Benefits
Having accurate and easy
to access online information on current and past mine usage is the goal
of Kentucky's Mine Mapping Information System. Benefiting citizens,
businesses and local and state governments, this cooperative electronic
mine mapping application features multiple layers of useful data to
help:
- Identifying underground voids enhances safety of miners
- Enhanced safety for oil and gas drillers
- Mine blowout prevention, mine fires and subsidence control
- Aid citizens and businesses in evaluating construction land use
- Tool for transportation corridor selection
- Facilitate construction feasibility studies
- Reduce the extent and cost of exploratory drilling
- Greatly reduce research time and travel to Frankfort
- Assist state policy makers and local planners
- Improve monitoring of the coalfield environment
- Identify potential sources of pH water quality problems
- Use maps to target abandoned mine land remediation
- Underground mines are potential sources of potable water.
- Aid in assessing potential for sediment run-off
- Develop model of anticipated pH values
- Facilitate development of pollutant reduction plans
- Aid in planning water and sewer line extensions
- Raise public awareness and encourage citizen involvement
- Aid volunteer citizen water monitoring such as Water Watch
- Utilize VISTA volunteer staff to do field verification
- Enhance watershed study sampling strategies
- Reduce the cost of research
Detail of Benefits
Maintain a Safer Workplace
Mine safety is one of the major benefits of the Internet accessible
digital mine maps. These maps provide easily accessible reference to
past and current mining activities. They provide a tool to determine
adjacent mining in the same seam as well as mining in seams above and
below the seam where mining is actually taking place.
Serious safety problems may be created by over-mining and undermining
as well as mining too close horizontally to a pre-existing mine void.
Since all individual paper mine maps existing at the Kentucky Division
of Mine Safety nsing (DMS) have not been completely compiled, it
is difficult to ascertain the extent of mining activity in a given
area. The digital mine maps are composite mine outlines for both the
eastern and western Kentucky coals fields that provide a link to a
scanned image of the most current mine map or the actual mine map on
file at the DMS.
Safety is also a key issue with the oil and gas industry. Access to
these maps provides a mechanism that may prevent inadvertently drilling
a well in the vicinity of an active mine. Documented oil and gas well
locations have been added to this application and provide guidance to
avoid the dangerous incidence of mining into an existing oil or gas
well. If one life is saved as a result of this project, it is worth the
time and effort that it has taken to develop it. Other related safety
issues that benefit include construction, mine blowout prevention, mine
fires, and subsidence control.
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Improve Economic Development
For Kentucky to have an advantage over surrounding states in attracting
new businesses and jobs to the commonwealth, it is important that the
process for evaluating and purchasing land be as trouble-free as
possible. That includes easy-to-access and accurate underground mapping
tools. Knowledge of underground disturbances may be a key in selecting
sites and estimating development costs. With existing paper maps, it is
very difficult for the average person to know how underground mining
relates to surface features since these maps seldom show surface
topography. The Mine Mapping project provides an easy-to-use, Internet
accessible interface allowing the average person to locate the area of
their interest and identify what mining has occurred beneath it. Local,
state, and federal regulators use the electronic mine maps to monitor
business and developmental activities. Residential and commercial
builders and developers and mining companies use them in their efforts
to minimize environmental damage. In addition, the maps are used for
feasibility studies to determine if potential residential, commercial,
or industrial projects should even be constructed at specific
locations. Coal resources and reserves can be clearly depicted, aiding
in long range state-wide economic planning. Land management companies
can use them to plan efficient mining practices and commercial usage
reclamation.
Transportation systems designers and builders in the Kentucky
Transportation Cabinet use the electronic mine map information as
important tools in potential corridor selection as well as the
subsequent alignment valuations. Access to these maps is a valuable
tool to aid efficiency within the Cabinet's project development
process.
Once the multiple phase project is fully implemented, it will show all
of the detailed historic mine maps. Access to this information will
potentially reduce the amount of exploratory drilling for construction
projects required to identify these underground works.
Users of the system will benefit by being able to view outlines of mine
maps of each coal seam in eastern and western Kentucky and associate
each to the actual mine map on file at the DMS or to a scanned image of
the map. Research time will be reduced considerably because of the
compiled mine outline map. After all the mine maps are scanned and
available, most research can be done online instead of at the DMS
office.
Research programs are being proposed to design mining technology to
safely and efficiently develop thin coal seams in eastern Kentucky. In
order to delineate specific criteria for such systems, information on
seam thickness and elevation variation must be assessed from existing
mine data. The online Mine Map Information System will greatly increase
the efficiency of this task, reducing the costs of conducting the
research.
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Protect the Environment
The Mine Mapping application greatly enhances the ability of the
Kentucky Division of Water, Watershed Management Branch and their
stakeholders to target remediation strategies of acid mine drainage and
abandoned mine lands sites. Specifically, when targeting watersheds for
remediation, the Division of Water can quickly identify the
geographically associated potential sources of metals and pH problems.
This greatly reduces the hundreds of hours of state employee time spent
going through manual map files and encourages greater stakeholder and
citizen involvement through the ease of access to the data.
The total maximum daily load (TMDL) section in the Division of Water
can use the information to help delineate abandoned mine lands (AML)
associated with both surface and underground operations. This aids in
the development of sediment run-off values, particularly the Tug Fork
watershed of the Big Sandy River, impacted by the Martin County coal
slurry discharge of 2001. Location and area data can be used to further
investigate the contribution of AML sites to sediment loading. Mining
data can be combined with other data sources to yield the needed
information. The data from this project may also help in the
development of pH TMDLs from AML sources in the western Kentucky
coalfield.
TMDL is a federally mandated requirement in the Clean Water Act. It
requires states to develop TMDLs for waters they list as not meeting
intended uses, such as swimming or sustaining aquatic life. The TMDL
process determines what reductions in pollutants from various sources
are necessary to improve water quality so that the intended use can be
restored.
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Improve Water Quality and Accessibility
Currently old underground mines are sources of drinking water for some
large and small communities in eastern Kentucky. The Mine Mapping
Information System benefits ongoing research to identify mines with the
necessary characteristics for use as municipal water supplies.
Citizen groups who are conducting water monitoring in mining areas will
now be able to do more scientific selection of sampling sites and more
scientific analysis of the results, assisting the public and water
quality experts to better understand the watersheds in these areas.
These watershed-sampling groups (Watershed Watch and Watershed Action
Teams) are generally volunteer groups with budgets that cover only
sampling-related costs (such as delivering sampling containers and
laboratory expenses). Neither travel expenses, nor time, are available
for them to obtain location information. Accessing this information
over the Internet to plan a sampling strategy improves their ability to
study watersheds and provides education to themselves and their
communities.
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Increase Public Awareness and Involvement
Resource estimates are performed periodically by state and federal
agencies to assess the extent and character of Kentucky's remaining
coal resources. This information is essential for state policy makers
and local planners. One aspect of these studies involves the
characterization of depleted resources. Historically, this information
has been difficult to obtain and the results have been inaccurate. The
Mine Mapping system allows up-to-date and accurate assessments of mined
out areas, and greatly reduces the effort required to do so.
Volunteer groups including the VISTA volunteers, agency staff, and
other stakeholders can quickly and easily use the mine maps along with
other available information to determine if a site may be causing water
quality impairment. This analysis can be followed up by targeted field
studies.
Patrons of the Kentucky Division of Mine Safety paper Mine Map
Repository are saving time and money. They are now able to research
mined out areas and obtain the maps they need over the Internet, thus
saving a trip to Frankfort. Before the availability of online maps, the
average customer spent two to three hours in travel time each way from
eastern or western Kentucky.
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