The Energy Blend

A Supplement to the Craig Daily Press Wednesday, October 15, 2014 | 1The Energy Blend

THE ENERGY BLEND

2 | Wednesday, October 15, 2014 A Supplement to the Craig Daily PressThe Energy Blend

Trapper Mine’s focus is on safety, the well-being of its employees, the needs of our local community and Trapper’s commitment to protect the environment. Trapper has been recognized by numerous organizations for its safety record, its reclamation success, its operational effi ciency and community interaction. Trapper’s employees and machinery carved out the back nine at the Yampa Valley golf course, built soccer fi elds and a health club for the people of Craig.

Trapper was given the mining industry’s premiere safety award and was selected as a company of the year by Colorado Commerce and Industry. Trapper was recognized with the bronze award as one of the three best examples in the United States of mined land reclamation in the 25-year history of the modern coal mining era. The mine was selected from among 1,400 U.S. coal mines for this award. Trapper has received positive public and media response to its reclamation excellence. Trapper continually strives to be a safe and effi cient surface mine. The Company maintains a commitment to the ideal of safety fi rst and production will follow.

Trapper Mine is on the cutting edge of mine land reclamation and mine technology with special emphasis on sediment and erosion control and wildlife habitat mitigation. Trapper is considered one of the nation’s cleanest surface mines. Trapper takes its commitment to the environment seriously and is proud of the work it does in returning the land which is in many regards better than the pre-mining range conditions.

The wildlife is fl ourishing on Trapper land. Mature shrub clumps or islands provide cover for the wildlife. The available forage is three to fi ve times that of pre-mining. Many species of wildlife are found on reclaimed lands. Pronghorns have increased from zero before mining began to a current population of several hundred. Elk have increased ten-fold. Mule deer numbers are stable at several hundred animals. Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, a species that has been petitioned to be considered threatened or endangered, are fl ourishing on reclaimed land. Burrowing owls, also found on Trapper reclaimed land, are also a state-endangered species. Stock ponds provide otherwise scarce drinking water. Seed from over 30 different native plant species is used to provide diverse, adapted and sustainable reclaimed plant communities. Trapper is responsible for the mined land for at least 10 years after the seeding process. This ensures that the reclamation has a chance to take root. All land is returned to its pre-mined condition at a cost of about $30,000 an acre.

Trapper Mine

25910 S Highway 13 | Craig, Colorado 81625

This is a paid advertisement.


COURTESY/ MUSEUM OF NORTHWEST COLORADO

From The Editor: The vast world of Northwest Colorado's energy economy

Imagine life with-out electricity. Picture yourself, rushing home after a long day at work and fumbling around for matches to light a can-dle so you can illuminate your house. There’s no light switch, no lamp to turn on — nothing but darkness until you light that fire.

That’s the way society lived up until the late 1800s until Thomas Edison invented the electric light system. It wasn’t until 1878 that Edison figured out how to generate electricity which has now become a multi billion-dollar industry that the entire world relies on.

If it’s difficult to imagine society without an electrical system, perhaps it becomes more real when you think about life without cell phones, dishwashers, laundry machines and computers. Luckily, most of the world, including the United States, won’t have to worry about being without that light switch, cell phone or computer. Electricity is here to stay, whether it be from coal-fired power plants, wind, solar or hydro energy. With new Environmental Protection Agency regulations coming down the pike, the energy landscape could change for coal-fired power plants, and many in the Northwest Colorado energy sector are trying to find reasonable regu-lations with the federal government. In this section, we heavily outline the coal industry in Moffat and Routt counties, as mining

and coal-fired power plants have a huge pres-ence here. We also outline why wind farms have not been constructed in this portion of the state. Additionally, Northwest Colorado’s first solar gar-den is slated to break ground this month. So, between looming EPA regulations and new renewable options, the energy economy remains one of the largest employers in this region. One out of five jobs in Moffat County come from the coal mining sector, and one out of every 10 jobs in Routt County comes from coal, according to Yampa Valley Data Partners that tracks the economics of both counties. The Craig Daily Press is pleased to bring you The Energy Blend — a first ever in depth look at the energy sector in Moffat and Routt counties. The idea came after I took my first tour of Craig Station.

I was in awe of the coal-fired power plant and how it operates. The coal industry is under an eagle eye right now as Pres. Barack Obama and the EPA works to regulate carbon emissions for existing coal-fired power plants. If you’re not familiar with the local energy economy, it’s my hope that The Energy Blend will highlight the complex industries.

Noelle Leavitt Riley is the managing editor of the Craig Daily Press and the Saturday Morning Press. Contact her at 970-875-1790 or [email protected].

Black coal in a white apron

The official surveyor for the United States government after the Civil War, F.V. Hayden, com-pleted his survey of the Rocky Mountain region in the early 1870s, which identified Northwest Colorado as home to one of the largest coal reserves in the United States. Though possibly no one else made note of his observations, astute financiers of that era certainly did. Hayden’s find-ings set in motion the beginnings of a dream for a railroad into the remote region, with the idea of bringing out the black gold to the Front Range markets and beyond. One of the earliest stories of coal mining in the Yampa Valley focuses on settler James Wadge and his wife, Sarah Jane Lilliecrap. They had settled in 1887 near what would later be the coal mining town of Mt. Harris. Coming from a genteel fam-ily in England to the wilds of Northwest Colorado must have indeed been a challenge for the well-bred Sarah Jane. Raising a family of five children on the banks of the Yampa River, Sarah — so the story goes — carried out the first load of coal from the family’s small mine in the folds of her apron. That mine site later became known as the Wadge Mine, which was part of a complex of several mines surrounding the town of Mt. Harris. Almost immediately upon their arrival in Northwest Colorado, homesteaders found coal to be an invaluable and easily accessible resource in combating the typically hostile winter months of the area. Small wagon mines, as the individually owned family-operated mines were called, sprang up all over the Yampa Valley and augmented the meager income of many early settlers. In between trying to eke out an existence in their challenging

new homeland, the pioneers found time to carve out small coal mines on their land from which they could wrest a little coal to sell to the local townspeople and businesses. The dream of a railline into the area, long held and backed by visionaries like Denver banker David Moffat, finally became a reality in 1909, when the first passenger train chugged into Steamboat Springs. By 1913 the rails reached all the way to Craig, opening up the valley to its first “mass transit” system. To many the coming of the railroad brought the reality of increased ability to travel between Denver and the Yampa Valley, but to some it signaled a tremendous potential to develop the agricultural and mining assets of the region. Following quickly upon the heels of the rail-road’s arrival, the Harris brothers moved into the valley from Iowa, intent on being among the first to develop a new coal market. By 1914, the small town of Mt. Harris could boast its first homes as well as its first coal production. It wasn’t long before numerous mining operations were remov-ing significant tonnages from Yampa Valley coal mines for transport via the Moffat Road, as the rail line was known. When World War I hit, those mines produced amazing quantities of coal to support the war effort, providing an economic boon to the region. Through the 1920s and into the years of the Great Depression, the coal mines remained a constant economic force and provided steady, if somewhat seasonal, employment for residents of the Yampa Valley. When World War II hit, the mines again performed in a stellar fashion, sup-plying high quality coal to fuel the efforts to pro-tect Europe, as well as the country’s own borders. Historically, the coal industry has dovetailed well with the local agricultural industry, provid-

ing an additional source of steady employment for many families involved in agribusiness. Today three major mining companies in the Yampa Valley employ over 1,000 people and are among the largest employers for the valley. The coal mining industry began in Northwest Colorado as a revenue source for area homesteaders as they mined their small wagon mines. That fact has not changed over the last century as the industry continues to be a source of income for many of the valley families. Even as the country struggles to find new sources of reliable, renewable energy,

the fact remains that for over 100 years, coal has been a dependable source of energy and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

E.T. HANCOCK PULLS A LOAD OF COAL out of a wagon mine at the Blevins mine near Craig in 1912. The small wagon mines that dotted the region helped support families with the sale of heating coal for residential and business furnaces and cook stoves. Coal mining still helps support many households throughout the area today and brings a strong economic benefit to Northwest Colorado.

Noelle Leavitt Riley

By Mary Pat DunnMuseum of Northwest Colorado Registrar

Museum of Northwest Colorado: Coal's history in the Yampa Valley


Though most of us benefit from the work done in a coal mine, few people ever gain a first-hand understanding of how coal gets from deep inside the ground and converted onto the electric grid. Northwest Colorado sits on vast reserves of coal. The Yampa Coal Field covers 520 square miles in primarily Moffat and Routt counties, according to a U.S. Geologic Survey report. It extends 48 miles west to east from Lay to Oak Creek on the southeast side, and 33 miles north to south, as far north as Black Mountain. Two kinds of coal mines exist in Northwest Colorado: surface mines, such as Colowyo and Trapper mines, and an underground mine — Twentymile. There are four types of coal, the two most prevalent of which are mined in the Yampa Valley. Colowyo and Trapper mines both extract sub-bituminous coal, while Twentymile extracts bitu-minous coal. All three mines tout the low sulfur and ash content of their coal, criteria which make for cleaner burning fuel. Bituminous coal has higher BTU — or British Thermal Unit, which measures the amount of energy it can produce — and is the most abun-dant coal in active U.S. mining regions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, subbituminous coal can be found in thick beds near the surface making it cheaper to mine, and is also well-suited as fuel for electric power generation. Both surface and underground mines utilize modern engineering and high-tech equipment to help them safely and efficiently remove coal from the earth using extremely different processes.

SURFACE MINING 101

At a surface mine, coal is removed by dig-ging through layers of earth in order to reach and remove seams of coal that lay beneath the ground. The process of surface mining begins with exploratory drilling, which provides data to create a geologic model of the ground beneath. Holes are drilled into the ground at regular intervals to remove samples of earth from as deep as 1,000 feet below the surface. Engineers then examine the model to deter-mine where the coal seams are, how thick they are, and how thick the layers of earth, or “over-burden” are in between them. “From there we can figure out the economics and the right places to dig and what’s going to be the most effective and efficient way to mine that area,” said Colowyo Coal Company Mine Manager Chris McCourt. The geographic model looks something like a giant layer cake, with thick layers of overburden separated by thinner layers of coal in a ratio of nearly 10 to 1 at Colowyo. There, the “cake” con-sists of 13 layers of coal which range anywhere from 18 inches to 18 feet thick. “We have a lot of material we have to move to get the one unit of coal,” McCourt said. “It can be

anywhere from a few feet to a few hundred feet to get to the next coal seam.” The mining process begins with removing the topsoil layer– which typically ranges from 6 to 24 inches, according to an informational pamphlet from Trapper Mining, Inc.– and carefully storing it at another site to be replaced once mining is complete. After the topsoil has been removed, the over-burden layer — up to 200 feet thick at Trapper Mine — above the first coal seam is blasted to make it easier to dig and to break it up into manageable pieces. Overburden is either placed in an adjacent section of the pit where the coal has already been removed, or hauled away from the pit site and stored in large dunes until the reclamation process begins. Once the coal seam has been uncovered, it is blasted and removed in the same fashion, and is then scooped into four-story tall haul trucks, which carry it to a stockpile site. The machine which does the heavy lifting in the mine pit is called a dragline, which can weigh as much as 3,100 tons. It looks like a crane and a backhoe combined, with a cab as large as a house and a boom up to 325 feet long. The bucket attached to the end of the boom can move upwards of 80 tons of overburden at a time. As the mine progresses, it expands both horizontally and vertically. At Colowyo, machines

remove coal in vertical slices, and begin filling in overburden and reclaiming land behind them as they go. Another process utilized to remove more

coal once a mine has been dug to its deep-est point involves a machine called a high wall miner. The high wall miner is capable of mining underground without requiring man-

Coal Mining 101: Out of the ground and onto the grid

By Lauren Blair

PHOTO BY LAUREN BLAIR


THE DRAGLINE REMOVES OVERBURDEN from the underlying coal seam at the west pit at Colowyo Mine. The massive machine can move up to 80 tons of earth in one scoop.

A FRESHLY LOADED TRUCK CARRIES COAL from the secondary crusher to the rail head located near the entrance to Colowyo Mine, where it will be loaded onto trains and shipped directly to Craig Station.


Coal Mining 101: Out of the ground and onto the grid

power underground; it can dig up to 1,000 horizontal feet into an exposed seam, pulling out the coal with flat cars sent in to retrieve it. From the stockpile, coal from different sites and different seams is blended together to to meet certain quality standards and stored in a central stockpile. “Once we dig it out of the ground, each of the 13 layers has a little bit different quality: sulfur and BTU. We blend it together so it’s a consistent product,” McCourt said. The coal passes through two more crushers to create a uniform consistency on its way to being loaded out of the mine. At Trapper Mine, it is transported by truck straight to Craig Station, and at Colowyo, it is trucked to the rail head near the entrance of the mine, where it is loaded onto trains and shipped directly to Craig Station. After land is mined, it needs to be put back together. The reclamation process involves three phases, and begins before ground is ever broken on a new pit. “It actually starts before the coal is removed with studies to determine the natural state of the vegetation, wildlife, soils, water, air, surface contours and land uses,” according to Trapper Mine’s pamphlet. During phase one, the overburden that was removed in the process of extracting the coal is replaced and contoured to match the original landscape. In phase two, the topsoil which was set aside at the start of the mining process is replaced and reseeded with seed mixes which are regulated by the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. In phase three, the vegetation is fully rees-tablished, and phase three bond release indi-cates land that has been fully reclaimed, which requires, at minimum, a 10-year process. Trapper Mine, which received a special honors from the U.S. Department of the Interior and Office of Surface Mining for its reclamation suc-cess, boasts abundant wildlife on its reclaimed lands, including black bears, mountain lions, over 100 species of birds, and flourishing wild game populations including antelope and elk. Colowyo is similarly home to large herds of elk which win-ter over in reclaimed lands surrounding the mine.

UNDERGROUND MINING 101

Visiting a surface mine may be like stepping foot onto another planet, but going underground is like stepping into another world altogether. An underground mine produces the same end result — coal — but uses a completely different process. Rather than giant trucks and draglines spread out across vast expanses of dirt and deep pits connected by wide, winding roadways, an under-ground mine consists of uniform tunnels laid out in a carefully planned grid deep under the earth. Miners at Twentymile Mine in Routt County do their work about 1,300 feet below the earth’s surface. The tunnels, called “entries,” are dug by a machine known as a continuous miner, which eats its way through the coal at a rate of up to 250 feet per 12-hour shift as it paves the way for the main event, the longwall opera-tion. Twentymile operates two continuous mining machines, which create tunnels 9 to 10 feet high and 20 feet wide, producing up to 5,000 tons of coal per day. The tunnels dug by the machines are like the streets on a city grid, while the city blocks are the panels of coal which are mined using the longwall method. Panels at Twentymile are 1,000 feet wide, nine feet tall and anywhere from 2,500 to 18,000 feet (or nearly 3 and 1/2 miles) long, accord-ing to Twentymile General Manager Pat Sollars. As the continuous miner digs new entryway, a roof bolter follows behind to stabilize the roof by essentially laminating it with resin and bolts up to 8 feet long, which are drilled into the ceiling every five feet. Added protection is provided by mats and mesh applied to the ceiling to contain loose material from the shale roof. Because coal dust is highly ignitable, every exposed surface underground is sprayed with rock dust made of pulverized limestone, which also serves to brighten the walls of the mine. “You put limestone everywhere to ensure that the top 1/8 inch of all surfaces in the mine is 80 percent incombustible,” Sollars said. Once the tunnels have reached their full length and have provided access to the coal panel, a dizzying array of equipment — consisting of six main components — is set up to begin the longwall operation.

First are the shields: massive, steel canopies that press into the roof to keep it from collaps-ing. One hundred and fifty shields are lined up side-by-side to create a kind of 1,000-foot-long, underground hallway adjacent to the face of the coal seam being mined. Held up by two electro-hydraulic legs, each shield can hold up to 1,300 tons of weight, and are automated to essentially walk themselves forward as the coal is mined and the face of the longwall retreats. As the shields move forward, the roof behind them collapses. Second is the shearer, a machine equipped with two steel-toothed, cylindrical drums that eat into the face of the coal seam. Protected under the canopy formed by the shields, the shearer rides back and forth along the 1,000-foot-wide panel, cutting up to one meter deep into the coal face with each pass, according to Sollars. “Moving at a rate of up to 130 feet per minute, the shearer removes or cuts about 1,300 tons of coal for each one meter of advance in the pro-cess,” Sollars said. The shearer — and the entire longwall opera-tion — advances 60 to 80 feet into the panel each day. A longwall miner can walk up to 10 miles per shift as he makes as many as 25 roundtrips per day back and forth along the 1,000-foot panel, according to a video produced by Peabody Energy titled “Twentymile Coal: The People Behind The Power.” The coal that is removed from the face by the shearer is caught by a highly engineered and rugged conveyor system, known as an armored face conveyor, the third component. The AFC car-ries the coal away from the face and brings it to the fourth component, the stage loader, which is another chain conveyor with a crusher built into it. The stage loader crushes the coal to a more manageable size to be transported to the sur-face on yet another conveyor. Twentymile has six miles of five-foot-wide conveyor belt, powered by 28,000 horsepower, which can carry 5,000 tons of coal an hour to the surface, according to Sollars. Two more components enable the underground operation: the emulsion pumps, which provide fluid to the hydraulic shields to allow them to

do their job, and the power train, which deliv-ers 4,160 volts of power to the longwall via a “monorail” system. Dust and oxygen levels are also scrupulously monitored to ensure air quality inside the mine. “Directing the flow of air underground is an important part of the mining operation. Large surface fans pull 1 million cubic feet of air through the mine each minute, drawing dust and gas away from working faces and supplying min-ers with fresh air,” according to the video. Once the coal reaches the surface, it is washed to remove rock sediment, crushed and loaded daily onto one to two unit trains of 100 cars or more, carrying up to 25,000 tons of coal per day to customers primarily in Colorado and the western United States, including Hayden Station. The underground mine relies on diligent main-tenance of each of the components and steps in the process to ensure the safety and efficiency of production. “It’s like a little city, because you have to have an infrastructure in place before any mining can happen,” Sollars said. Once a panel has been completely mined, which can take anywhere from two to 10 months, the entire infrastructure must be disassembled and moved to a new panel. Twentymile is currently in the process of moving the longwall to a new 8,000 foot panel. All told, crews at Twentymile must transport 7,546 tons of equipment every time the longwall is moved, with the heaviest components weigh-ing in at 40 to 60 tons a piece. A longwall move typically takes 18 to 22 days, and happens on average two to three times per year. With crews dedicated to providing for every element of the complex underground operation, and a vast vocabulary that is unique to under-ground mining (and practically unintelligible to a non-miner), the underground mine truly is a world of its own.

Contact Lauren Blair at 970-875-1794 or [email protected].

COURTESY OF TWENTYMILE MINE

COURTESY OF PEABODY ENERGY

A ROCK DUSTER SPRAYS THE WALLS of the entryways inside the underground mine at Twentymile Coal Company in order to reduce the combustibility of the coal dust.

THE SHEARER ON THE LONGWALL chews through the face of the coal seam as coal falls onto a conveyor.


Editor’s note: All of the data quoted in this assess-ment was mined from Yampa Valley Data Partners or interviews with representatives from the respective power plants and coal mines.

Without Colorado’s robust energy industry, much of America wouldn’t be able to turn lights on or watch TV. Businesses would be clueless without Quicken and Starbucks coffee pots around the country would run dry. And, many Coloradans, especially those living in Northwest Colorado, wouldn’t be able to put food on the table or go to the doctor. Last year, Colowyo and Trapper above ground mines, which both supply coal to Craig Station, provided about $50 million in wages and benefits to employees. Coal mining alone provides nearly 1,000 per-manent jobs to Moffat and Routt counties. Moffat County’s energy industry (includ-ing Peabody Energy, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Trapper Mine and Colowyo) provide the most jobs out of the top 10 employers in the county, with 1,006 permanent jobs. Craig Station and Hayden Station combined provided almost $40 million in wages and ben-efits to employees in 2013. Environmental retrofits and revisions to Craig Station will bring at least an additional 475 tem-porary jobs to Moffat County in the future. Craig Station spends $276 million in Colorado and $213.8 million of that locally. The oil and gas industry in Moffat County pro-vided more than $2 million in wages in 2013. Forrest Luke, environmental and external affairs manager for Trapper Mine, is concerned about the economic impact of new renewable energy

regulations. “It’s not just gonna affect us locally,” Luke said. “Its gonna affect everyone in the country. And the ones who will be hit the hardest are the ones on fixed income and the poor. They’ll be spending much more of their income for energy; they’re going to have to choose between energy and food.” Some of those renewable sources of energy have brought money into Colorado, too. In 2013, according to the American Wind Energy Association, wind power brought up to 4,000 jobs to Colorado. Land lease payments for wind energy total more than $7.5 million. The Solar Energy Industry Association’s website said, “Colorado solar industry generates as much revenue as its top-ranked craft brewing industry.” More than 3,000 people are employed statewide by the solar energy industry. Audrey Danner, executive director of the Craig/Moffat Economic Development Partnership, said at the Sept. 16 Moffat County commissioners’ meeting that the Craig community has a chal-lenge ahead of them, but not one they can’t overcome. “We have our work cut out to tell our story and look to the future of coal development, and what will that look like? It may not look like it looked 20 years ago," she said.

Contact Janelle O'Dea at 970-875-1795 or [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @jayohday

Northwest Colorado energy industry economic impacts

By Janelle O'Dea The climate change debate continues to heat up political races across America. While the Obama administration passes clean energy policies, not everyone in the country agrees with these deci-sions. In 2007, the United States Supreme Court issued a ruling that gave federal agencies the ability to regulate carbon dioxide as an air pol-lutant. In September, the Environmental Protection Agency from Region 8 visited Craig to dis-cuss the Clean Power Plan, and Moffat County Commissioner John Kinkaid disagreed with the ruling. “No matter how many times extremists say carbon dioxide is a pollutant, it does not change the fact that it is not," Kinkaid said on Sept. 11. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 195-nation consortium formed in 1988, lists a number of climate change indicators in its 2013 Climate Change Assessment. According to the report, indicators include changes in sea level, glaciers and surface temperature. The Craig Daily Press sat down with two profes-sors from Colorado colleges to talk about the two sides of climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL

The science behind climate change lies in the way greenhouse gases trap radiation. Jim White, professor of Geological Sciences and Environmental Studies at University of Colorado-Boulder said there’s no other way to interpret it. “It would be weird if the atmosphere didn't warm up as we added more greenhouse gases,” White said. “Greenhouse gases are not going to do anything different than absorb energy because that's what they do.” Fossil fuels are a suspected culprit of causing climate change. White said coal plays a pretty big

role, but shouldn’t be counted out of America’s energy equation completely. “I don’t blame the coal or gas industry,” White said. “I find it odd we would blame the basic pro-vider of energy for the fact that we haven't come up with a basic plan for how to deal with this.” “I think we (Americans) need to have an adult level conversation about what to do about this,” White said.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT REAL

For others, greenhouse gasses trapping energy seems to be a myth. William M. Gray, professor emeritus at Colorado State University in the Department of Atmospheric Science, said he’s a “proud skeptic” of climate change. “It's greatly overdone,” Gray said. “The CO2 increasing just can't do and change the climate change system the way some of these models have shown.” Gray fears the coal industry is in danger and plans to spend the rest of his life working against the climate change movement and the effects it has on America’s energy industries. But he doesn't think research on renewable energy should completely stop, either. “I think this demonizing of coal is terrible and I think all the grant support to renewable energy has been essentially money down the drain because that hasn't worked out very well,” Gray said. “We have so many other problems that should dominate this,” Gray said.


The heated climate change debateBy Janelle O'Dea

Southwestern Energy’s oil and gas play in Northwest Colorado got much bigger in July after the company entered an agreement to acquire an additional 74,000 net acres of mineral leases in the Niobrara shale formation for $31 million. The company released its second-quarter earn-ings in August, highlighting the new acquisition in two separate transactions that are expected to close in the third quarter of 2014. The new $31 million deal is in addition to the $183 million acquisition of 306,000 net acres of mineral leases that Southwestern purchased in March from Shell Oil. Southwestern took interest in the Niobrara formation after Shell announced it would pull out of the area last August. In total, Southwestern Energy is investing $208 million in Northwest Colorado, which includes the mineral lease acquisitions and the costs associ-ated with drilling, according to the company’s second-quarter financials.

The company plans to drill five vertical explor-atory wells — three in Moffat County and two in Routt County — potentially by year’s end. Southwestern’s CEO Steve Mueller allud-ed that the company could drill as many as 10 exploratory wells: five in 2014 and the rest next year, according to the compa-ny’s second-quarter earnings call transcript. “Part of it is drilling across a section and under-standing the gas ratio and the liquids ratio and the quality of the liquids and trying to figure out where the better spots would be,” Mueller told analysts and investors in the earnings call. “We think ultimately, it’s going to take somewhere close to 10 wells to really get a point of where we understand enough to say go or no go.” If the company finds rich oil and gas spots, it then will drill horizontal wells. The company finished drilling the Welker well near Moffat County Road 30 west of Craig in August, hiring contract workers from Kawcak Inc. to help with the well. The company also opened an office in Craig at

390 Yampa Ave. and a small one in Steamboat. Although the company is eyeing more wells in the area, it could take some time before oil and gas production becomes fruitful. “Stay tuned, we’re excited about it,” said Christina Fowler, spokeswoman for Southwestern. “It’s going to take a little bit of time before we know what the long-term strategy is.” Moffat and Routt county officials are interested in what might become of the energy company’s presence in Northwest Colorado. “I think it’s great that Southwestern Energy is making that large of a commitment to our area. I hope it pays off for them and for us,” Moffat County Commissioner John Kinkaid said. “I hope they strike rich.” In May, the Routt County Planning Commission unanimously approved to recommend a permit for Southwest Energy to drill a new oil well located off Routt County Road 80. The State Land Board north of Hayden controls that land. On June 10, Routt County commissioners approved the permit.

“These vertical wells are for geological study. It’s simply to get a better understanding of the formation,” Fowler said. Southwestern Energy is entering the Niobrara formation on the heels of four contentious oil and gas ballot initiatives — 88, 89, 121 and 137 — that were withdrawn in the summer from potentially appearing on the November ballot. U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, dropped his two “anti-fracking” measures, 88 and 89. Initiative 88 would have required drilling rigs to be at least 2,000 feet from houses and schools, and 89 would have added an environmental bill of rights to the state constitution. In return, 121 and 137 — seen as pro-oil and gas industry initiatives — also were withdrawn. Initiative 121 would have stopped cities that ban hydraulic fracturing from receiving Colorado severance taxes from oil and gas drilling.

Reach Noelle Leavitt Riley at 970-875-1790 or [email protected].

Southwestern Energy invests millions more in Northwest Colorado: Drilling in Moffat, Routt counties will continue through 2015

By Noelle Leavitt Riley


You’ve heard the saying over and over, and you’ve seen the signs in yards, on business win-dows and bumper stickers across Craig, “Coal, it keeps the light on.” That’s exactly what Craig Station does day in and day out — it generates low-cost electricity to provide continuous electricity to a vast region in four states. The coal-fired power plant has a huge presence in the Craig and Moffat County community.

ABOUT CRAIG STATION AND CRAIG’S ELECTRICITY

Craig Station employs over 300 workers and is operated by Westminster-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. It paid nearly $36.7 million to its workforce in Northwest Colorado in 2013. The company is a wholesale electric power sup-plier that is owned by 44-electric cooperatives, and it dispenses electricity to 250,000 square miles in Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming. Although it produces electricity for parts of Colorado, the city of Craig receives its power mainly from Craig Station’s neighboring power plant, Hayden Station. Yet, when you look at the big picture of the electric grid, where the electricity comes from is irrelevant as long as consumers are able to “turn the lights on.” How much electricity is generated is based on a demand and supply model. The supply of electric-ity that is put on the grid depends solely on how much demand is created by energy consumers that day, said Tim Osborn, operations superinten-dent at Craig Station. Tri-state owns nearly 5,300 miles of power

lines through which its power plants, wind and solar farms deliver electricity. The company’s eight power stations work together to either raise or lower the amount of electricity put onto the grid in order to meet the needs of its coop members at any given time. Once on the grid, electricity flows to where it is needed. “If you can picture a sprinkler system in your yard, and the electricity is the water and you turn all of your sprinklers on, all of that (water) will go out of those sprinklers,” Osborn said. “And then one zone gets flooded out and doesn’t need (water) anymore, that zone can be shut off.”

It’s the same with electricity. When that light switch comes on, the electricity goes through, and when it’s shut off, the electricity flows to the next source. “After our peak time of day, at 10 or 11 p.m., somewhere in there, people turn their lights out, depending on the time of year, air conditioners get turned off… so the peak can fluctuate a little bit and that’s the demand,” Osborn said. The reason why the power plants need to work together to supply the demand is because mega-watt energy can’t be stored. “You can’t just store this volume of energy in a battery because one megawatt is 10,000 100-watt light bulbs, if you can picture that,” Osborn said.

COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS AND RENEWABLES

Coal-fired power plants can constantly fill that need for electricity, something that renewable forms of energy cannot, Osborn said. Power plants can produce energy 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Wind and solar energy, on the other hand, only operate when the sun is out or when the wind is blowing. When clouds block the sun or it’s night-time, energy can’t be produced. “If you want to have any sort of reliability on

wind or solar you have to at least have gas or coal backing it up,” noted Drew Kramer, public affairs manager for Tri-State. Tri-State isn’t foreign to the renewable energy option though, as the company has the 30-mega-watt Cimarron Solar Facility in northeastern New Mexico, meeting the “equivalent needs of 9,000 average homes,” according to the company.

Wind power is also in Tri-State’s energy port-folio. It operates the 51-megawatt Kit Carson Windpower Project in east-central Colorado, pro-viding roughly enough energy to power 14,000 homes. The company also has a 67-megawatt wind farm in northeastern Colorado called the Colorado

Highlands Wind project, which can power nearly 20,000 homes. “Additionally, Tri-State continues to be one of the region’s principal buyers of federal hydro-power,” according to the company.

HOW ELECTRICITY IS PRODUCED AT CRAIG STATION

In order to produce that electricity at a power plant, coal — that’s provided to Craig Station from Colowyo and Trapper mines — needs to be pulverized, heated, generated into energy and released onto the grid. Essentially, coal is burned in massive furnaces inside the plant, which produces heat. That heat is used to boil water, which produces steam. The steam is then used to turn the tur-bines, which produces electricity. The power plant has three units that carry out this process, recognizable by the three tall stacks that thrust high into the air called Unit 1, Unit 2 and Unit 3. Unit 1 and 2 have wet scrubbers that reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide that’s released into the atmosphere during the coal burning process. “The combustion byproduct (of coal) is sul-fur dioxide, which is SO2,” said Rich Thomson, maintenance superintendent at Craig Station. The scrubbers take the flue gas and condition the byproduct with water. The white plumes from Unit 1 and 2 that look like clear smoke are basically steam, or water vapor, he said. Unless it’s extremely cold outside, no plume (water vapor) is apparent from Unit 3, because it

Craig Station works

to supply

thedemand


"How much electricity is generated is based on a demand and supply model."


has what is called a dry scrubber, which doesn't use water. “The technology that was put in on Unit 3 was at the time when there was a concern about the amount of water that was being used in the west. They wanted to reduce the amount of water usage, so they went for a dry scrubber technology on Unit 3,” Thompson said. “Both technologies (wet and dry scrubbers) are considered best achievable control technologies. The point is to get the sulfur dioxide out of the emissions.” Craig Station takes water from the Yampa River and runs it through the power plant to produce steam to make electricity and to cool off big equipment — mainly the turbines. “We condense the steam as it goes through the turbine and back into the water so we can use

that condensed steam cycle again,” Osborn said. “We’re in a constant recycle process out here with the scrubbers and the river water.” The power plant recycles 18 million gallons of water each month, and is allowed to take 45 cubic feet per second of water from the river each month. The turbine, which is powered by the steam

from Yampa River water, rotates 3,600 times every minute (3,600 rpm). “The reason we have it rotating at that speed is our electric grid is based on 60 hertz electric power. The U.S. works on 60 hertz, so you basi-cally take the square root of 3,600 and that’s 60,” Osborn highlighted.

NEW EPA RULES COULD AFFECT COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT BUSINESS

Craig Station upgraded to a newer, faster turbine in 2008. “What we have done here starting in 2008 is put a better turbine in so that the steam flow through the turbine is more efficient,” Osborn said. “So we can actually burn the same amount

of fuel and have more output.” That essentially lowers the heat rate, something that the Environmental Protection Agency is asking coal-fired power plants to do in its Clean Power Plan proposal that was released by the Obama administration in June. Such upgrades are what Tri-State is hoping the EPA will consider recognizing as it works to final-

ize its Clean Power Plan. Comments on the proposed plan were originally due to the EPA by Oct. 16, but due to the hun-dreds of thousands of responses to the proposal, the EPA extended the deadline to Dec. 1. Once the plan is finalized, it will set standards on how much carbon emissions coal-fired power plants can release into the air, along with other standards. Tri-State calls itself a compliant company, meaning it makes proper upgrades to meet standards handed down by the state and federal government. The EPA visited Craig in September to hear from coal miners and power plant workers about how its proposal could harm the local economy. Tri-State’s primary concern is it wants the EPA to count the $176 million in upgrades it has already made to Units 1, 2 and 3’s turbines. “We did Unit 3 in 2008, in 2011 we did Unit 1 and did Unit 2 in 2013,” Osborn said. Only time will tell what will happen with the EPA plan, and the energy industry should have a good idea of what’s next in the coming year.

Contact Noelle Leavitt Riley at 970-875-1790 or [email protected].


CRAIG STATION BY THE NUMBERS:

$36.7 million paid to Craig Station’s 306 employees in

2013

Generates more than 1,301 megawatts, or more than

13 million 100-watt light bulbs in one day

Occupies 1,120 acres of land

Construction began in Sept. 1974. Unit 2 completed in 1979 and Unit 1 in 1980.

Unit 3 began commercial operation in 1984.

Uses and recycles 18 million gallons of water per month

PHOTO BY NOELLE LEAVITT RILEY


"Only time will tell what will happen with the EPA plan, and the energy industry should have a good

idea of what's next in the coming year."

CRAIG STATION COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT is one of the largest economic drivers in Northwest Colorado.

THE STACKS AT CRAIG STATION STAND TALL. Water vapor come out of Unit 1 and 2. Unit 3 uses a dry scrubber so nothing visible comes from that stack.

TIM OSBORN, OPERATIONS SUPERINTENDENT at Craig Station, explains how Units 1, 2 and 3 work at the power plant.


Entering the surface mine at Colowyo Coal Company is like embarking into a world of oversized Tonka trucks that dig and transfer thousands of tons of coal from one section of the mine to another. In other words — it’s a robust operation that would fascinate the eyes of a young child who is obsessed with monster trucks. That’s an extremely simple way to describe the work done at Colowyo, which utilizes massive machinery such as haul trucks, bulldozers and mining trucks — to name a few — to facilitate its mining operations. Colowyo is owned by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association which also owns and operates Craig Station coal-fired power plant in Craig. Located between Craig and Rifle in Meeker, the coal mine paid $28.2 million in 2013 to its 259 workers, 75 percent of whom are from Craig and the rest of whom are mainly from Meeker and surrounding areas, according to Tri-State figures. The surface mine supplies coal only to Craig Station, producing roughly 190,000 tons of coal each month that’s shipped to the power plant where it’s turned into energy, supplying electricity to Tri-State’s cooperative members. The mine opened in 1978 and has transferred hands a couple of times before Tri-State bought the operation in 2011. It now produces more than two million tons of coal per year from 12,000 acres of land. Currently, Colowyo is trying to expand its operations and is going through an environmen-tal assessment study administered by the Bureau of Land Management to mine a new site known as Collom. The environmental assessment process takes around two to three years before the land can actually be mined. Colowyo is one year into the assessment. It's all a part of the process to get final approval to mine that area. Monitoring workers safety and environment protection is at the top of Colowyo’s list, accord-ing to the mine’s executive staff. “I think people have this impression of mining and what it was in the 60s and 70s. It’s really not that way at all. It’s really a very high tech indus-try,” said Stephen Laramore, health and safety manager at Colowyo. “Basically, everything we do is very high tech. We need to be as efficient as possible, so we brought in all these tools to make mining safer and more efficient.” The Mining Safety & Health Administration (MSHA) regulates the mining industry, which sets standards of conduct and safety for mines across the United States. “You look at MSHA stats, from the time they started regulating the industry, if you can track those fatalities and injuries, it’s been on a steady decline,” Laramore said. “You just don’t see the types of things — at least in Western mining — that you’ve seen historically.” Over the years, coal mining injuries and fatali-ties have fluctuated, and the number of deaths in mines throughout the U.S. dropped significantly in 2014, according to MSHA.

In 2010, there were 48 coal mine related fatali-ties and only 11 so far this year. Colowyo’s last fatality was in 2012, when a worker was killed after losing control of a water tank truck. MSHA required that Colowyo boost its training on such equipment, and it did, according to the MSHA report. As a part of its environmental protection and safety program at Colowyo, large water tankers patrol the mine every day, spraying large quanti-ties of water on mine roads to keep the dust levels at bay, as required by law. Environmental protection also includes land reclamation.

“Now the first step in the mining process is we come in and we remove off the top soil layer, which is the layer that grows vegetation,” said Colowyo Mine manager Chris McCourt. “We sepa-rate that, we set it aside and that’s used when we put the land back. As a part of our permit-ting process and requirements for coal mining is

that we also look at what the surface looks like before.” After Colowyo removes coal from various coal seams in the ground, miners are required to return the land back to its original state before it was mined. Essentially, the open pit mine is filled back up with the soil and dirt that was removed, contoured and reseeded. That means, if you were to fly an airplane over

the land prior to the mining process, and then fly over the same area after the reclamation process, which requires a minimum of 10 years — it will look as if the land was never disturbed, according to McCourt.

Reach Noelle Leavitt Riley at 970-875-1790 or [email protected].

Colowyo's vast world of surface mining and monster machines


COLOWYO COAL MINE BY THE NUMBERS:

$28.2 million paid to Colowyo’s 259 employees in 2013

More than 2 million tons of coal mined from 29,000 acres of land

Open since 1978

A HAUL TRUCK MOVES a large quantity of coal to a coal stock pile within Colowyo Coal Company in Meeker. PHOTO BY NOELLE LEAVITT RILEY


COLOWYO HEALTH AND SAFETY MANAGER Stephen Laramore and Tri-State Public Affairs Manager Drew Kramer look onto a mining pit at Colowyo.



THE CRUSHER MACHINE AT COLOWYO dispenses coal into a loading truck.


THE BUCKET — attached to the walking dragline that can move up to 80 tons of overburden at one time — moves material around in the west pit at Colowyo.

With the flick of a switch, a glass bulb is beam-ing, but the energy within it that makes that modern miracle a possibility has a considerable journey before making it to your home. Stretching across Moffat and Routt counties and even reaching into Wyoming is electric coop-erative Yampa Valley Electric Association, which is the next stop for the power produced by Hayden Station. Though methods of providing power and levels of demand have changed greatly since the company’s 1940 inception, the mission to keep the state alight remains the same. The electricity generated begins at 69,000 volts fresh out of the plant and ready for transmission. In order to be usable for commercial purposes, the juice makes its way via conductors to one of 23 substations maintained by YVEA where the conversion through transformers puts the voltage at 7,200 or 14,400, depending on the size. Each substation serves different portions of the customer base — which currently stands at 26,540 members, with 566,376 megawatts sold this year to date — and sends electricity across the land for use at smaller capacities, as low as 110 volts at the typical household outlet. All power used by YVEA is provided by Xcel Energy, said Steve Johnson, cooperative vice president and chief operating officer, though por-tions of the electrical makeup have other sources, like wind and solar, other than that created at Hayden station. With the debate over renewable energy greater than ever, the use of coal remains a priority in YVEA’s operations, he added.

“Coal-fired electricity is the most reliable and the most economical ways of getting power that we have,” he said. The convenience of locally produced power created by fuel mined from within the region is a benefit, though the future may see some changes. Johnson said the requirements mandated by Senate Bill 13-252, necessitating rural electric co-ops to obtain 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, aren’t something the company can really argue with in the coming years. The key will be exploring new forms of energy while still utilizing the sources available and keeping costs reasonable amid the fluctuation. “We're dealing with all those mandates as they come, and we're being as prudent and fiscal as we can,” he said.

Contact Andy Bockelman at 970-875-1793 or [email protected]

YAMPA VALLEY ELECTRIC ASSOCIATION

BY THE NUMBERSFirst organized in 1940

26,540 current members

566,376 megawatts sold in 2014 to date

7,000 square mile service area in Moffat and Routt counties and parts of Carbon County, Wyoming

Source: YVEA

Yampa Valley Electric Association: We'll leave the light on for you

By Andy Bockelman

PHOTO BY ANDY BOCKELMAN

A SUBSTATION IN THE BROOKLYN NEIGHBORHOOD of Steamboat Springs is maintained by the cooperative Yampa Valley Electric Association. Transformers within substations take in voltages of 69,000 from Hayden sta-tion and convert it to smaller capacities for commercial use.


Trapper Mine Powering Craig Station since the 1970s

For Craig Station to produce its more than 1,300 megawatts of energy each day, it needs coal. It needs a lot of coal. Half of that coal comes from the Trapper Mine. It opened and began mining coal for its only cus-tomer, Craig Station, in 1977. The above ground mine produces between 2 and 2.5 million tons of coal every year. Four different entities own Trapper: the Salt River Project, a partial government agency and partial co-op; Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a co-op; PacifiCorp, an investor-owned utility and the Platte River Power Authority, a consortium of four municipalities. Trapper lies south of Craig Station and hopes to soon expand eastward. Environmental & External Affairs Manager Forrest Luke said they’re still exploring the area. “We don’t even know if there is any coal there yet,” Luke said. Currently, Trapper occupies more than 10,000 acres of land within its permit boundaries, and 6,570 acres of land has been mined so far. A total of 4,514 of those acres have been reclaimed. Though some may think of coal mining as a dangerous industry, Trapper's last fatal accident was in 1999. A Trapper employee with more than seven years of blasting experience was attempt-ing to retrieve a misplaced device out of a blast hole when it accidentally detonated. Coal mines are required by law to reclaim land. It simply means that the mined land must be returned to its original state or better after mining is finished. Reclamation includes salvaging and replac-ing all topsoil, providing a diverse seed mix

to re-establish forage, ensuring the landscape looks close to how it looked before disturbance, protecting wildlife in the area and monitoring effects of land removal on ground and surface water nearby. In 2002, the mine was recognized as one of the three best examples of mine land reclamation in the country. It was selected from more than 1,400 U.S. coal mines. Trapper also employs one of the American Society of Mining and Reclamation’s reclama-tionists of the year in 2006, Billy Nicholson. Trapper provides Colorado wildlife with water and healthy, reclaimed land. Smaller species found on Trapper’s land include the blue-winged teal, western kingbirds, badgers, Wyoming ground squirrels, rattlesnakes, turkey vultures and dragonflies.

Big game species include pronghorn, elk and mule deer. Luke said the pronghorn population near the mine has increased over time from zero to several hundred, and the elk population has increased tenfold. Trapper hires an outside consultant to take aerial photos for wildlife monitoring.

Trapper has played a role in conserving the Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, according to Luke. The species was nearly listed as endangered more than once within the last decade. In Northwest Colorado, Trapper’s reclama-tion area is 1 percent of the bird's habitat, but 18 percent of the leks can be found on reclaimed land. A combination of reclamation success, regional conservation efforts and ongo-ing research prevented the bird from being listed. Trapper has also seen increasing numbers of sage grouse, another potentially endangered spe-cies, on its reclaimed land. Luke said the seed mix used to reclaim land contains about 30 different native species of plants, and a company in Utah collects the seed from Colorado.

“From the timing and application of the seed to the depth of how far down it’s planted, it’s all planned very carefully,” Luke said. Wildlife also finds success on these lands because many species, such as Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, enjoy open areas. But because mature shrubs are difficult to re-establish, they

are moved and placed close together for wildlife to use as shelter. While Trapper spends time and money to focus on wildlife survival and the health of habitats in its mining areas, they’re also learning to cope with new regulations coming from the EPA. “There’s a war on coal coming out of the Obama administration,” Luke said. “They don’t like us, and they want to get rid of coal in this country. I don’t think they care about collateral damage.” Luke said although last month’s meeting with the EPA showed that the agency wants to be flex-ible about energy policy, they’re still proposing emissions cuts of 30 percent by 2030. “No matter what flexibility they’re talking about, they still have to reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent,” Luke said. “Where are those going to come from, if not by shutting down a unit at the power plant?” Graham Roberts, an environmental engineer for Trapper, agrees with Luke. “For many of the regulations now, the mea-surable benefit is so small that they have over-stepped their bounds a bit,” Roberts said. “I feel this is very forced and unneeded.” Roberts and Luke, as well as many others in the coal mining industry, are concerned about the long-term future. “If you start whittling off pieces of the economy, you’ll have a measurable loss that can’t be replaced by anything else,” Roberts said.

Contact Janelle O'Dea at 970-875-1795 or [email protected] follow her on Twitter @jayohday

By Janelle O'Dea

PHOTO BY JANELLE O'DEA

A TRAPPER MINE HAUL TRUCK prepares to dump a load of coal near Craig Station.

TRAPPER MINE BY THE

NUMBERS:$21.8 million in wages and

benefits paid to Trapper's 175 employees in 2013

Between 2 and 2.5 million tons of coal mined in one year on 10,382

acres of land

Began mining in 1977

Source: Forrest Luke, Trapper Mine

"No matter what flexibility they're talking about, they still have to

reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent."


For nearly 50 years, it’s been providing power to Northwest Colorado, and Hayden Station shows no sign of stopping with new develop-ments on the horizon in its objective of providing power for Moffat and Routt counties. The coal-fired power plant is a crucial com-ponent of regional energy production, with two units — Unit 1 was operational in 1965, Unit 2 in 1976 — providing 446 megawatts between them and serving thousands of people in the area. The process of converting low-sulfur coal — mined and transported from nearby Twentymile Mine — involves the substance being placed into

a pulverizer and ground into fine powder. From there, the residue goes into the furnace system of the plant, heating up the water in the boiler thousands of degrees, creating steam while the resultant ash is caught by a baghouse, which prevents release into the air. The location burns about 5,000 tons of coal daily, keeping a supply of up to 60 days worth on hand. An average of about 3 million gallons of water are used each day, provided by the Yampa River, while the location boasts no water discharge offsite. “We use a lot of water in our scrubbers too, and we try to recycle as much water as possible wherever we can,” said Manny Zeringue, plant director. “All plants use what they call a heat sink, and whether it’s nuclear or gas-fired, that heat sink is going to be about the same based on the amount of generation. The steam turbine is using a tremendous amount of water.”

The steam from the furnace — surplus of which is put into a condenser and reused as a cooling agent in the boiler — keeps the turbines of the units going, which in turn powers generator rotors to create electricity, sent through trans-formers and transmission lines for consumer use. Hayden Station wholesales power to Yampa Valley Electric Association for Moffat and Routt counties and is responsible for about 7 percent of the power provided in Colorado by prima-ry owner, Xcel Energy. PacifiCorp, of Portland, Oregon, and Phoenix’s Salt River Project also own stakes in the station.

The latest happening for Hayden is the con-struction of Selective Catalytic Reduction equip-ment, which will add to the measures already in place to comply with the Clean Air Clean Jobs Act of 2010 and the Environmental Protection Agency’s forthcoming proposed rules. Combined with the baghouses, dry scrubbing systems and low-NOx burners already in place to control particulates, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, the SCRs — the first of which is currently under construction and set to be operational for Unit 1 in 2015 — will further reduce emissions. “I think it’s something that’s really good for the coal industry, stepping up, doing everything we can to clean up the air,” said Andy Mills, engineer-ing and technical support manager for Hayden Station. “It’s a good environmental control.” Such work is an important part of the com-pany’s desire to make sure the station is efficient, safe and clean as possible, said Xcel Media

Representative Mark Stutz. Xcel provides energy in multiple states with varying sources, including natural gas, nuclear and, to a lesser extent, oil, wind, solar and refuse-derived fuel. Coal makes up 53.8 percent of the overall gen-eration provided by the business, and in Colorado that rate is 68 percent. “We’re big on renewables, but coal plays an important role in what we do, and coal genera-tion is going to be part of this company for many years to come,” Stutz said. “We’re obviously going to be transitioning to other forms of energy as a society, but that’s going to take decades, and coal’s going to be a key component.”

Contact Andy Bockelman at 970-875-1793 or

By Andy Bockelman


TRAPPER DUMPS ITS COAL straight into one of Craig Station's crushers, where it will travel by conveyor belt to more crushers. Then, the coal will be dumped out in a pile that will eventually endure further crushing until it is flour-fine and finally, it will travel to the firing part of the plant.


A VIEW FROM THE TOP of one of Trapper Mine's mining pits

Hayden Station: Charging up Northwest Colorado

HAYDEN STATIONBY THE NUMBERS

$2.7 million paid to 87 employees in 2013

Generates 446 megawatts, or almost 4.5 mil-lion 100-watt light bulbs in one year

Occupies 1,315 acres of land

Hayden Station began construction in 1962, originally owned by Colorado-Ute Electric

Association. Unit 1 was operational by 1965. Unit 2 began in 1976.

Uses 3 million gallons of water per day

Burns about 5,000 tons of coal daily

Sources include Xcel Energy and

Yampa Valley Data Partners

"The location burns about 5,000 tons of coal daily."

PHOTO BY ANDY BOCKELMAN

THE TURBINE OF HAYDEN STATION generates power from burning coal, creating steam and powering rotors to create electricity for use throughout Northwest Colorado. Shown is Unit 1, which was first built in 1962 and operational in 1965, later accompanied by a second unit in 1976.


Twentymile Coal Company: Digging below the surfaceNew coal beckons but future demand uncertain for underground mine

For all the complex, highly engineered machin-ery required to run an underground mine, it’s a Dodge four-wheel-drive pickup truck that delivers miners to their work site every day deep under the earth at Twentymile Coal Company’s Foidel Creek Mine — commonly referred to as Twentymile. Miners arrive for the start of their shifts at 6 a.m. and, following crew meetings, load into the pickups to make the 30- to 45-minute drive to the longwall operation 1,300 feet under ground. Twentymile employs approximately 345 people in addition to 30 contractors that run the state’s most productive coal-mining operation, which sits underneath 20,000 acres in Routt County near Hayden. Preceded by a surface mine also by the name of Foidel Creek Mine, which began extracting coal in the area in the late 1950s, the mine now known as Twentymile went underground in 1983. “It got to about a 12 to 1 strip ratio,” said Twentymile General Manager Pat Sollars, who has worked at the mine for over 25 years. “It was not economical to do a surface mine operation. They had to remove 12 layers of rock in order to get to one layer of coal.” After going underground, Twentymile has passed through several hands throughout its more than 30-year life and was purchased by Peabody Energy in 2005. Peabody has over 50 years of history in the area, according to mining history buff and Colorado Northwestern Community College Surface Mine Safety Instructor Ed Koucherik. Previously known as Peabody Coal Company, it has owned and operated mines in the Yampa Valley region since the mid 1960s, including the Wolf Creek strip mine and the Seneca II and Yoast strip mines, which both closed in 2005. Peabody Energy is now the world’s largest private-sector coal company, doing $7 billion in sales in 2013 with 251.7 million tons of coal sold for use in producing power and making steel. The company operates 27 mines in the United States and Australia and has a growing presence in countries such as China, Indonesia and India. Twentymile is the sole supplier of coal to Hayden Station, supplying 1.8 million tons per year to fuel the coal-fired power plant owned by Xcel Energy, which supplies power to Yampa Valley residents via Yampa Valley Electric Association. Twentymile also has a contract with Public Service of Colorado in Denver through 2017, at which point PSCO will convert to natural gas, according to Sollars. Other customers include Monsanto, industrial utilities in Texas, and cus-tomers in the southeastern U.S., Hawaii and Europe. Production levels at Twentymile have consis-tently remained between 7 and 8 million tons for the past five years, down from production levels upwards of 8 million tons between 2003 and 2008, which reached a peak of 9.4 million tons in 2005, according to numbers from the Colorado Department of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.

The August 2014 Fast Facts report from Yampa Valley Data Partners revealed that as of June, Twentymile’s production levels were up 17 per-cent compared with June 2013, putting it on target to match or exceed 2013’s production of 7.2 million tons of coal. Twentymile is Colorado’s most productive coal mine, and accounted for 30 percent of the state’s total coal production in 2013 according to data from CDRMS compiled by YVDP. “There’s enough coal mined at Twentymile to power one third of the homes in Colorado,” Sollars said. Additionally, data compiled by YVDP shows that Twentymile provides some of the highest wages in the area, paying more than double the wages of the average job in Routt County. In Moffat County, Peabody was the largest employer of residents in 2013, and mining accounted for more than 18 percent of the total labor income, according to YVDP. Dennis Bouwens, who retired from Twentymile last year after 25 years at the mine and 45 years in the mining industry, affirmed that it was good work and described his co-workers as family. “It takes a certain kind of person to be a coal miner,” Bouwens said. “It’s knowing that you’re doing a job that’s going to benefit others because it’s going to help them get electricity. It’s the satisfaction of doing a job well done that a lot of people don’t want to do.” Moffat and Routt counties rank second and third in the state for the highest number of jobs provided by the mining industry. When consider-ing the multiplier effect of the mining industry on area jobs, nearly one in every five jobs in Moffat County and one in every ten in Routt is attribut-able to area coal mines, according to YVDP. “We use a lot of the companies in Craig for our materials supplies and services,” Sollars said. “There are a lot of people we depend on.” However, employment numbers are currently dropping at Twentymile, down nearly 40 percent from five years ago. The mine also cut 47 contract

positions at the beginning of the year, according to The Steamboat Pilot and Today, citing cus-tomer demand as the reason for the reduction. Part of the reason for the high employment numbers back in 2009, Sollars explained, had to do with the mine plan, which included developing two new sections for future mining and required extra manpower. Peabody developed and began mining the adjoining Sage Creek mine in 2012 with the intention of transitioning full production to the new mine by 2015, according to the Pilot. However the timeline has been pushed back and the mine has sat idle with no definite plans in place for when it will resume. Fluctuations in the industry are inevitable, with operations dependent on the demand for coal. But in recent years, demand has been affected by statewide regulations such as the Renewable Energy Standard, which requires that 20- to 30-percent of energy needs be met by renewable sources by 2020, and the Clean Air Clean Jobs Act passed in 2010. Currently, coal miners and industry profes-sionals are worried about the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan,

which, if passed, would take effect in 2015. “Proposed regulations will make energy more scarce and more expensive without any material improvement in emissions,” Peabody said in a press release in June. In addition to Sage Creek, Twentymile was per-mitted in 2007 to begin explorations of the Wolf Creek seam, approximately 150 feet below the Wadge seam that it is currently mining. The new seam is approximately 25 feet in depth compared to the 9-foot-deep Wadge seam. “Exploration is pretty much complete,” Sollars said. “We’ve identified the reserves, we’ve identi-fied the quality. We’ve started initial slopes down into that reserves. The market really determines how we move the mine.” In sum, there is no shortage of accessible coal for Twentymile Coal Company to mine, though an updated report from CDRMS indicates that Twentymile predicts coal extraction from the Wadge seam to end in 2016. By all accounts, the market will have the final word on the future of their mining operations. “The industry’s given me a good paying job and let me raise my family, and I hope it still survives with everything that’s going on,” Bouwens said.

Contact Lauren Blair at 970-875-1794 or [email protected]

TWENTYMILE BY THE NUMBERS$47.3 million in wages and benefits paid to Twentymile’s

455 employees in 2013

7.2 million tons of coal mined from beneath 20,000 acres of land

in 2013

Began mining in 1983

Source: Peabody Energy, Colorado Department of Labor and Employment

PHOTO COURTESY OF TWENTYMILE MINE

TWENTYMILE COAL CO. BEGAN construction of the new Sage Creek Portal in 2011.

By Lauren Blair

PHOTO COURTESY OF TWENTYMILE MINE

TWENTYMILE COAL COMPANY BEGAN construction of the new Sage Creek Portal in 2011.


Yampa Valley Electric Association co-op mem-bers will soon have the option to participate in one of Northwest Colorado’s first solar ventures. Clean Energy Collective, a Colorado-based group that aims to provide clean power genera-tion to people regardless of housing ownership status, partnered with YVEA to build a solar garden in Craig. The garden is an effort between the city of Craig, CEC and YVEA. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, Colorado installed 56 megawatts of solar electric capacity in 2013. The entire state has 359 megawatts of solar energy capacity, or enough to power 68,600 homes. “What we do is we provide the interconnection point from their system back to our system,” said Steve Johnson, chief operating officer and vice president for YVEA. “Our partnership will allow the energy produced by the solar garden to be placed on the electric grid so that it may be uti-lized by all YVEA members.” Those who rent or own property on YVEA’s elec-tric grid can purchase one of the $825 panels. Each panel will save consumers about $45 per year on their electric bill. As of Oct. 8, consumers had purchased 46 percent of the garden. In June 2013, the Colorado Senate passed a bill that requires YVEA to have 20 percent of the energy in their portfolio come from renewable sources by 2020. “It benefits us to meet the Senate Bill 252 man-dates that were placed upon us,” Johnson said. “It allows us to accumulate power from green energy sources.” YVEA put out a call for proposals for renewable projects nearly two and a half years ago, and

signed the contract with CEC a little more than a year ago. The project was not originally driven by legislature. "We actually decided to do a renewable project as a result of member interest and Senate Bill 252 punctuated the need to move forward on that," said Tammi McKenzie, YVEA's director of marketing. The garden will be next to Craig’s water treat-ment plant, and will be able to produce just over half a megawatt of energy, or more than 5,000 100-watt light bulbs’ worth. It can power 88 homes that require a 6 1/2 watt electrical sys-tem, which is what the average home requires. Craig City Manager Jim Ferree said building the solar garden is a “win-win-win” for Craig. “It's adjacent to our sewer lagoons out in the county and we have no future plans for it, so it's making good use of some idle property that's not in use for the city's operations,” Ferree said. “It meets CEC’s needs and also satisfies a need for Yampa Valley Electric.” The city of Craig leases the land to CEC in exchange for 5 kilowatts of power per year, or $800 in savings on the city’s electric bill. CEC’s proprietary remote meter measures the performance of the panels and calculates the amount of energy generated in the garden. The energy distributes to panel owners based on the number of panels purchased in the garden. The credit rate for energy produced by the panels is set by the power purchase agreement between YVEA and CEC. Todd Davidson, director of marketing for the CEC, said the credit rate is tied to inflation. “If you buy enough panels to cover your bill 100 percent, the bill credit rates will always go up with the kilowatt-hour price set by YVEA, so you’ll still be covered 100 percent,” Davidson said. About 50 percent of the garden’s panels have been bought so far. Those who wish to buy a panel can finance one through Sooper Credit Union or pay for the panels in full. The garden was expected to break ground in fall of 2014, but leasing issues prevented CEC from beginning the project. Trapper Mine, a surface coal mine about 5 miles south of Craig, owns the mineral rights under the solar garden ground. This means Trapper Mine owns any natural gas, coal, oil or any other natu-ral resource that lives under the solar garden. “There became a mutual understanding, and anything they do underneath shouldn’t affect the surface,” Davidson said. “It’s so far underground, it’s not an issue at all.” Construction is now set to begin this month (October).


SOLAR ENERGY BY THE NUMBERS

More than 346 solar energy compa-nies in Colorado employing 3,600

people

359 megawatts of solar energy cur-rently installed in Colorado

$233 million invested in personal, business and utility solar energy in

2013

$5.50 to $7 per watt to install solar systems

Average 2,000-watt system (2 kilo-watts) costs between $11,000 and

$14,000 to install before tax credits and rebates

2 kw system saves consumers an average of $280 on their electricity

bill

Source: Solar Energy Industries Association, Colorado Energy Office

THIS IS ONE OF TWO SOLAR GARDENS installed and maintained outside Breckenridge by Clean Energy Collective.

COURTESY PHOTO

Craig's solar garden to light up renewable

opportunitiesBy Janelle O'Dea

Northwest Colorado is home to coal, oil, natural gas, and now, a solar garden. But what about wind power? Although strong winds blow from time to time, wind resources in the western half of Colorado are generally poor according to a wind map from the U.S. Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “Strong winds aren’t that good. What you really want are slow, steady winds,” said Colorado Renewable Energy Society Executive Director Roger Alexander. The main criteria for classifying wind power are wind speed and consistency, as well as air density. Measurements are typically taken between 50 and 80 meters above the ground, which is the height of most commercial wind turbines. The ability to connect the wind turbine with the grid is also a major consideration. “Transmission, quality and availability of the resource are the most important things they consider when choosing a site,” Alexander said. A wind map of the United States reveals that most of the nation’s prime wind resources are located in a large band running through the Midwest from North Dakota through Texas. But while Northwest Colorado may not be ideal for producing wind power, residents can still benefit from the addition of wind power on the eastern plains. Yampa Valley Electric Association purchases power from Excel Energy in order to supply energy to Northwest Colorado residents. Excel’s portfolio is on target to include 20 percent wind power in 2014 for a total of 2,668 megawatts, according to Excel spokesperson Gabriel Romero. This percentage has doubled since 2010. In Colorado, “Wind power is capable of meeting more than 24 times the state’s current electricity needs,” according to the American Wind Energy Association website. With the 13th best wind resource in the U.S., Colorado currently gets 13.8 percent of its electricity from wind and ranks fifth in the nation for number of wind-related jobs,

according to the AWEA. Benefits of wind power include zero carbon emissions and miniscule water usage, which the AWEA estimates saves more than 1.6 billion gallons of water per year in Colorado and avoids over 6.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. This would be the equivalent of removing over 1 million cars from the road. And Alexander said that as wind turbine tech-nology improves, the cost of wind energy is going down. “Wind is one of the lowest cost sources of gen-eration,” Alexander said. As electric utilities and cooperatives work to meet the Colorado Renewable Portfolio Standard of 30 percent (for utilities) and 20 percent (for rural cooperatives) renewable energy by 2020 (respectively), wind power’s presence in the energy blend will only continue to grow.

Contact Lauren Blair at 970-875-1794 or [email protected].

STOCK PHOTO

A ROW OF WIND TURBINES turn to produce renewable energy.

Where the wind blowsBy Lauren Blair


21088113

The Energy Blend

Documents

Transcript of The Energy Blend