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('.J ~ C:".1 rl (. ' . ~ THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Tuesday, June 1, 1982 ....-... IA Coal Company's Way to Pacify I ' !Environmentalists: 'Use 'Baggies' : Bv A"" HCGH.-y bags would be burned. , ' , S'aff REporter of TilE W ALl. STRE~;," Jot;SNAL For at least 20 years. a variety of camba- i NEW YORK - Any propo," , to ship tants. including environmentalists and rail' ]crushed coal. or slurry. through water in a roads. have fought the water pipelining of ,pipeline makes environmentalists do a slow coal. Coal operators and utilities want the i burn, Coal operators. from time to time. pipelines. It would require legislation to set. ! may have asked. "What are we supposed to tie many regulatory. water'rights and right. I do with the stuff? Wrap it in Baggies?" of,way problems. " , That's what one corporate coal miner. [w.R. Grace & Co.. now has in mind. Its The 'Aquatrain' i plastic "Baggles." however. are hardly your Ira McKeever. president of Grace's west. ; garden,variety supermarket kind, Each ern mining division, says its bag pipeline, or iwould be nearly two feet in diameter and 10 "aquatrain." wouid cost about $2.5 billion : feet long, including the cost of coaJ~bagging plants: Protecting Coal and Water The Zlf-inch pipeline, Grace says, could Grace mines coal in Colorado. and it also move about 15 million tons ot ,coal a year makes specialty plastics. among other from Grace and other coal suppliers in the , ' pipeline venture. thmgs, It proposes usmg water from the salt'polluted Upper Colorado River basin to The pipeline shipping cost would be no Icarry baggtd'Colorado coal through a pipe- higher than the S28 a Ion it now costs to ship line to the West Coast. The bags would pro, coal by rail from northwest Colorado to teet the cleaned and processed coal from Long Beacli, Calif" Mr. MCKeeveJ'isays. The salt and keep the coal from further dirtying future cost would rise more slowlfthan rail the water. Once on the Wesl Coast, the salt costs, he says. because the variable costs-I water could drain inlo the Pacific already such as labor and fuel-of operating a pipe- tainled with salt. But Grace officials say lhe line make up a much smaller proportion of: IdwnPing would be done very carefully to tolal operating costs than lhe variable costs avoid damage to nearby marine life. The of running a railroad.