In Texas, a coal mine opens to power Mexico - Marketplace.org
The coal industry is struggling as cheaper and cleaner natural gas undercuts coal, and environmental regulations push utilities to shut down their older coal-burning plants. Yet new coal mines open and others expand. In one Texas county on the Mexican border, local officials and residents seem nearly united in their opposition to a new coal strip mine, the Eagle Pass Mine. The company that owns it, Dos Republicas Coal Partnership, says it intends to ship out the first load of coal by train next month. Dos Republicas is backed, through layered ownership, by a major Mexican steel and coal firm, Altos Hornos de Mexico, S. A. All the coal from the Eagle Pass Mine is bound for Mexico. “The excuse is that ‘we need energy,’” says Martha Bowles Baxter, a resident of Eagle Pass who opposes the mining plans. It appears to be the first time a coal mine has been opened in the United States to serve a power plant in Latin America. George Baxter, her husband and a civil engineer, says the smoke from the generating station in Mexico often drifts north to Eagle Pass. Now, he says, those results of burning coal will be added to the insults of mining it. “Apparently the war on coal does not extend to Maverick County,” he says. The Eagle Pass Mine intends to discharge into Elm Creek, which runs through the mine just before it joins the Rio Grande. Source: www.marketplace.org
