Coal mines are not static. They move. A years-long time-lapse of a strip mine would show a crater crawling across the Earth as miners gouge pits hundreds of feet deep to expose coal seams, and then haul dirt excavated from the front of the hole to fill in the back, where the mining’s finished. It’s an efficient way to begin the process of “reclamation,” which companies are required to implement to restore the disturbed land to some semblance of its pre-mining condition.
“You don’t want to have to move dirt twice,” as that would make the mining operation more expensive and the reclamation effort more difficult, said Rusty Bell, the director of Gillette College’s Office of Economic Transformation, as he drove his silver Ram pickup to tour coal mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin on a sunny day in May. A geological formation stretching from Campbell County across the state’s northeast corner into…
