Transforming the Land: RRC’s Extensive Requirements for Mine Reclamation For many workers, the typical workday includes time in an office, a cubicle, a conference room or another similar but limited configuration.
For RRC Surface Mine Inspector Cade Harris, it is difficult to relate the scope of his job.
Tools of the RRC Surface Mine Inspector Inspecting hundreds and often thousands of acres is an intensive job. Tools that RRC’s inspectors utilize include: • 4x4 Truck • Polaris Ranger Utility Terrain Vehicle • GPS Equipment • DJI Enterprise Unmanned Aerial System (aka Drone) • PH meter • Electrical Conductivity Meter • Turbidity Meter • Geiger Counter • Survey Equipment • Digital Camera • ArcGIS • Global Mapper • AutoCAD • Water/Soil Sampling Equipment • Binoculars • Topographical Maps • A Sharp Eye • Empirical Knowledge
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“Some surface mine permits can range in size from 30,000 to 40,000 acres, which require multiple days of in-depth inspection,” he said. “Each permit must be inspected unannounced monthly, making turnaround time for inspection reports rather short and requires immense flexibility.” And, as his job is often outdoors, the weather dictates when Harris and other mine inspectors can be at a site. But work does not stop when mining ceases. When Luminant stopped harvesting lignite from its 16,000-acre Three Oaks Mine near Elgin east of Austin in 2018, it still faced years of work to return the land to beneficial use. “Texas coal mining regulations require lands disturbed due to mining-related activities be reclaimed to a state equal to or better than before the mine,” said Harris, who has been working at the Luminant mine. Three Oaks, which received its RRC permit in 2003 and supplied about 6.2 million tons of lignite per year for electric power generation at the Sandow Power Plant in Rockdale, is being transformed into pastureland,
