According to local newspaper the Herald-Standard, UMWA’s Cecil Roberts spoke to a crowd of 2000 from the US and Canada at a Greene County rally on the history and future of unions and the coal industry. He spoke specifically about Foundation’s proposed Foundation mine and the Freeport operation, both local to the event’s venue.
"We've got to make a change in America," Roberts said.
"Our workers have been blown up, burned up, covered up and killed in these [non-union] coal mines. We have paid with our lives, our health and we don't intend to compromise any longer.”
He said without unions, production as the industry knew it would cease.
“The leadership of Foundation Coal doesn't run a shuttle car. They don't run a continuous miner or crawl up and down a shaft. There wouldn't be one ounce of coal coming out of these coal mines if it wasn't for the membership of the UMWA," Roberts told the crowd.
In an interview with ILN, Foundation spokesperson Rick Nida said that the company was not present at the gathering and had not commented publicly. However, as part of the permitting process for both operations, it holds periodic information meetings to discuss details with the public.
The Foundation longwall, expected to produce approximately 7 million tons annually from the Pittsburgh 8 seam, was developed as a Northern Appalachian production replacement for the Emerald operation once that was mined out.
“We are still working through the permitting process, but a rough estimate of timing is for CM development work to begin in 2013, with longwall production scheduled to begin in 2015,” Nida told ILN.
“We have estimated that the initial capital investment will be $US500-plus million.”
He also outlined the producer’s plans for the Freeport room and pillar mine, which will extract coal from the Freeport seam when market conditions support its development. While it is to produce metallurgical coal, some of the output is anticipated to be sold into the thermal market.
“The total initial investment to develop the mine would be approximately $300-400 million,” Nida said of the operation, which has a total production capacity of about 3Mt.
“We are proceeding with permitting, engineering designs and land acquisition, but we will not begin construction until we have secured long-term contracts for the mine’s production.”
