Coal Age Magazine - For nearly 100 years, Coal Age has been the magazine that readers can trust for guidance and insight on this important industry.
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1980-1989 1980s: The Massive Build Out Begins 1980-1989 T he 1980s opened with the coal indus- try grappling with increased regula- tions and recovering from fierce labor battles. President Jimmy Carter was try- ing to convert utilities, steel mills, and industrial boilers from oil and natural gas to coal. He and his successor President Ronald Reagan were both big proponents of building a domestic ener- gy plan. A larger slice of the energy pie was up for grabs if the coal industry could only get its act together. It eventu- ally would, but no before the landscape changes dramatically. A major build out was about to take place in the 1980s. The coal industry would add 151 million tons and most of the expansion would be in the West. After a 10-year moratorium, the Department of Interior (DoI) resumed coal leasing on fed- erals lands. With the passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, many regulatory restraints on the railroads were removed. The Interstate Commerce Commission would subsequently approve several rail mergers and coal consumers in the Midwest and Southeast began to see coal from the West moving their way. While regulation was freeing up some sectors, the opposite was taking place with coal mining and utilization. Surface coal operators were learning to contend with the Surface Mining Control & Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) and the Office of Surface Mining (OSM), which administered the regulations. Underground miners were coping with dust sampling and black lung issues. Utilities were dealing with amendments to the Clean Air Act and by the end of the decade concerns about acid rain would lead to even more regulations. As far as mining and processing, com- puters were beginning to play a larger role as technology shifted from main- frames to PCs. Similar to everyday life, technology and computers began to improve all aspects of mining. In the mid- 1980s, Autocad drafting software operat- ing on IBM 386s replaced hand-drawn mine maps and the Leroy lettering guide. By the end of decade, the squeal of the Hayes dial-up modems could be heard in mine offices as email began to supplant facsimiles. The increased use of comput- ers begins to influence every aspect of mining from pass matching on the sur- face, to ventilation surveys underground, even train loading systems at the prep plant. Deregulation of the railroads allows western coal to move easier into the East. 138 www.coalage.com Safety performance and productivity take huge strides. Most of the coal pro- duced underground is cut with continu- ous miners working room-and-pillar sections. Longwall technology has arrived and throughout the decade American coal miners would improve a system devel- 100th Anniversary Special Issue oped by Europeans. On the surface, load- ing and hauling equipment continued to grow in size and speed. Traditional area strip mines with draglines moving over- burden begin to incorporate truck-shovel techniques for pre-stripping and mining; and they also experiment with buck- etwheel excavators (BWEs) and cross-pit spreaders for moving overburden. Coal processing would evolve from a way to improve the environment by reducing black water and pyritic sulfur to a way to capture more fine coal. Coal Age remains under the leadership of Joseph F. Wilkinson, editor, and Paul C. Merritt, managing editor, for most of the decade. At the time, Wilkinson was also editing Engineering & Mining Journal (E&MJ;). During 1980 and 1981, regular editorial columns appear without photos facing the inside back cover. Most are writ- ten by Wilkinson, some are penned by junior editorial staffers and a few guest commentators weigh in occasionally. That is the only glimpse the readers get of the editorial team. In true McGraw-Hill fashion Coal Age reports the news about the coal business and tries to remain unbiased. Throughout the decade, the editorial staff experiments with articles reporting on specific forms of equipment or areas of mining and pro- cessing. Two great examples are the U.S. Longwall Census and the U.S. Prep Plant Census, which Coal Age still publishes today. For several years, readers selected certain leaders for the Coal Age Award. Many of the covers where illustrations, which were trendy at the time, and the magazines routinely contained more than 100 pages, sometimes as many as 200 pages or more. Coal Age also had competition. Maclean Hunter's Coal Mining & Processing, which later became Coal Mining, was competing for readership and advertising dollars. Maclean Hunter August 2012