Residents Concerned About Proposed Coal Mine Set Public Meeting for Thursday

For the past several weeks, farmers in Champaign and Vermilion County have been talking about an Indiana coal company's interest in opening an underground coal mine under farmland at the Champaign-Vermilion border. Now a group of farmers and others critical of the idea are inviting the public to learn more at a meeting on Thursday night.

Sunrise Coal of Terre Haute is not represented on the list of speakers. That's the company that has been talking with landowners about mineral rights for an area located between Homer and Allerton. Instead, the meeting will feature environmental groups, and others concerned about how the mine would impact the area.

Vermilion County farmer Charles Goodall, one of the meeting organizers, says there are other mines in the area, but this is the first that would go underneath prime farmland. Goodall says Sunrise plans to wash coal on site, and the resulting waste water --- or slurry water --- would carry toxic elements from the coal.

"And the disposal would be either by dumping it in local streams, or by injecting it underground", says Goodall. "In either case, it can have an immediate or long-term impact by decreasing the amount of clean groundwater available to people both in their farms, but also available to villages that have groundwater based systems"

Goodall says he's also s worried that Sunrise coal may use ""longwall" mining techniques to extract the coal. "And that type of mining immediately drops bathtub-shaped ponds at the surface", according to Goodall. "And Illinois does not prohibit long-wall mining. So it's something that has to be included in each lease, as a type of mining not permitted by the lessor, the person who owns the land."

Longwall mining is just one technique that Sunrise Coal could use, if it builds an underground mine at the Champaign-Vermilion site. The coal company has not yet responded to a call for comment.

The public meeting about the proposed mine starts at 7 PM Thursday night at the Immanuel Lutheran Church, north of Broadlands.