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 Post subject: The End of Mining In the Northern Anthracite Field
PostPosted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 8:15 pm 
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Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 2:34 pm
Posts: 6872
Location: Within 60 Miles of the Northern Anthracite Field
a guy wrote me an email asking about and when i got done i figured it would be good to post here........

hey, well not up in the northern field. it would be almost impossible to drain the entire field because there is no pumps big enough. heres the situation. imagine the mine pool as a swimming pool. when the mines were operating they would pump the water out. put a garden hose in the pool. this represents the natural water coming into the mine. now to pump it out and keep up with the flow, you need to install a pump with a supply large enough to meet the flow in. so now you have the water coming in, and being pumped out. the pool stays dry. now the mine closes. pumps shut off. pool fills up. as long as the mine pool was empty it was easy to keep it dry with pumps. now imagine the pumps needed to not only meet the water level coming in but now exceed them enough to drop the mine pool! ive been doing some work with reading anthracite on this exact topic. down there, near frackville in the middle and southern field there is still coal reserves left above water level. up in the northern field its pretty much mined out. especially near the surface. that was "easy coal" and was mined first. later they went deeper. so to get the good remaining coal we would need to go deep, way deep. over 1000 feet down. another problem was that the pillars of coal left would support the top. timbers and props were tempory fixes but in the day mine companies were not responsible for surface subsidence so they would take as much coal as would leave the men safe in the mine for the time being with timbering. sometimes not. now the props and timbering have well rotted away and the water supports the top by hydrolic force. also many of the mines were flushed with fine coal that the breakers couldnt process. now thats what they want so theres talk of going in and remining the flushing and filling it with stone. but not in the northern field. and to the knox point. this is one of the, if not the main false rumor of the northern field mining. when the knox disaster happened it effected only 3 collieries. and they eventually even pumped them all out. remember the pics of the rescue men in the knox mine next to one of the railroad cars that plugged the hole. water ended mining in the northern field but not from the knox as "everyone" thinks. all mining companies, with the exception of a very few, punctured barrier pillars from seperate collieries, or bought the rights off them to mine it. now since they punctured the 100 foot coal pillar that was supposed to serve as a safety boundry for bordering collieries what happens when that mine shuts down and turns off their pumps. now to keep the other colliery from flooding due to the rising in the neighboring colliery and flowing over into their own colliery they have to pick up the bill and run the other pumps, as well as their own. now their operating expense just doubled. this making the run of the mine coal they bring to the surface less profitable. now if another colliery "up stream" also shuts down not they have tripple the water to keep up with. you can see where this is going. there comes a point where its no longer economical to mine the coal and they shut down. this setting the next colliery in line for certain doom. this is what ended deepmining in the northern field.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 1:02 am 
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Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 11:33 pm
Posts: 3080
Location: Above the Sterling Hill Mine
Little information is really known about this subject, this really sums it up well.

Miner Greg


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