Article: Accessing rock mining damage



By Pam Sohn and Ben Benton

Staff Writers

Rock mining along the Cumberland Plateau region of Tennessee is growing, according to residents, and that has at least one regional conservation group concerned.

"This is not a few people in pickup trucks anymore. This is big earthmoving machines, and they're strip mining -- doing the same thing that's prohibited under coal mining rules," said Carson Camp, a county landowner and board member of the Sequatchie Valley Historical Association, the group that supports the coal mining museum at the Dunlap Coke Ovens.

Tennessee mountain stone -- used on many area buildings, walls and walkways -- has become a commodity so popular that mineral rights owners such as Tennessee Consolidated Coal are hiring contractors to harvest and mine it. Tennessee Consolidated, owners of thousands of acres of mineral rights along the Cumberland Plateau, is at the center of a new rock-mining debate in Sequatchie County. There miners have sued a landowner and developer for access to his property after he blocked roads into it with heavy earthmoving equipment.

Bernard Higgins, general manager of Tennessee Consolidated Coal in Whitwell, Tenn., referred inquiries to Massey Energy Co., the coal company's parent company. Phil Nichols, treasurer of Massey, said he would not comment, but the company may issue a statement later.

Cathie Bird, chairwoman of the mining committee for Save Our Cumberland Mountains, said rock mining, and the mineral rights involved, are a concern.

She said rock mining is more destructive to land than coal mining. But the government does not require damage repair as it does with mining operations covered under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

The citizens group, known widely as SOCM, has fought more than 30 years for legislation to protect the rights of surface owners against coal company strip mining.

"As with more usual forms of surface mining, the people who live near the mine sites pay with lost peace of mind, decreasing property values, disturbance of viewshed and other resources," Ms. Bird said.

On Wednesday night, Ms. Bird's mining committee discussed rock mining and decided to put the issue on SOCM's agenda.

"We decided we'll have to do more than we're doing right now," she said.

A growing business

The rocks, sometimes referred to as dimension stone, fetch $200 to $800 per ton, and mineral rights owners generally receive a 10 percent to 15 percent royalty. Landowners normally receive nothing.

Tennessee has conflicting laws and state attorney general rulings. The state does not regulate the operations as mining, but the Department of Revenue allows counties to tax the stone as a mined product.

Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, said water quality regulators sometimes inspect the rock mining operations to check for stormwater runoff problems and violations of water quality permits.

In 2002, about 65 rock harvesting operations were permitted, she said. Now about 172 have been permitted.

In the past 18 months, at least three lawsuits over rock mining have been filed in the Chattanooga area, records show.

In January, the state found itself embroiled in the rock mining issue when harvesters working for a Florida company tore up 75 to 100 yards of the state-owned Cumberland Trail near Soddy-Daisy in the Cumberland Trail State Park.

Two weeks ago, Hamilton County Chancellor Frank Brown denied the state's request for an injunction barring rock harvesting anywhere on park property. But he did order the rock miners not to use mechanized machines to extract mountain stone within 50 feet of the Cumberland Trail or to take rocks "by any means" within 25 feet of the trail.

Chancellor Brown's ruling did not address other issues in the growing debate, including whether Tennessee mountain stone is considered a rock or a mineral. That decision, he said, was for another, higher court or body.

E-mail Pam Sohn at psohn@timesfreepress.com

E-mail Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com

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