Eastern Kentucky, Day 2 by Emily Grace Sarver-Wolf

The class poses on top of a multi-million dollar truck used for
mountaintop removal coal mining.

Tammy assessing a hive.

Our first stop today was at an active surface mine site in Perry County, where we worked with Tammy Hornhttp://www.eri.eku.edu/coal-country-beeworks) to help treat the hives there for Varroa mites, to do some assessment of hive health, and do an assessment of honey production. This surface mine had a lovely crop of young volunteer sourwood trees that the bees will appreciate when they bloom later in the year. To treat for Varroa mites, we used powdered sugar to encourage hygienic behavior in the bees. Tammy assured us that the bees would have everything cleaned out in a day or two. We made sure the boxes we dusted had brood, since Tammy instructed us on the life cycle of Varroa mites, and informed us that mites reproduce in cells of brood (mostly drones). Dismantling the hives gave us plenty of opportunity to learn interesting facts about bees, the plants they pollinate, and their life cycles in general; we even got to see a live queen in one hive, and some students tried some royal jelly from a different hive. Some students seeded a special pollinator friendly wildflower mix, which will hopefully come up with the next rain, and we used a problematic weed eater to help reduce rodent invasion of the hives.

Jordan Engel seeding the mine site.

                We ate a lunch of sandwiches as a group before heading out to our second surface mine. We continued with our hive assessment and mite treatment. The group was much more efficient on our third time around. Students did some seeding here as well, and we got to look at some of the past reforestation work done on this mine. The trees were planted about a year ago, but the mining on this site had ceased about 7 years ago. Before planting the land, the hillside was “ripped” to loosen the soil to help the trees root and grow. The trees that were planted were also specially chosen to be pollinator friendly. We also got to look at some 15/16 American chestnut

Inspecting a planting of blight-resistant
Chestnut trees.

hybrids that seem to be doing well. Throughout our tour of the mine, we spoke with several different mine employees and managers who were all very nice and welcoming; even to a bunch of college kids with lots of questions.

This particular mine currently has permits to mine about 800 acres, but thousands of acres had already been mined at this site alone. There also are plans to mine some of the adjacent mountaintops, resulting in thousands more acres of mine sites. We learned that in order for a coal seam to make economic sense to mine, there needs to be a 35:1 ratio. That is, 35 inches of overburden to one inch of

Dr. Olson at the bee yard.

Jordan Engel on an active surface mine.

coal. If there is more overburden, then it doesn’t make economic sense to mine it, and if there is less, then it is that much more viable. This mine employed ~43 people, not including the contractors. We got to look/crawl on some of the HUGE mining equipment which gave me an appreciation for the scale of earth that is moved through the mountaintop removal mining. We got a close look at the ripper (whose work we saw earlier) and the tires alone were taller than each one of us. This machine uses approximately 400 gallons of diesel per shift. We also got to climb on a dump truck, which also had huge tires, which cost approximately $30,000 each, and each truck had 8 tires. This whole site uses approximately 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel per day, which is brought in by the tractor trailer load once a day. Estimating the price of diesel at $4, it costs about $32,000 per day to fuel the mining equipment, which is a staggeringly large number to me. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, a ton of coal (2,000 pounds) from Central Appalachia is currently valued at $67.27 (http://www.eia.gov/coal/news_markets/index.cfm). The economics of coal companies and the sheer quantity of money and technology that goes into providing our nation with electricity is astonishing to me.

Our guide for the day was kind
enough to show us the equipment,
like this massive tire imported from
Russia.

Throughout our expedition to Eastern Kentucky, I know I personally have been overwhelmed with the natural beauty of the landscape. While we have seen mountaintop removal sites that that have been restored well, they still have a fraction of the biodiversity that they once had. Most of the sites look more like savannah or prairie than Appalachian forest. There can’t be too many restoration efforts, and there is a somewhat endless amount of work to be done. Our class tours of these mine sites has certainly provided me with new perspective.