Why we should say no to coal

             Clean drinking water: it’s something we sometimes take for granted here in central Illinois. However, something so important to us all may soon go away.

The Sunrise Coal Company wants to build their Bulldog Coal Mine in the area between the communities of Homer, Sidell, Fairmount, and Broadlands. The effect the mine would have on these communities, as well as those in the surrounding area, could be devastating. That is, if those people value having clean water.

When the Bulldog Coal Mine is fully functional, it will use about 2,000,000 gallons of water per day! The communities of Homer, Broadlands, Longview, and Allerton use about 258,000 gallons of water per day combined. If we let the mine use this much water, we might not have any for ourselves. If water is used at such a rate, it cannot be naturally replaced fast enough. Our wells will not be able to get us the water we need to survive.

That is more of a long term issue. However, there is a much more urgent issue that must be addressed: pollution. Sunrise Coal has announced that they plan to wash the coal on site. Once the coal is washed, they will take the clean coal away. What they leave behind is potentially deadly. The water used to clean the coal, called slurry, can just be dumped into mine pits. This poor disposal system allows the slurry to contaminate our water supply. Slurry is toxic, and could render our water unusable.

However, this issue has a wider impact than just our drinking water. The Bulldog Coal Mine could destroy the life in nearby streams. First of all, the mine makes a storm water basin to help manage water flow. The basin is essentially a dam, and that has two big problem. The first is that a basin won’t drain the farmland the way the a stream used to. The second is that pollution from the mine will be steadily discharged into the stream. The components of this pollution and the effects they can have is just horrible. The components include chlorides which are poisonous to fish, sulfates that can be irritating and even toxic to livestock and other animals that drink from the stream, and heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium. The heavy metals can contaminate our drinking water and the fish in the stream, and upon consumption can lead to multiple health issues.

While the problems are mortifying, the solutions are fairly straightforward. One solution would be that Sunrise Coal takes responsibility for the mess, and properly disposes of the toxic materials, hopefully making some of them safer in the process. Or we could just keep the coal where it is: underground. If we prevent Sunrise from building the Bulldog Mine, none of this will become an issue. We won’t have to worry about the ecosystems in our streams being destroyed, we won’t have to worry about our water running out, and we won’t have to worry about our own tap water killing us. That is why I stand up to coal.