April 2, 2007

Those old maps in your attic or garage could be handy to the Utah Geological Survey (UGS). The UGS, in cooperation with the Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, has created a new digital database of the abandoned coal mines in Utah.

With funding from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, more than 400 abandoned coal mines were identified in the database, however the UGS has been able to find maps for only 58 percent of the abandoned mines. Ideally, the state would like to have a map for each abandoned coal mine.

"The information we have is not complete,” said Dave Tabet, UGS senior scientist. “In order to complete our mine map coverage, we are asking the public to dig out all of their old prospecting maps that they got from their parents or grandparents and see if they contain information about old mines that we don’t have. We would like to borrow those maps, make a digital image of them for our records, and then return the maps to the owners.”

To see what maps the UGS has collected, the database can be found on the Web at: http://geology.utah.gov/databases/umsh/index.html.

"This is really a public safety issue,” said Tabet. “We hope that by identifying the location and extent of the workings of all the abandoned coal mines in the state, we can avoid the kind of accidents that have occurred in the eastern U.S. where active mines have become flooded when they intersect abandoned mines and miners are trapped.”

The coal mine database is part of a UGS effort to make more services and information accessible to the public on the internet, including such information as well logs, answers to common questions on Utah minerals and geology, interactive maps about GeoSights, and Utah energy statistics.

"We hope that this type of information is useful to miners, regulators, researchers, history buffs, and anyone interested in the geology and mining history of Utah,” said UGS Director Rick Allis.