Redstone’s Coal Basin receives money to remove methane gas from mines

The tiny, picturesque town of Redstone gets another serendipitous distinction: first in the country to address methane gas from abandoned coal mines on public property.

“According to the EPA, the methane emissions at Coal Basin cause as much climate damage as all of the carbon dioxide emissions in Pitkin County combined,” said Dallas Blaney, CEO of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency, or CORE.

Due to this, Redstone’s Coal Basin was awarded a $1.2 million grant from the United States Department of Energy to pursue research on the methane-gas release from the discontinued mines at Coal Basin. 

“Ours is the first effort in the country to address methane emissions at an abandoned mine site situated on federal land,” Blaney said.

“We learned in mid-June that we received the final contract documents to proceed with the project and use the $1.2 million dollars in funding,” said Jami McMannes, public relations and communications manager for CORE. “Funding will be used in phases and in alignment with the criteria to move forward with our research at Coal Basin.”

This comes at a serendipitous time because CORE also received the go-ahead for its permit request from the White River National Forest to begin research at Coal Basin.

“Our teams have been visiting the location over the past few weeks and will continue to do so over the summer,” McMannes said. “We will also be doing tours with folks and working with volunteers to move some of the research equipment around. Our next volunteer group, Aspen Skiing Co., will be making the trip on July 12.”

Mona Newton, a consultant on the project and former CORE employee turned owner of Energy Smart Solutions, said, “This my first endeavor working on a methane cap-type scenario, but I am not a stranger to complex, environmental projects. I worked on the development of a successful building materials salvage program in Boulder County. ReSource and I worked on getting the solar farm approved in Pitkin County.” 

She added, “Most recently, I was co-chair of the Pitkin County growth management committee, and in our effort to stem climate change, we have to be tenacious at the right opportunity, and I enjoy working on these challenging projects for this important issue.”

Christopher Caskey, founder of Delta Brick & Climate Company in Paonia, is also taking on his first-ever methane removal.

“It has been a collaboration between CORE and our company. We co-wrote a grant application for Congressional Designated Spending; that basically meant that Sens. Bennett and Hickenlooper wrote us into the 2022 physical budget,” he said.

He added, “We are going to figure out where all the methane is coming from, figure out how much is coming out, and work with various community members and organizations to develop a methane capture plan.”

The plan will then go to the White River National Forest, which will ask for permission to stop the pollution with ideas that will come from this study.

His company has been based in Paonia for five years.

“This will be the first project I’m a lead,” he said. “I manage a project in Pennsylvania that captures methane from an abandoned coal min and then am also involved in a project in Colorado that does the same thing.”

Thus far, the team has gone hiking to look at methane leaks. The project officially starts when the methane protectors arrive, whether that is days, weeks or months. 

The main thing will be the environmental review and permitting process.

“By the end of the fall, we will know. We will know what the possible solutions are and then it will take a solid year to permit them. We are looking for a solution implemented in summer 2025,” Caskey said.

“Our summer plans will determine the quality and quantity of gasses leaking from the mine, which will set the stage for a project proposal to destroy as much of this gas as we can reach,” Blaney said.

He added, “This effort has been made possible through the generous support of Pitkin County, a generous donation from Atlantic Aviation, and congressionally-designated funding advanced by Sens. Bennet and Hickenlooper.”