Owners of the historic Kemmerer coal mine are abandoning a $30 million project to relocate 3 miles of U.S. Highway 30 to get access to millions of tons of coal.
Declining demand for coal means the company doesn’t need to access those reserves.
“Due to current and foreseeable declining coal demand, KOL (Kemmerer Operations LLC) can no longer justify committing further resources in the form of time and funding toward advancement of this project,” wrote KOL President and General Manager Don Crank to engineers with the Wyoming Department of Transportation and local politicians.
Crank couldn’t be reached for comment prior to publication.
The $30 million makeover was needed to make it easier to get coal for power plants, send to customers looking to turn the commodity into ammonia or help with energy-starved trona mining operations in southwestern Wyoming.
The proposed project called for an estimated 1.2 million cubic yards of dirt be moved from the rolling hillsides located just west of the Kemmerer port of entry. That’s the equivalent of about 50,000 truckloads of dirt.
“Although the U.S. 30 relocation project is still showing in our state transportation improvement program for 2025, there are no plans to go to construction in the foreseeable future,” said WYDOT spokeswoman Stephanie Harsha. “At the request of the mine, we are currently in a holding pattern with the project.”
The work has been indefinitely delayed, she said.
“This project will be moved to what we call a ‘shelf’ project, which means most of the design work is complete, and it could be picked up and constructed at a later date if funding becomes available,” Harsha told Cowboy State Daily.
The nearby Kemmerer coal mine had wanted to realign a nearly 3-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 30 to the north a little bit — about a half mile — so that it could gain access to 9 million tons of rich coal reserves. WYDOT was looking at making an 80- to 100-foot vertical cut in the hillside to the north of U.S. 30.
Another 9 Million Tons
The design process of moving the highway began in 2018, but was put on hold a few years ago, then restarted in May 2023.
Before Crank sent a letter to WYDOT halting the project, the current goal was to have plans ready to begin carving into the landscape by January and complete the work no later than 2027.
The coal downturn in Wyoming changed this strategy.
“KOL will continue to look for future coal sales that could allow us to resume this project,” Grant wrote in the letter to WYDOT engineers working and obtained by Cowboy State Daily.
“We understand the tax revenue stream provided to the state of Wyoming and Lincoln County is of utmost importance, and either entity may choose to continue funding the engineering work,” Crank wrote. “In the event Lincoln County [and/or] the state choose to pause the referenced project, KOL requests all data generated to date be archived and secured, such that this project could be resumed in the future if required.”
The Kemmerer coal mine has the oldest active unionized workforce in the United States. The United Mine Workers of America represents more than 226 miners at UMWA Local 1307.
Cullen Pace, who worked at the mine for 17 years and is now a representative of District 22 of the UMWA in Price, Utah, wasn’t immediately available for comment on the project’s halt.
He previously told Cowboy State Daily that he didn’t envision the highway getting moved unless the coal owner locks down long-term contracts.
Downturn In Mining
The Kemmerer mine, like others in Wyoming, has struggled in a downturn across the nation.
In the latest quarter that ended June 30, Kemmerer Operations reported digging up about 604,100 tons of coal, one of the lowest producing mines in Wyoming, according to data compiled by the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Out of 15 mines, the Kemmerer Mine was ranked as the 12th least productive in the state.
Wyoming’s largest mines are in the energy-rich Powder River Basin.
The Kemmerer mine produced 2.5 million tons of coal in 2023, down 44.4% from a high of 4.5 million tons dug up in 2015, one of its best producing years in more than a decade.
The pullback in mining is coming at a time that the area is becoming a billionaire’s row for new investment.
The mine is in a strategic spot in Kemmerer, a scrappy southwestern Wyoming town known for coal mining and as the birthplace of James Cash Penney’s department store chain from the banks of the Hams Fork River.
While Kemmerer Operations has a variety of plans underway to keep digging the coal, converting the Naughton coal-fired plant to a natural gas-fueled one has worried local politicians and prospects. Warren Buffet-backed PacifiCorp owns Naughton.
The Kemmerer mine backs up against the Naughton power plant.
Naughton’s Future?
In recent years, local politicians have focused their attention on the lineup of big energy companies that have committed throwing billions of dollars into building new factories along U.S. Highway 189 south of Kemmerer and Diamondville.
These include the billionaire Bill Gates-backed TerraPower site across the road from Naughton, where it began building the Natrium reactor demonstration project in November 2021.
TerraPower announced in March that it filed plans to build the reactor with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Its reactor demonstration project could become the prototype for future orders and jumpstart a long-languishing industry.
Other plans are in the works along Highway 189 to build a coal-to-ammonia plant, with other projects being discussed, some of which are in confidential stages of discussion, according to officials interviewed with the nearby city of Kemmerer.
Energy-guzzling data centers have been mentioned as examples of possible projects near the Kemmerer mine and Naughton plant.
A disparate group of well-heeled investors out of Utah, Idaho, Florida, Maine and Wyoming with hundreds of millions of investment dollars have bought 136 acres of land and are digging up the landscape near the Naughton coal-fired power plant to pave the way for their skincare line, among other projects they have in mind to repurpose coal.
The investors are called TriSight AG LLC, a technologies company with a “green” vision for coal that has on its drawing board plans to turn some of the coal dug up at the adjacent mine owned by Kemmerer Operations LLC into a nutrient for skin to smooth out lines or wrinkles.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
