With coal markets energized by high oil prices and global steel demand, mine operators are turning to Vecellio & Grogan’s site preparation services as a cost-effective way to access their reserves, whether “steam” coal for powering homes and businesses, or “met” coal (metallurgical coal) for producing high-quality steel.

At Deer Run Mine in Hillsboro, IL, V&G moved 2.6 million c.y. of material for a steam coal mine site, including excavating for a slope and a shaft, and prepping for the processing plant. Crews moved another 1.9 million c.y. for slurry pond construction. V&G also constructed about seven miles of railroad beds and roadways for the mine. The extensive work entered its final stages earlier this year. (See below for photos.)

V&G completed similar work last year at Sugar Camp Mine in Benton, IL.

Roaring Creek Holds Groundbreaking

Vecellio & Grogan recently earned a contract to prepare the site for a met coal mine in Ellamore, WV, for Roaring Creek Coal Company. V&G will perform the grading, drainage work and erosion control for the mine and coal prep plant.

Roaring Creek’s groundbreaking was attended by acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, and representatives from the mine, its corporate parent, United Coal, and from Vecellio & Grogan, along with other dignitaries.

The mine site is located between Weston – home of Stonewall Jackson State Park, where another Vecellio company, Ranger Construction, sculpted the land into an 18-hole golf course – and Elkins – where Vecellio & Grogan’s highway and bridge crews built a new section of Corridor H, a four-lane divided highway.

Vast Experience Spans Decades

With V&G’s decades of heavy/highway and mining experience, providing site development services for mining operations is a natural fit, and it’s a partnership that goes back many years.

In the mid-20th century, V&G not only mined rock for its own road construction projects, it also mined coal, in addition to performing mine site preparation work. In the 1980s, V&G formed White Rock Quarries, a Miami, FL, limestone mining operation that has grown into one of the largest-producing single-site quarries in the nation.

Over the decades Vecellio & Grogan has drawn from its extensive experience to partner with coal mining companies and provide a full range of site preparation services, from overburden removal to slope and shaft excavation, from slurry pond construction to site remediation.

The company is able to perform cost-effective site preparation for surface or deep mines throughout the Appalachian and Illinois basins and beyond.