Earth-shattering explosions are a fact of life in
northeast Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Each week millions of
pounds of explosives are detonated as the basin’s 17 open-pit mines
rearrange thick layers of earth and extract the coal beneath.
Sometimes blasting also creates clouds of nitrogen oxide
gases.
Luann Borgialli was alarmed in January
when one of the distinctive red-orange nitrogen oxide clouds from
Arch Coal Inc.” s Black Thunder Mine settled over her neighborhood
in Wright, a cluster of homes and schools in this sparsely
populated dry lake bed.
“Our kids were let off
the school bus into that cloud,” which lingered for an hour and a
half, Borgialli says.
The orange color indicates
a high concentration of nitrogen oxides, including nitrogen
dioxide. When inhaled, nitrogen dioxide becomes nitric acid as it
encounters moisture in the lungs. Exposure to the gas can cause
respiratory problems, lung damage and even result in
death.
While the coal industry agrees that
nitrogen oxides are a problem, its representatives insist that the
gases are difficult to predict and that risks to people are
small.
Members of the grassroots citizens’ group,
Powder River Basin Resource Council, have appealed to the state for
years, they say, only to be ignored. In February, however, the
federal Office of Surface Mining issued a rare notice of violation
to Cyprus Amax’s Eagle Butte Mine north of Gillette. The company is
appealing the agency’s decision to the Department of
Interior.
Since the federal crackdown, the mining
industry in Wyoming has created a task force to consider ways of
reducing its nitrogen dioxide emissions.
*Eric
Whitney
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Beware of orange clouds.
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