Jo: The nature of owners/operators and large corporations often crys for a response. When I got out of college, I was the Regional Spoil and Water Lab Director in Hazard, KY. Spoil is a term for surface mining soil. I spent my days in front of titration cylinders and pH meters. I assisted Reclamation Inspectors in building their enforcement cases.
One day a coal operator came into the lab and offered me 6 times what I was making. I left in a hurry. I became the Quality Control Engineer and Reclamation Supervisor for a large out of state corporation. I have mentioned their name on this forum before and I will provide this disclaimer. They are a reputable company and what I am about to tell is not a blemish on them as much as it is a blemish on mankind. The Statute of limitations has run out and in any case, it is a story that could never be prosecuted. The other party involved is deceased. Given that, I am comfortable telling this. Take it as one of my talking dog stories.
My job was partially to ensure that the unit trains leaving our tipple facility headed for Georgia Power Company met a specification of 14 % ash and 11,400 BTU on an As Received Basis. That means with the moisture and ash in the sample. BTU is determined in a calorimeter and as received is back calculated. When BTU is first measured on a moisture/ash free basis, the BTU is much higher. As received would be a representation of the coal as it was fed into the power plant. I went to Georgia Powers facilities a couple times to watch our coal being unloaded and fed into the power plant. It is an interesting process and this was in the 1970s.
I kept spread sheets by hand that had simple weighted averages so I could predict the quality of our coal when it was loaded in the train. Our tipple had an advanced sampling system. Coal came into the tipple and was weighted by a conveyor belt scale. Three electric/hydraulic arms split the stream of coal as it fell through the tipple. The sample was collected in metal trash cans, ran through a sample hammer mill and then split down with a riffle bucket into four samples, each sealed into plastic sample bags. Much like a zip lock bag. Only they were heat sealed. One sample was archived, one went to our lab and one went to Georgia Power. The other was held.
We were mining from a pit where the coal seam had three clay lenses. It was impossible to strip them out. I had samplers working for me who took channel samples and truck top samples. I was running this data by hand (no computers then). I saw that the train we were preparing to load from the accumulated stockpile would not meet specifications. That means one of two things: The coal needed to be washed or it needed to be diverted and marketed at a much lower price. I informed the Operations Manager of the problem he was facing. He called me in privately and to make a long story short, he ask me to "fix" the samples. Rather than refusing, it first occurred to me to tell him the risk. I told him that Georgia Power often train tops their cars and that they have automatic sampling systems that sample the incoming coal. He insisted. I explained that this coal had 22 % ash and was about 10, 400 BTU on an as received basis. This could cause a major problem in the power plant. I explained that this will not go undetected. He told me, he would get one of my samplers to do it. I walked out of his office. He heard what I said. He knew that if I did this, I would take the fall, he would deny the whole conversation. This would have been criminal and someone would be prosecuted. He hoped it would be me. They diverted the train to Ravenna, KY and washed the coal. There was a 30 % wash out. The cost to wash and the loss of 30 % tonnage was financial disaster. It wasn't long after that, I left.
