Published: March 4, 2016 |

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Owners of the Deer Run Mine near Hillsboro now want to temporarily seal the coal mine after more than a year of unsuccessfully fighting a smoldering underground fire.

State regulators, meanwhile, are preparing to consider an application from the mine’s owner, St. Louis-based Foresight Energy, for a major expansion of areas not affected by the fire.

Foresight shut down the underground mine in January 2015 as a result of what the company described as a “combustion event.” Approximately 100 employees were laid off.

The company announced late Tuesday that an application had been filed with the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration to temporarily seal the entire mine.

“To date, our efforts to extinguish the combustion event have been primarily directed at sealing specific areas of the mine, and filling them with extinguishing agents and inert gases,” the company stated.

Sealing the entire mine, according to Foresight, should cut off oxygen to the fire.

“We are uncertain as to when production will resume at this operation,” the company said.

Even as Foresight works to extinguish the fire, the company has asked the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for a 7,700-acre expansion of the mine. Deer Run Mine, which opened in 2011, had been among the largest employers in Montgomery County.

“The formal review of the permit application has not begun yet,” DNR spokesman Chris Young said in an email Wednesday.

Young said the department took public comments at an informal public meeting on Feb. 11 in Hillsboro. He said another public hearing will be scheduled.

Citizens Against Longwall Mining, a Montgomery County group that opposed the original mine construction, now is fighting the Foresight expansion plan. Board member Mary Ellen DeClue of Litchfield said coal mining is a threat to the water and air, while mine subsidence threatens long-term damage to farmland.

“Longwall” refers to the technique used by Foresight Energy to bring coal out of the Hillsboro mine.

“If that application is approved, for the next 50 to 60 years, they’ll (landowners) have that threat hanging over them,” said DeClue.

She said members of the group also have been frustrated by the state permit-approval process, as well as what they believe to be lack of enforcement of federal environmental laws.

“The things that go on here just should not be allowed to go on,” said DeClue.

Source: (March 2, 2016) The State Journal -Register

To stop by Foresight’s website, CLICK HERE

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