I received some very bad news today regarding coal mining in Harlan County. Blackjewel LLC, the largest mine operator in the county, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the beginning of this month. So far, it has been unable to secure any financing beyond a small loan for care and maintenance during bankruptcy proceedings. Many miners are owed several weeks' pay after paychecks bounced, and investigative reporting indicates incompetency and/or fraud on the part of upper management. I cannot overstate how angry behavior like this makes me.
This prep plant wound down operations in 2013, and has been on standby ever since. A crew has been on site screening waste material to recover some usable coal; this explains the portable screen we found. Local sources suggest that the plant's owner plans to refurbish it and begin processing coal again; the company owns several mines in this valley, one of which will show up in a brief video later. There is easy truck access from the mines to the plant, and the plant has a rail spur, so this is likely to be successful provided prices for thermal coal support the action. Unfortunately, eastern Kentucky lacks the metallurgical coal reserves of Virginia and West Virginia, and is correspondingly very vulnerable to recent downturns in the thermal coal market.
I've been unable to pin down the identity of the flooded drift mine on the property. I thought it may have been the RB #11 Mine, operated by the RB Coal Company, but MSHA records indicate that the RB #11 is on standby with periodic underground entries conducted, so that can't be right. A mine guard we spoke to at another complex said that this whole valley was full of mines operated by RB, so it may just be a matter of finding the correct mine number.