Topsoil Removal
Prior to mining through an area, all of the topsoil is salvaged. Cat 637G scrapers remove the topsoil, taking it to a stockpile for use later or directly replacing it on an active reclaim area nearby. The primary job of the scrapers is topsoil salvage and replacement. The Poplar River Mine currently has 3 scrapers.

Overburden Removal
Everything below the topsoil and above the coal is called overburden. Overburden is removed by our two Bucyrus Erie 2570-W draglines. Lot 15 was commission in 1979, and was the 15th BE2570-W to be built. It is the brown and tan dragline. Lot 38, the orange and white dragline, was commissioned in 1982 and was the 38th BE2570-W to be built. Each dragline works in its own pit, several kilometers away from each other. Draglines operate by removing the overburden above a new strip of coal and “spoiling” it away beside them in the previous strip, where the coal has already been removed. Draglines do not actually move any coal; they just remove the dirt on top of the coal so that other equipment can access it.

Coal Haul
Out of Pit After the overburden has been removed, the coal can be hauled away. A fleet of front-end loaders and coal haulers move the coal from the pit to the coal loadout facility or the coal stockpile. For loading the coal, the Poplar River Mine utilizes Cat 993K loaders, the second-largest front-end loader that Cat makes. Cat 776D Coal Haulers haul the coal away, at about 130 metric tonnes per load.

Haul Coal to Power Plant
After the coal haulers move the coal to the coal loadout facility, it is crushed so that no lumps of coal are any larger than 6 inches (~15 cm) in size. The crushed coal is then elevated up a conveyor belt and stored in an elevated silo. The silo holds one train-load of coal, and functions on the same premise as a grain elevator, loading the train quickly and then re-filling the silo slowly while the train is on-route to the power plant. Once fully loaded, the 22-car train carries about 2,000 metric tonnes of coal south along the 22 kilometers of track to get to the power plant. After leaving, the train will get back to the mine in about 2 hours, and does 4 to 6 trips every 24 hours when the plant is producing power near its maximum capacity.

Make Power
Once the train delivers the coal to the power plant, it is in SaskPower’s hands. At the Poplar River Power Station, coal is ground to a fine dust, and then burned in a boiler to create steam. The steam turns massive turbines to create electricity. The Poplar River Power Station is owned and operated by SaskPower and consists of two 315 megawatt units, for a total of 630 megawatts of peak electricity production.

Spoil Levelling
Getting the coal to the power plant is not the end of the strip mining process. After the coal has been removed from the ground, the area has to be reclaimed back to a productive state. The first step in the reclamation process is called spoil levelling. “Spoil” is what the overburden is called after a dragline has moved it. Cat D10T dozers knock down the rough spoil piles left by the draglines, re-contouring the land within specified slope guidelines. At the end of this process, the area closely resembles the low rolling hills found around the Poplar River Mine. Spoil levelling is a continuous process. It occurs year-round, and follows closely behind the draglines, often levelling spoil within a few months of mining through an area.

Topsoil Replacement
After spoil levelling, the same scraper fleet that did the topsoil removal replaces topsoil on the re-contoured area. This topsoil either comes from a stockpile that was placed during the topsoil removal step, or is directly placed as topsoil is removed from a nearby area.

Revegetation
After replacing topsoil, the final step in the reclamation process is to revegetate the land. Reclaimed areas are seeded back to a tame hay mixture, which is tendered out to local farmers. The productivity of the land is closely monitored, and once it is proven that the land is once again productive it can be sold back to the local farmers. The Poplar River Mine has its own farming equipment, and takes care of seeding the land to hay with internal employees. After the land has been seeded, local farmers bid on hay tenders, and then cut, bale, and haul away the hay themselves.