WVCA Member Gary Hartsog and Alpha Engineering Services will hold their annual Underground Surveying and Mapping Seminars on Thursday and Friday, June 12^th & 13^th, 2014 at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center in Beckley, WV. 

Topics will include:

• The safety of your surveying crews
• Latest MSHA Plan and other court decisions
• Latest MSHA Electronic Surveying Instrument Litigation Decisions
• Are check surveys needed in an electronic world?
• How to adjust workings to check survey results?
• Ethics
• Minimum Legal Standards

These Seminars are suitable for Continuing Education Credit acceptable to many PE or PS Boards (please contact Gary or Alpha Engineering regarding specific States). The Seminars are also suitable for training and/or continuing education for entry- and staff-level engineers and surveyors, CAD map-makers, underground surveyors, and those with interest in how mine maps are made, updated and presented in the 21st Century.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Gary at 304-255-4131.  Also, he asks you to check their Web Page for more detail and registration information at www.alphaengineer.com.  Please feel free to pass this on to others who mighthave an interest.

The Environmental Protection Agency came under fire Thursday after new emails surfaced that allegedly show government officials worked in secret with tribal leaders and other environmental groups to preemptively oppose the controversial Pebble Mine project in Alaska before a review was even conducted.

The internal memos published by The Washington Times show EPA officials working behind the scenes as early as 2008 to kill the gold and copper mine project -- two years before any scientific study or survey was conducted looking into the environmental impact.

According to the Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) weekly production report, year-to-date U.S. metallurgical exports for February 2014 were up 3.4% as compared to the February last year (5.5mt v. 5.3mt) and steam coal exports were off by 0.7% (3.27mt v. 3.3mt). Coal imports were up by 51% from last year for the same month (0.583mt v. 0.385mt).

West Virginia’s 2014 year-to-date production, through 4/26, was down 0.5% statewide when compared to the same period in 2013 (38mt v. 38.2mt), with northern WV production down 0.3% (13.8mt v. 13.9mt) and southern WV was off 0.5% (24.1mt v. 24.3mt). U.S. year-to-date production through 4/26 was down 0.5% (313.8mt v. 315.2mt). There were 117,562 railroad cars loaded last week in the United States.

The Friends of Coal Ladies Auxiliary will be hosting its first golf tournament on Friday, June 20th at the White Oak Country Club, 1206 Summerlee Road, Oak Hill, WV.

For more information and/or registration information contact:  dcorcoran@beavercoal.com

The American coal industry is accusing the Obama administration of using the Environmental Protection Agency to end the use of coal despite the president's claim of having an "all of the above" energy policy.

Earlier this year, the EPA issued its Mercury Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which the agency said will eliminate 90 percent of mercury and acid gas released into the air by coal-fired power plants.