percent.
"We thought companies down here felt like it was a God-given right to take extended cuts and that the dust standard didn't matter as much as it should have," Stricklin said. "We decided to start pulling the plans and making it more difficult. We didn't think it was a given to give coal companies extended cut plans."
The reason for pulling the plans, Stricklin said, is deep cuts appeared to be the driving -force behind non-compliance with the respirable dust standard.
"We pulled those back and we think we got everybody's attention on how important it is," Stricklin said. "We think they now realize how important the maintenance of the system is as well as the training of the miners to know what they needed to comply with in the plan and to make sure the system works correctly."
According to a 2011 evaluation of face dust concentrations of mines using deep cut processes by the National Institute for Occupational and Safety Health, all of the operations surveyed were implemented "without significantly increasing the dust exposures of face workers during the cutting and bolting cycles."
"In general, all of the selected mines exercised good dust control practices by maintaining water sprays, scrubber airflows, proper curtain setback distances and providing sufficient airflow to the active faces," the NIOSH evaluation states. "These practices minimized variability in dust levels related to factors other than the depth of cut."
Four mines, including Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal, will be given the opportunity to pilot some extended-cut mines.
"We're going to give them a chance to take extended cuts and let them ‘swim or sink' on their own merits," Stricklin said. "If it does (work), it would be something we would build on in the future."
The pilot programs are to begin this month. Hamilton is optimistic about the potential, particularly with new technologies for compliance with respirable dust and other safety standards.
"There's a whole host of advantages with extended cut mining and the use of the scrubbers that are machine-mounted and are right there at the point where coal dust is generated," Hamilton said. "The role and purpose of the scrubber is to collect and serve as a vacuum system that collects the coal dust and renders it harmless at the point of attack or where it is generated."
Hamilton is opening that by spring of this year, MSHA will have an opportunity to assess the pilot program and begin utilizing more extended cut operations in West Virginia.
"It's an absolute, without question, improvement with safety in those applications where it makes sense to use an extended cut," Hamilton said. "That's the qualifier. The caveat is that there are some areas where the geologic conditions don't lend themselves to that system of mining."
Determining if a mine's geology can accommodate deep-cut mining techniques, Hamilton said, is already a part of any MSHA assessment of a mine's operation plans.