Coal mine expansion could swallow family farms in southern Illinois

Foresight Energy subsidiary is making claims on a four-decade-old contract between landowners and a government utility. Members of theEwing Northern Coal Association — local farmers who under the 1976 agreement promised to sell their coal mineral rights to the TVA. Farmers got about $1,000 for each coal-containing acre, with many owning 100 acres or more. The agreement also stipulated that if the TVA wanted to buy the farmers’ surface land in the future, the farmers would have to sell, receiving fair market value plus 10 percent.At the time, it seemed like a great deal. One hundred thousand dollars was a huge sum in those days. And coal mining was regularly done below farmland with little impact on the surface. So Kern’s father and other farmers didn’t think they would suffer any ill impacts from mining below their farms, and they didn’t think the TVA would really have any reason to demand they sell their land in the future. Besides, it was a patriotic era and they felt good about supporting the country’s energy security.  Now Illinois operations typically use longwall mining, wherein a massive machine chews away whole seams of coal and lets the ceiling collapse behind it. This method causes widespread subsidence, wherein panels of earth sink by up to six feet, cracking the foundations and walls of houses and causing water to pool in depressions created in the land.