Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
In Pennsylvania, new uses found for waste coal
Cogeneration plants turn waste into fuel, leaving reclaimed land
FREELAND, Pa. — Henry “Hank” Zielinski scanned a landscape that seems otherworldly: black, barren and bumpy with mounds of coal and rock.
Bulldozers scooped black rubble into huge trucks, which emptied their loads into a screening machine.
The machine ejected large rocks on the side and carried finer material up a conveyor.
From atop the conveyor belt, a sandy stream rained down to a big black pile.
The black sand is silt, one of the coal wastes discarded by miners of yesteryear in the Foster Township area of Highland, a mile west of Eckley Miners Village Museum.
Waste coal wasn’t useful for the furnaces of homes and factories that previous generations of miners supplied with fuel.
But now mining engineers such as Zielinski can extract fuel from the waste coal using a different boiler.
They’re called fluidized bed boilers but contain no fluid.
Instead, jets of air on the boiler’s bottom shoot upward, giving fluidity to the fuel particles.
After engineers realized that fluidized bed boilers could burn waste coal, companies started building power stations — known locally as cogeneration plants — in 1987.
Of the 18 cogeneration plants in the nation, 14 are in Pennsylvania.
One of them in Northampton Borough in a county of the same name is owned by Northampton Fuel Supply, Zielinski’s employer.
For the past decade, Northampton’s workers have been extracting waste coal from about 100 acres that the firm rents in Highland and Eckley.
The land, owned by Jeddo Coal, includes two silt lagoons, now dry, that are being processed. There are culm banks of coarser coal, rock and other wastes. A smaller silt lagoon that off-roaders call The Arena provides a fuel source that Northampton will dig into later.
Since starting operations, Northampton and other cogeneration companies have produced power and powered the state’s economy.
The cogenerators at their peak employed more than 540 people at average salaries of $70,000.
Direct expenditures from cogeneration companies hit a peak of $432 million a year. The companies do business with trucking firms, scientific consultants and other businesses that generate an estimated $736 million for the economy and support 3,600 jobs, according to a report commissioned last month by their trade association, ARIPPA.
Falling energy prices, pushed down by a ready supply of natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania and other states, hurt the cogenerators.
Last year, the cogeneration plants produced 33 percent less electricity, according to a report that Econsult Solutions of Philadelphia did for ARIPPA.
Production is expected to decline again this year, with direct spending and employment.
Northampton now employs 33 people at Eckley and its power plant, where more than 60 people worked previously.
Some workers from Panther Creek, an affiliated firm that idled its cogeneration plant, assist Northampton’s workers at Eckley.
In addition to the economic changes, cogeneration companies wonder how new regulations within the president’s Clean Coal Plan will affect them.
When measured against current rules, the waste coal plants tend to emit less mercury, a natural component of coal, than do new coal plants.
Adding limestone to the waste coal in fluidized bed boilers reduces sulfur emissions and reduces acid rain.
The president’s plan, though being contested in court now, could close some coal-burning plants to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change.
“Our industry is heavily challenged,” Zielinski said.
“Maybe power generation is not our priority. Maybe land reclamation is our cup of tea.”
Northampton and the other cogenerators always reclaimed land as they produced power.
Zielinski pointed to where the company has planted trees on 15 acres already reclaimed. White dust coats another 20 acres. Workers spread limestone while getting ready to replant that ground.
As Zielinski drove around other work sites in Highland and Eckely, he bounced over ruts and down rocky slopes in a pickup truck that already has survived 300,000 miles.
On Wednesday, the state announced it will provide funds to expand the Hazleton rail-trail to the museum at Eckley. Zielinski said one route would have passed through land that Northampton won’t finish reclaiming for years, but he is not sure of the latest route.
Tom Ogorzalek, who has won an award for his volunteer work on the trail, said the route will require a bridge near the south end of the Hazlebrook Tunnel, climb over Buck Mountain and approach the Buck Mountain Road before meeting the museum’s service entrance.
As Zielinski drove past rock piles, he said workers will use some of the rocks to build homes for bats, which have suffered drastic losses from infections of white-nose syndrome.
The Eckley cemetery, visible from the passenger side window of Zielinski’s truck, was so overgrown years ago that he barely saw the tombstones amid the trees and brush. Pruning afforded him a closer look at the graves, which date to the 1850s.
“A lot of babies. A lot of young men,” he said.
He drove as close to a water-filled mine pit as he could before leaving the truck and scampering down a rocky bank to the shore.
Pitch pines poked through the black sand. They grow gnarled from withstanding wind that carves furrows in the dunes.
“It seems like they’re hanging onto life,” said Zielinski, who considers the pines to be the Anthracite Region’s equivalent of Joshua Tree National Park in the California desert.
He has worked in California and Ohio in gas plants and mined in West Virginia. Zielinski prefers restoring mine land in Northeastern Pennsylvania, where he grew up.
“It’s a fun job. I see different issues form year to year,” he said.