State Safety

From: The Daily Times (Farmington, NM)

By Chuck Slothower

WATERFLOW San Juan Mine remains closed more than two months after a fire broke out underground and prompted an emergency evacuation.

The section of the mine where the Sept. 9 fire began, known as the long wall, remains sealed. Mine workers are working on recovery efforts to get the mine running again, but officials can offer no timetable for when normal coal production will resume.

San Juan Mine, operated by Australia-based BHP Billiton, supplies coal to San Juan Generating Station about 15 miles west of Farmington. The mine is a major employer, with approximately 580 workers.

“During this mining operations stoppage, our main focus has been on safety, working cooperatively with the regulatory agencies and ensuring our employees are taken care of,” Jac Fourie, president of BHP Billiton’s New Mexico Coal unit, said in a prepared statement Tuesday.

Employees who normally would be producing coal have instead been assigned to recovery efforts, done work that would otherwise be outsourced to contractors or sent to the nearby Navajo Mine, which is also operated by BHP Billiton.

“Throughout the process, no employees were laid off,” said Norman Benally, a BHP Billiton spokesman. “No employees had their pay interrupted at all.”

Mine officials have re-entered the mine to examine affected areas and place additional seals upon the long wall. They are working closely with the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, Benally said.

MSHA officials did not return several messages seeking comment on the mine’s closure.

The mine is not producing coal, Benally said.

“Right now we are just performing the recovery activities,” he said. “Once the recovery activities are completed, we will begin the normal mine operations. I really don’t have a timeframe for that. It just depends how well the preparations go.”

San Juan Generating Station relies on the mine as its sole supplier of coal. It has not been affected, said Don Brown, spokesman for plant operator Public Service Co. of New Mexico.

“At the time of the fire in September, the plant had a reserve stockpile of coal sufficient to run the plant for several months,” Brown said. “Based on the latest information from San Juan Coal Co., we believe the existing stockpile is sufficient to continue normal operations until full mine production resumes next year, but we are investigating our options should the mine not resume full operations as expected.”

Such options could include running the mine at less than full capacity, or procuring coal from another source, he said.

The coal-fired power plant is an important part of the Southwest’s power grid, producing 1,800 megawatts of electricity.

Investigators are looking into the fire that led to the closure. It ignited on the long wall, an area created by an enormous machine that moves horizontally, digging coal as it goes, said Terence Foreback, New Mexico state mine inspector. The machine produces most of the mine’s coal.

Miners evacuated after the fire broke out. No one was injured.

Shortly after the fire began, the mine was flooded with nitrogen gas to starve the area of oxygen. The reaction worked, quickly extinguishing the fire.

Underground coal fires can be extremely dangerous. They are relatively rare in the United States, but more common in developing countries. In 2010, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners.

Regulatory authorities tend to proceed cautiously after mine fires, Foreback said.

“Whenever there is an underground ignition or fire, that organization prefers to take a conservative approach, their concern being that heat or a portion of that fire may still be burning,” he said.

The fire at San Juan Mine was caught early in part because of the nitrogen-injection system, which is relatively rare in the U.S., Foreback said. San Juan Mine also had several advantages compared to the Upper Big Branch Mine, which had poor dust control and used dull machine bits.

“Several of the things that made a major difference between that incident and this was San Juan Mine’s ventilation being adequate, their dust control being adequate,” he said.

BHP Billiton’s technology and safety-first approach kept the fire from becoming worse, he said.

“While underground mining has inherent dangers, it’s the risk control you take that determines whether an underground mining situation is safe,” he said.