(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald.

In Elkhart at the Viper mine where they recently completed a one of a kind project in Illinois.

You may have seen this project from I 55 if your travel, the highway.

There's a five mile long conveyor system that brings the coal from the mine to a handling facility here.

Well we're gonna explore that system a little bit and we're gonna go underground and see how the coal is mined.

Safety is a big issue first.

Hardhat of course, with a minors light, oxygen on my hip, steel toed boots, a tracking system to make sure that if I get lost on there they'll know where I am.

Of course, goggles and glasses for eye safety.

We'll be going down to see what it's like to mine that coal and then we'll see this handling facility in just a little bit.

First, down into the darkness.

(car engine revving) Okay sir.

(car engine revving) (background noise drowns out other sound) Well, we're looking at a coal seam some 275 feet below the surface.

We traveled by 2200 feet to get here, Brad Kaufman.

And now what we get a chance to see is a seam of coal that's gonna get just chewed up and mined up and taken to the surface.

Is that right?

- That's right.

We're getting ready to load up the first car load of coal out of the work and face air and the one left section at the Viper mine.

- We went under the UPC railroad tracks and under I 55, these mines, you know, people think, well, you know you'd go down and you mine but you go miles and miles down to underground.

- It's a pretty big mine.

We've been mining at the same location for 32 years now.

- It's a good one, isn't it?

- It's a good mine, good place to work.

- You're the safety what, the safety, - Safety manager.

- Safety manager.

Okay, so I have you to thank for all of this stuff.

- We wanna make sure you're visible.

- Yeah (laughs) I don't think I can get lost down.

Oh, I don't think I can get lost here.

- (mumbles) lost anybody for a long time.

- You can't be too tall and be a coal miner.

You find yourself slouching a lot when you walk through these chambers.

- We have about a six foot seam of coal here.

- Okay, and what we're gonna see now, this machine that we're going to see work is called a continuous miner.

- This is a continuous miner.

It's gonna load up the first car this place and we're probably gonna cut a place eleven and a half feet wide and maybe four foot deep on the first car.

- Now when yo say it'll cut a car, what does that mean?

- We're gonna fill a coal hauler, a Ram car full of coal and it'll take that load to the feeder and dump it on the feeder to get to the belt to go out of the mine.

- Okay, and how many car, how long does it take this machine to do a car flow?

- Oh, the first car should take maybe a minute or so but after that, he'll get to load them pretty quick, maybe 45 seconds for a car.

- That does seem pretty quick.

- For 10 or so tons of coal.

- Wow, okay.

So we'll see this process first and then we'll get as chance to see it loading it onto the car or the car loading it, right?

- [Brad] Yes, and then - Okay, terrific.

- [Brad] We'll go see it dump onto the feeder to dump onto the belt to go out of the line.

- Okay, terrific.

Well, let's watch this monster work then.

- You're ready Nil?

- [Nil] Yeah.

(machine engine revving) - Brad it's incredible how this machine chews up the face of that mine, isn't it?

- It's pretty fast.

- Fast, real fast.

That's the name of the game, isn't it?

You get as much of the coal as fast as you can and keep process on.

- As efficiently as possible.

- Yeah.

What's gonna happen next?

- He's gonna backup now, he's gonna trim the top out even to the hight where we're standing here.

Once he gets the top trimmed after he's made this first car full then he'll turn the conveyor on and we'll be able to see the coal coming up through the minor and into the back of the car here.

- Okay, and then the car it's called a Ram car.

- Ram car or a coal holler.

- That's what it's called.

A coal holler, okay.

And that just takes the mine, the cold that he just mind and it transports it, what, to a conveyor?

- To the conveyor, it'll go into a feeder breaker and go, it'll size it down for any small chunks and we'll break it to the right size and put it on the conveyor for its trip out of the mine.

- Okay, well let's see this trimming then.

- [Brad] Yep.

(machine engine revving) - Brad, while that continuous miner is chewing up that working face of coal, that coal seam, there are cars that have been loaded and they're congregating in a site like this.

- At the feeder.

- At the feeder.

- The feeder here is where the coal is sized, where any rocks or pieces of coal that are too big would get broken up.

And then the coal helps, the feeder helps put the coal onto the belt.

And that's what it's doing now.

We've got about 10 tons of raw coal in the back of this car and he's gonna back into the feeder now.

- Okay.

- That's the next stop on its trip to the surface.

- I see, okay.

(machine engine revving) Oh, I've seen, it's kind of like a dump truck, isn't?

- [Nil] Sort of.

- [Brad] It is.

- [Mark] Pushes it back.

- [Brad] It has a false bed.

So the first half is pushed out by the false bed the whole back of the car moves out.

And then it has an injector cylinder on the inside that shuts the blade out and push the rest.

- [Mark] Oh, okay.

So now it's shoving and shoving onto that feeder, I call it a conveyor belt, that's what it is.

And then that feeder actually takes the coal all the way above us and to the surface.

- [Brad] Yes, yes it does.

You can see him shine in the photo eye over here and that's just to turn the conveyor on in that feeder so it's light activated when he puts the car in.

And as soon as he pulls away, the next car will be ready to pull up and dump on the feeder.

- [Mark] Waste no time.

- [Brad] That'll keep that belt forward.

- [Mark] There it goes.

- And it's on his way to get another load.

- [Mark] Brad, one thing you might expect down in a coal mine is that everything would be black, but all the dust is white, why is that?

- [Brad] We cover everything with limestone dust in the event there ever was any kind of a problem and ignition, the limestone dust would stop any explosion from propagating.

So we cover everything with limestone dust.

- Well, that's an ongoing thing that you have to do all the time I guess.

- It's constant.

We are in constant supply of dust.

We get it from here in Illinois around Quincy and we pump it underground from surface tanks.

- So it's actually sprayed on.

- We mix it into a slurry and spray it on at the point of mining and then we come back and dry dust later.

- Okay, fascinating.

You know, you and I are standing right under the conveyor belt which the coal that we just saw is moving along and we've changed.

Now, we're near the slope, back near the slope again.

- We're near the slope bottom.

This is a 60 inch belt.

This is main West number four and it dumps right here where we are onto the bottom of the slope belt getting ready to go up and out of the mine.

- Okay, and if we follow it, it's going that way.

If we follow it, it'll dump the coal down onto that moving belt that we see in the distance and then right up the slope.

- [Brad] Yeah, it's kind of hard to see right here.

We've got that dump point box Stan, and we keep water sprays on that all the time to keep the dust down.

We don't want that dust coming out in the atmosphere.

So it doesn't make for a very picture SVU but it keeps the dust under control.

- Brad we and the coal have made it back to the surface.

And as we look just right over to our right, this is the beginning of that whole project that takes the coal up to the preparation plant.

- [Brad] This is the beginning of the Overland belt.

It runs up the stacker here and then you can see where it angles across our yard and then parallels I 55 and the UP railroad as it goes North end to the prep plant, you can see the silos in the distance out here.

- I can see them.

I don't know if our camera can see them or not but those silos they've been there a long time.

- They've been there a long time.

They're about five and a half miles away from us and safety was a big key for putting this belt in.

It just cut down thousands of truck crossings of the UPA railroad track here every day.

Thousands of crossings.

- Yeah, so this monster right here and I'm told this is the only one in Illinois, the only Overland felt like this.

- [Brad] This is the only one of it that I know, yes.

- [Mark] Yeah, yeah.

Were there any difficulties getting this thing up and running or did it, day one act like it was supposed to do?

- [Brad] We've had our share of challenges and opportunities getting it to work perfect but it's been very reliable now that we're getting the bugs worked out.

But it's very quiet and clean and efficient and it's doing a real good job for us.

- Yeah, if it weren't here, you'd have to have trucks taking this coal, thousands of trucks taking this coal - [Brad] Thousands.

- From here, five and a half miles to the prep plan.

- Correct, and they'd have to cross the track.

First of all when they came out of the mine, parallel the interstate and then cross that track again now on its way back to the plant and then the return trip empty.

So this just saved literally thousands of crossings and it was that effort between the state Senator Durbin's office and the UPA and a whole lot of effort of people coming together to get this project done.

- Yeah, yeah.

I think our next stop should be the preparation plant coz that's where this ends up, right?

- That's where we're going.

- Okay, let's head up that way.

- We're following the coal.

- Okay (laughs).

Jamie, we've been following coal all day long.

We started underground and we saw them break it away from the face and then we saw transported up above ground.

And we've been talking about, it's five mile an Overland belt that brings it all the way up here.

This is where the coal used to come out of the ground.

And now this belt, you know, brings it up here and it gets transported up into that, I guess that's where the raw coal goes, that silo right there.

- Yeah.

- [Mark] And then from there, if you're gonna prep it, it comes into this prep plant.

- [Jamie] Right.

- [Mark] Stands for preparation, I guess.

- [Jamie] Yes.

- [Mark] And they take it all the way to the top first.

- [Jamie] Yes.

- [Mark] I guess separated out.

- [Jamie] Yes, hey think at the top of the plant, it comes in at top of the plan and it hits a raw coal screen which separates it into two different surrogates.

You've got to find coal surrogate and of course coal surrogate.

Then it goes into a vessel which floats the coal and separates the rock from the coal.

The coarse coal will go through crusher and then straight to the product belt.

The fine coal will run to the siphon inside of the plant and run through a set of spirals and hydrocyclone pump and cyclones and separates the finer refuse material out of the coal.

And eventually it all ends up on the product belt and across the road.

- [Mark] Yeah, so preparation action, what that means is you're trying to get the coal sized properly and washed at the same time.

- [Jamie] Sized and cleaned, yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah, and it takes a tremendous amount of water, I noticed everything in that plan is wet.

- [Jamie] Yes there's, we have several pumps, several places we get water.

We recycle all the water that we use in the plant.

None of the water leaves the property.

So everything that, everything that's here stays here.

- [Mark] Yeah, and everything, and by the time it gets over there to this finished, to this finished silo, guess it's what it's called, where it's ready to be loaded onto trucks, it's just as clean as it can be.

- Yeah.

- I rubbed it in with my gloves and it didn't even leave a smudge.

- Yes, it's a clean product.

It has to be for invention purposes.

- [Mark] Yeah, well thank you sir.

- Hey, no problem.

- Kayla Primm, you have an interesting history with this company.

How many years?

- Almost 31.

- 31 years.

And during a time you've been an underground surveyor.

- Yes.

- So you spent years.

- Several years, yes.

- Underground, far underground serving what, where the rooms were gonna go?

- Which direction of the mining.

Also in order to determine whose property we were under so that we could pay royalties to the correct person.

And that also includes measuring the coal so that we know how much is coming out of the ground.

- [Mark] And more recently, you were involved in getting the permits for this Overland belt.

- Yes, I was.

- [Mark] Was that a hairy job?

- It was and it's time consuming.

Anytime you're working with that many folks and trying to get that many things going at once, it does, it does take a lot of time.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- Luckily we had a lot of help from lots of different folks.

All of the local folks around here in the community, the Road Districts, Williams, Hurlbut, Elkhart, the Logan County Highway Department, Department of Transportation and the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, all helped us greatly, gave us all the support we needed and really made this thing come together.

- Why was it so important?

- Well, we were at a point where our old works over near the Elkhart site were at risk.

Those entries had been mined in the early eighties and there were some geological issues that were causing problems that we were not able to predict by any means and we weren't able to control them.

So the thing is we could either keep going the way we were and possibly have problems that would shut down the mine at any minute.

Or we could build this new portal which we did, and take the coal out of the ground here.

- And that's the portal we saw us going down in today.

- Yes.

- That's the New portal.

- Yes it is.

- Right.

And building a new portal is not a small issue, isn't it?

- No, it's not, it's not.

It's a very big issue permitting wise, not to mention getting the property, just getting all the contractors and the money together to do it.

- And add to that, the issue that now, okay we need a new portal, so we're gonna build a new portal but our prep plants five miles away.

- [Primm] It is.

- So, we have to have this Overland belt.

- [Primm] Well, we have to have something.

We have to have some way of getting the coal from the portal to the preparation plant.

You can't just pick up the preparation plant and move it.

It's a huge building.

So what we had originally planned since we already had spent a lot of money on this production portal, we had planned to truck it from the production portal to the prep plant, which means couple thousand railroad crossings every day.

- [Mark] A couple of thousand.

- There was two rail road crossings between the two portals.

Each truck would have to cross them twice on round trips.

So that's four crossings per truck.

You're talking two thousand crossings.

- Wow, and you have that many trucks a day going over those.

- They would go over it if they were hauling raw coal between the two sites.

- Wow.

Let's take a look at this map coz this kind of puts things in perspective for us.

This is the new portal that you're talking about, right?

- Yes, it is.

- And this is also the office where we are.

- [Primm] Right.

- So here's the new portal and this is where the belt, the Overland belt starts.

And so it goes along the railroad tracks and of course along, all the way up to here.

And this is, I'm not sure what this road is.

- [Primm] It's commonly called Elkhart mine.

- Elkhart mine road, okay, then it goes off over here and we saw where the prep plant is.

So this is where it ends.

But along, or is it along in here that you're talking about that you had these railroad crossings, right along UPA?

- Yes, there's one right here at the Elkhart mine road.

And had we taken that option we would have built another crossing right here at the North end of our property.

So the truck would have to cross once go up here, cross twice, dump the load, cross third time, cross fourth time.

- [Mark] And of course they're upgrading the track to high-speed.

- [Primm] Yes.

- [Mark] So it's another added problem.

- [Primm] Yes, and it's a safety issue.

You've got that many trucks going across crossings on a high-speed rail line.

And plus then you have all of the traffic that is overloading roads that normally aren't.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Let's say that Viper mine would not have been able to build a new portal or get the belt or any of those things, what could have happened?

- [Primm] We could have shut down.

That's the ultimate possibility.

Don't know when that might've been but that would be the direction we would have had.

- [Mark] How many jobs are we talking about?

- We're talking over 300 folks that work here right, currently.

- Yeah, that work here and the industries that support this would also, - Would be even more.

Yes.

- Yeah, yeah.

And it's not like they're gobs jobs in this.

- No.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- No, it would mean, it would be have a significant impact on not only Logan County, San Juan County, but yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Back up just a little bit.

I wanna look at this map that you.

This is another interesting take on it.

This is where we're standing right now.

And earlier today when we went underground, we went under the railroad and under the highway and down into this room here.

This is where we saw the coal mining going on.

And all of this area here is yet to be worked, isn't it?

- [Primm] Right, the blue is projections.

- [Mark] So you've got a lot of coal left?

- [Primm] Oh yes, we've got many, many years of coal left.

- [Mark] Terrific.

Well, thank you for this visit.

- [Primm] You're welcome.

- We just grabbed the specimen out of the preparation plant.

You see how nice and clean that coal is.

That barely leaves a smudge Dan.

- A little bit, little bit.

- Barely leaves a smudge yeah.

I wanted to ask you a question about Illinois coal because we're looking at a map here.

First of all, you're with the department of econ, - Commerce and Economic.

- Commerce and Economic Opportunity, right, DCEO okay.

And you all had something to do with getting this project and I'm talking about the Overland belt done.

- Correct, correct.

You know, our office, the office of coal development, we're an office within DCEO.

Our main purpose is to promote only coal.

And we can do that through various ways.

We have various programs to do that.

The program that took advantage for this project was a coal competitiveness program.

And it's a program designed to make Illinois coal more competitive.

And we do that in this case by assisting one of our coal producers, Viper mine here, and partnering with them and bring down their costs through the project.

And so in that, in turn has an impact in the overall costs of them mining the coal.

So yes, we were involved from the standpoint of the funding, so.

- Yeah.

Probably a very good thing because as we learned earlier, if this project hadn't gotten done, this mine might not lasted much longer.

- Yeah, it was certainly an issue of concern for the mine personnel.

It's a concern for us, it took a vital piece of the coal industry and put it in jeopardy because of the geologic setting and the issues that they've encountered here at this mine.

And it allowed us to assist them in keeping this facility operating and growing and in employment impacts that obviously we're concerned with at the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and keeping Illinois coal vital and of life in this industry.

- [Mark] And you got a lot to keep alive because as we at this Illinois map, the light green color is where coal is.

And it's under the, almost the entire state.

- Yeah, bout two thirds of Illinois is underlined by the Pennsylvania system.

That's a system which has our Illinois coal seams.

And as you can see, it's, it's a basin and it's, if you can imagine a bowl, the outermost edges of the basin being shallower, the inner most and deeper.

And as you can see, most of the mining in the past has occurred along the edges.

The most economically beneficial areas to mine coal.

- Where the coal is shallower.

- Right.

- Costs less to get to it.

- Right.

- Easier to get out of the ground.

- Exactly, and so as these mines get deeper, they become more expensive.

Of course, technology allows us to mine the deeper seams but that's what, an important role for our office is to keep these companies growing, keep these companies invested in the coal seams of Illinois.

- [Mark] And for various reasons, a lot of this coal is exported which is our real net gain for Illinois.

- It is, it is.

And, you know, we try to use our coal domestically, but, you know, we can't necessarily force it upon utilities.

We provide coal, make it available and a lot of our market is overseas and so we are getting drawn into the export business and we're seeing a lot of our coal getting exported.

- [Mark] Dan, thanks very much.

- Thank you.

- Well, here at the Viper mine, they estimate that they have about 20 years worth of known coal reserves under the ground right here.

And with that new portal and that new line, that new belt that they've built, they're very optimistic about the future.

With another Illinois story in Elkhart, I'm Mark MacDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Illinois stories is brought to you by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

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