[topher]

The mercury in Great Lakes salmon and trout can be traced directly to Chinese coal. Coals from every part of the world have a locale signature in their ash and thus can be traced to their source.

And I guess it is environmentally unsafe to mine low mercury coal here in the US. Maybe that is the Environmental Wacko connection here -- we could probably produce safer coal here if we geared up the coal industry instead of importing coal since it cannot be mined here in this country anymore.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The US mines something like 100 million tons of coal/year.

[LurkingSince'98]

topher,

several misconceptions there:
1) ALL coal has mercury in it, it varies from site to site and within each site.
2)We don't PRODUCE "safer coal" or any other kind of coal - we mine it. What you mine is what you get.
3) Coal is mined in throughout the US with the majority coming from the Northwest (Wyoming). There are no prohibitions from anyone(EPS, etc) against mining it, some utilities don't buy the high sulfur coal as they must then spend money to treat it.
Regards, Lurking'

[ApplegateRanch]

since it cannot be mined here in this country anymore.

Ahem; DM&E RR is engaged in building a new line to supplement the curreent DM&E and BN&SF rail lines out of Wyoming's Powder River Basin, strictly to accomodate coal trains.

Basin Energy, a generating coop that sells power to other upper Midwestern electrical coops has mines near (like next to) some of their power plants in ND. Near those mines are more mines owned by regular coal mining companies, which supply coal to Midwestern and Northeastern power plants.

That is just part of the current & expanding WY, ND, & SD coal mining industry. There's plenty more coal mining elsewhere in the west.