Two-minute descent: Enlow Fork Mine tour offers rare glimpse into ‘underground

At the start of their shift, the coal miners working on Enlow Fork Mine’s H-3 longwall section step into a black steel elevator and descend 800 feet underground, where they walk out through a heavy airlock door and into a part of the earth that few people ever see.

It’s a two-minute trip to the bottom of the Consol Energy Inc. coal mine in Prosperity, Washington County.

The area is surprisingly well-lit, with a concrete floor, telephone, computer, and emergency supplies stored in cabinets. The mine walls near the entrance are sprayed with fire-resistant shotcrete, a cement-like material used for mines, subways, tunnels, and swimming pools.

“This is pretty much where everybody’s day starts. It’s a high-traffic area, and we try to protect it because this area, for the life of this mine, will be here, so you figure another 25 or 30 years,” said Mike Koffler, assistant supervisor at Enlow Fork Mine, who led a group of reporters on a tour of the mine on May 9.

Then, the miners load into mantrips – shuttles that carry the miners and their supplies throughout the mine on a maze of subway-like tracks – and they settle in for the half-hour ride to the section of the mine they’re working on.

There, they will spend eight-hour shifts operating shearers and other state-of-the-art equipment to cut coal from the wall. The coal travels on underground conveyor belts that come out at the surface. There, overland conveyor belts take the coal to be sorted.

All of the other underground work the miners do is to prepare for the longwalls to be mined.

“As we’re mining, it’s kind of like building a city underground. We have to have electricity, we have to have water, we have to have air going with us as we continue to mine so we can ventilate and make the environment safe underground,” said Koffler.

Mining, he noted, “is not a pick and shovel and a horse and a carriage anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. It’s very technologically advanced, and we are continually pushing that envelope to get that technology underground and to be able to use it to help us be more efficient and productive and do it safely.”

For coal miners like Rich Burkholder, a fourth-generation miner, there is no other job they’d rather do.

“I’ve been doing this for 22 years, and I love it. My family’s been doing this for many years. My great-grandfather, my grandfather worked in the mines, different jobs,” said Burkholder. “When my father retired as a miner, they had a tour and he took me and my mom in. I saw it and I was like, ‘Hey, that’s something I’d like to do.’ I was amazed by the process. And here I am. That was 22 years ago.”

Tapping more uses for coal

Consol Energy Inc., based in Canonsburg, has been a coal industry giant and one of the nation’s biggest coal producers for 160 years.

Coal accounts for 35% of the world’s total electric power supply, and worldwide electricity generation from coal hit record highs in 2023, even as its role in U.S. power generation has dwindled as natural gas and renewable power sources, including solar and wind, step up. Coal generated about 16.6% of electricity in the United States in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But Consol continues to find new ways to grow.

Exports now account for 60% of Consol’s market, and shipments overseas to India and other countries – the company has shipped coal to five different continents – have helped Consol weather the challenges facing the industry.

Consol also launched Consol Innovations, a subsidiary that is looking at new markets and…