Blount County Audience Voices Strong Reservations Over Proposed Return of Coal Mining

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A Canadian company called MCoal has applied to the Alabama Surface Mining Commission for an initial permit that covers 564 acres.

The company has applied to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management for a wider permit covering 3,522 acres and company officials say that future phases of their mining of the Rosa Coal seam could include underground mining.

While the current permit will not allow blasting and includes only augur mining, residents expect future phases will.

MCoal plans to hire 25 to 30 local employees and hopes to recover a total of 5 million tons over the next several years. The Rosa Coal seam is known to produce metallurgical coal, which is particularly valuable because it can be cooked into coke which is used to make steel.

The rising price of coal has sparked a renewed interest in mining deposits that had not been considered economically feasible.

NovaDX Ventures Corp.: MCoal Corporation Files Rosa Coal Mine Permit Application

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Neil MacDonald, CEO of NovaDX, commented that, "MCoal has met a significant milestone in the development of the Rosa Coal Project. Together with permit applications we have pending with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Army Corps of Engineers, this milestone completes our permitting applications required for the Rosa Coal Project.

In January 2009 MCoal conducted a successful test mine of the Rosa deposit extracting 250 tons using a triple auger. The knowledge gained from the test mine has provided management with the insight to develop its detailed mine operating plans. The Rosa Coal Project can be operated 12 months per year and is located in a coal mining area, with well-developed infrastructure, services and skilled labour available in the area.

Metallurgical coal, also known as coking coal, supplies the carbon used in the making of steel from iron ore. Rosa coal is a very high quality coking coal used primarily for blending with other metallurgical coal to improve their quality for making coke. Additional uses for Rosa coal include specialty industrial applications such as activated carbon for water filtration, carbon fiber and carbon lubricants. Similar grades of metallurgical coal to the Rosa coal currently sell in Alabama for between US$130 and US$140 per ton. Alabama is a major coal producing state, located on the southern-most portion of the Appalachian Coal belt. Alabama produced over 20 million tons of coal in 2008.

MCoal Corporation's long term plans are to develop several metallurgical coal mines in the Appalachian region.



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