Centralia — Mounds of coal from Wyoming and Montana are piled around TransAlta north of Centralia, while the last remaining bits of local coal are mixed with dirt in nearby sludge ponds, remnants of a time before the coal mine closed in 2006.
Coalview Centralia LLC, a startup coal technology company, plans to extract the usable coal from the sludge ponds and sell it back to TransAlta.
Roger Fish, president and CEO of Coalview Centralia, said he expects the company to produce up to 4 million tons of coal over 11 to 12 years of production. About 350,000 tons of coal will be produced annually.
The production will likely continue until 2025, when TransAlta — the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the state — is scheduled to stop using coal under an agreement with the state made in 2011.
The total production is still only about 5 percent of the capacity of TransAlta, Fish said, but it puts a dent in the use of out-of-state coal.
“We are providing a local coal instead of taking it from Wyoming or Montana,” Fish said.
Coalview Centralia started construction in March on a fine coal recovery plant where the old preparation plant once operated. Crews have already finished the concrete foundation.
The recovery plant will start producing coal from the sludge pounds by November, Fish said.
The sludge will be dredged into the recovery plant, where the coal will be separated from the dirt and water using spiral machines and a centrifuge that works like a household dryer.
Usable coal will be sent on a conveyor belt to TransAlta, just down Big Hanaford Road, while the dirt is sent back to the land and the water is cleaned and sent back to the streams.
Coalview Ltd., which owns Coalview Centralia, is borrowing about $29 million from investors of financial institutions through the Washington Economic Development Finance Authority to fund the project.
The reclamation project may have some environmental benefits, Fish said, which is important especially since the Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan Monday to cut carbon emissions 72 percent by 2030 from existing power plants in Washington.
“We believe the emissions will be better with the local coal,” Fish said. “The equipment was made for that coal. It’s different coal entirely.”
Fish, who worked as TransAlta’s mine engineering director prior to joining Coalview, said the project also falls in line with the proposed Industrial Park at TransAlta, an economic development project south and east of the TransAlta facility.
Once the plant is operating this winter, Fish said, it will employ 23 people.
