Qualla: Hobet Coal Mine https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:06 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Hobet Coal Mine https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine Hobet Coal Mine: Introduction https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine/ From cruising altitude over southern West Virginia, the Hobet site is unmistakable: a vast, pale wound in the green roll of the Appalachian forest, miles across, with the original ridgelines simply gone. From 1974 to 2015, this mine on the Boone-Lincoln county line was one of the largest mountaintop-removal operations in West Virginia. At its peak in 2002, the dragline at Hobet pulled five million tons of coal out of the ground in a single year. Then natural gas got cheap, demand collapsed, and the company that owned the mine went bankrupt. What remains is a flat-topped landscape larger than many small towns, leaching selenium into the Mud River and waiting to be turned into something else.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/8/hobet-coal-mine-wp/dnv8-hobet-coal-mine-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hobet Coal Mine: How to Take a Mountain Apart https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine/ Mountaintop-removal mining is a category of surface mining used where coal seams run horizontally near the top of a ridge. Operators clear the forest, scrape off the soil, then use explosives to break apart the overlying rock. A dragline excavator - a multi-story piece of equipme...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/8/hobet-coal-mine-wp/dnv8-hobet-coal-mine-how-to-take-a-mountain-apart.mp3 0:06 2 full Hobet Coal Mine: Strike of '93 https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine/ Coal miners are among the most consequential American labor forces, and they have paid for everything they got. In 1993, miners at Hobet joined a selective United Mine Workers strike that pulled together workers across five states. Only thirty percent of U.S. mining was union-pro...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/8/hobet-coal-mine-wp/dnv8-hobet-coal-mine-strike-of-93.mp3 0:06 3 full Hobet Coal Mine: The River Downstream https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine/ The Hobet mine sits at the headwaters of the Mud River. More than twenty valley fills - the buried hollows where the old mountain rock now rests - leach a brew of selenium, sulfate, and high-conductivity runoff into the watershed. Even after the mine closed in 2015, those fills k...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/8/hobet-coal-mine-wp/dnv8-hobet-coal-mine-the-river-downstream.mp3 0:06 4 full Hobet Coal Mine: After the Coal https://qualla.com/hobet-coal-mine/ Patriot Coal, which had bought the Hobet mine in 2008, filed Chapter 11 in 2012 and again in 2015. In October 2015, a Virginia bankruptcy court approved the second filing. Patriot's assets and liabilities - including $400 million in worker health-care obligations - were taken on ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/v/8/hobet-coal-mine-wp/dnv8-hobet-coal-mine-after-the-coal.mp3 0:06 5 full