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Coal Miners You get into a cage, And they lower you down; Six hundred feet, Down in the ground. Forty people get off, And walk in a line; To get to their jobs, And start working in the mine. Each has their courage, To enter this hole; It takes a different breed of person, Strong, brave and bold; To take out the coal, And keep yourself alive; But we are the miners, Of Old Ben #25. —Rosemary "Rosy" Baker District 12 Local 2250 © 1990 Dr. Christopher T. Ledvina (above) nurtured the National Coal Museum where former miners like Greg "Coast Guard" Collins (overleaf) now conduct tours. Above ground, the hoist house is about the only visible evidence of the expansive mine 600 feet below. The taunting graffiti was scrawled in the mine's last days.

Rosy Baker remembers Oct. 10, 1980, clearly. It was the day Jimmy Carter visited Old Ben Mine 25, the first time a sitting American president visited an underground coal mine. He picked this mine because he's from Georgia and Old Ben 25 had a contract with Georgia Power.

"They sent down several Secret Service men with a big German shepherd. The dog was to search for guns or bombs. That dog went straight for my dinner bucket! I told the Secret Service men There's a half a meat loaf sandwich in there and that dog can have it if he wants it!' They didn't even laugh. They were serious."

Old Ben closed 14 years later (on Oct. 14, 1994) after producing coal for 18 years. But, Rosy Baker still works in the mine under a new job description. Less than two years later, the mine reopened as the National Coal Museum. Instead of mining coal, she now helps educate the public about coal and its importance to Illinois, the nation and the world.

Rosy Baker

She's a tour guide for the mine, now the National Coal Museum, the only shaft coal mine open to the public anywhere in the world, located at two sites in West Frankfort. The site at Mine 25 includes 415 acres, although only a small portion of it is being used for tours. The site was donated to the cause by Zeigler Coal Holding Co.

The other site, Orient 2, which opened in 1921, was donated to the city of West Frankfort, which in turn donated a 50-acre site and the mine's old hoist house to the museum. Not only is it the only 1920s vintage mine in the United States still standing, it is significant for other reasons. It still holds the world's single-shift hoist record of 15,174 tons in seven hours, it was the first in the world to become completely mechanized, and it was the world's largest mine for nearly 20 years. Renovations are underway at Orient 2 for a late 1996 or early 1997 opening.

The museum's education mission is important, said spokeswoman Christeen Lewis, because coal is not a fuel of the past, as many think.

"Sixty percent of our power still comes from coal. This is something that people don't understand," said Lewis. "They think it's something their grandparents used to haul in a coal bucket in to heat their homes. Every time we turn on the lights, we have coal to thank. But people think coal is an antique. It's not. It's still the best source of power that we've got."

The idea for a museum was that of Dr. Christopher T. Ledvina, a professor in the mining department at Northeastern Illinois University. He worked in the coal mining business for nearly 18 years, beginning in the coal section for the Illinois Geological Survey. In 1978, while working as a mine examiner, he fell through a roof while examining a coal mine for Old Ben Coal Co. Although left paralyzed, the accident did not faze him. "It only endeared it to me more," he said. In fact, he said the accident gave him the time to nurture the idea.

Since opening on May 7, 1996, nearly 10,000 visitors have taken the plunge, 600 feet into the earths' belly—down as deep as the St. Louis arch towers above. Visitors ride the "cage," or elevator, straight down into the earth and view working machinery while listening to their guides—all of them former coal miners who once worked the mine like Rosy Baker and Dennis Moak. Patiently they explain how, as greenhorns, they

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learned to fashion rodent-proof lunch buckets and hang 'em high for safekeeping, and how they learned not to blind one another with the light atop their hard hat. Above all, they stress safety.

Moak, an electrical hoisting engineer certified by the state, explained that the elevator is called a man cage, and that everything underground that was man made, including some behemoth machinery, got there through the cage. He tells that it is powered by a 300 horsepower motor, that it cost about $6 million, and that it is suspended from a wire rope, not a cable, so that there is a "rubber-band" effect at descent's end. A cable couldn't handle the maximum 40 tons the man cage could transport. He notes it travels 600-feet a minute, and that if for some reason it were to go faster, it would automatically shut down.

Just like new miners, or "greenies" as they are called, visitors must don a red or orange hard hat. Lewis explained, "One of the reasons is, since you are a greenie, coal miners need to watch out for you, make sure you're not getting yourself hurt. But, also because the coal miners need to watch for themselves." Veterans of at least a year are allowed to wear any color hard hat. Retired miners or miners employed elsewhere are encouraged to bring their own hard hat, and guides say many do.

The National Coal Museum is open seven days a week with underground tours every hour on the hour beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 5 p.m. Tours cost $10 for adults, $8 for children to age 15 and for senior citizens, and $7 for retired miners. Group rates also are available. For more information, call (618) 937-2625.

Old King Coal

Still on top of the heap

Coal—nature's black diamond—generates more than half of the nation's electricity because it is the lowest-priced fossil fuel and it is readily minable in many states.

Continuing hostilities in recent decades in the Middle East (where the largest reserves of fossil fuels are found) and coal's relatively stable price have proven it remains a reliable, if not the most reliable, source of energy for Americans. And it's Illinois' greatest natural resource.

Some 310 million years ago, during the Pennsylvanian Period, much of the United States was a swamp.

"Illinois was part of a vast system of deltas that bordered a shallow sea, and the climate was tropical," writes W. John Nelson, in a coal geology fact sheet available at the museum. "Lush forests flourished in the lowlands and swamps along the delta. The trees that grew in Pennsylvanian swamps of Illinois were strange to behold. Giant relatives of today's club mosses, horsetails or scouring rushes, and ferns prevailed. Some of these grew to heights of over 100 feet and had trunks 3 to 4 feet in diameter. All were adapted for growth in ever-wet ground and standing water, much like cypress and mangrove trees of today."

The plants in the Illinois Basin died and fell into the acid swamp water where decay was slow, Nelson said. The layers grew thick, up to 50 feet more, as the land slowly sunk (much as the Mississippi Delta and New Orleans are now). Then, something triggered a rise of sea level and the water drowned the swamp, creating very thick layers of peat underneath layers of mud, silt, sand and limy sediment from rivers and the ocean. The process was repeated several times in several million years, eventually being covered by "several thousand feet of overburden." The process forced out the water and compressed the peat, transforming it into coal.

Later in history, water, wind and glacial ice eroded much of the rock overlying the coal beds and earth movements tilted them, breaking them and changing the depth in places. Thus, some coal seams crop up out of the surface and can be strip-mined.

Coal seams in Illinois first were numbered, in a system designed by Amos Worthen, the first state geologist of Illinois, who mapped the coal deposits in the 1860s. Originally only seven seams were known, then new finds upset the numbering system and names were added.

Coal is considered a fossil fuel because it is made of once-living

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material. Oil and natural gas also are fossil fuels, but in order to meet the American demand for electricity, imports of those fuels would have to be nearly doubled.

Fortunately, coal is plentiful, and as such, many analysts maintain that it is the nation's best hope for providing energy and economic security in the world's economy. The reserves in the United States alone account for at least 35 percent of the world's proven recoverable coal. It is estimated there are about 30 billion tons of recoverable coal remaining in Illinois—one eighth of the total recoverable reserves of coal in the nation. The United States produces about 1 billion tons of coal annually, and Illinois' 20 coal mines provide about 50 million tons of that.

Illinois is the sixth largest producer of coal, after Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Underneath Illinois alone lies enough coal to power 6 million homes for 500 years. About 90 percent of Illinois coal is purchased by the electric utility industry, with more than two-thirds of it sold to out-of-state utilities.

Historically, coal has fueled this country, and dozens of Southern Illinois communities depend on coal for their economic lifeblood. Commercial mining is believed to have begun in Illinois in 1810.

Coal generates about half of the electricity used in the state, with Decatur-based Illinois Power burning more Illinois coal than any other Illinois user. Most of the rest comes from nuclear facilities.

Southern Illinois Power Cooperative (SIPC), owns a coal-fired generating plant on Lake of Egypt near Marion. Last year SIPC, which is owned by three Illinois electric cooperatives, purchased about 501,590 tons of Southern Illinois coal at a cost of $8.8 million. Together, those employed in coal mining and those employed by SIPC earn $7 million, and most of that money is reinvested in Southern Illinois, creating many more jobs.

The success of coal is important to at least two other industries: railroads and barges. The Association of American Railroads reports that coal is the largest single commodity carried by the rail industry. Railroads transport more than three times more coal than the second largest commodity, farm products. Unfortunately, most Illinois coal is high in sulphur. Coal's popularity began to decline, as did coal mining and related jobs, with the emergence of the idea that burning high-sulphur coal contributed largely to acid rain. It's demise was hastened by amendments in 1990 to the Clean Air Act, which required the reduction, by Jan. 1, 1995, in emissions of three compounds, including sulfur dioxide thought to cause acid rain. Stricter standards must be met by 2000 and the federal Environmental Protection Agency has proposed still stricter standards. And then there's that wild card, electric utility deregulation.

Railroads transport more than three times more coal than the second largest commodity, farm products.

Fortunately, there is a glowing ember of hope for coal's resurgence in the Illinois economy.

Ironically, the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments may actually help Illinois in the long run, some observers speculate. That's because, while Illinois coal is higher in sulphur, pound for pound it provides much more energy than its medium-and low-sulphur competitors. Burning lower-sulphur Western coal won't be enough to meet the standards; in order to meet new standards, coal-burning electric plants that have avoided doing so will be forced to use clean-coal scrubber technologies. When that happens, it is hoped more utilities will opt for Illinois coal, since they have to scrub anyway, because it is more efficient.

And there is good environmental news: The Illinois Water Survey at the University of Illinois this year found that acid rain in Illinois and the eastern United States, declined significantly from 1994 to 1995. In Northern Illinois, the survey found, sulfate levels dipped 11 percent and acidity levels fell 12 percent. In Central Illinois, sulphate dropped 12 percent and acidity 20 percent. Southern Illinois posted the biggest decline, with sulfates declining 26 percent and acidity 33 percent.

Scrubbing and other new techniques have been, and continue to be, developed to burn coal more cleanly. The Department of Commerce and Community Affairs has committed $138 million toward clean coal technologies, which in turn has drawn millions more in federal and private funds (SIPC has participated in several clean coal and coal byproduct research projects.) The Illinois Clean Coal Institute at Carterville reports spending nearly $3 million a year on research designed to make burning Illinois coal environmentally and economically sound. One project the institute has assisted with is the development of a new generation of power plant that is capable of burning Illinois Basin coal less expensively and more efficiently, while reducing airborne pollutant emissions by 50 percent below current U.S. EPA standards.

And the state continues to develop export markets for coal. Last year Illinois coal exports increased by 10 percent over the previous year and DCCA noted some analysts predict coal exports could double by 2000.

Coal watchers are, shall we say, guardedly optimistic.

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