Jack and Stacie Phillips and their four children spent Tuesday night in a motel because their $350,000 dream home south of town is sinking.
The Phillipses were unsuccessful in their efforts in court and before the Illinois Department of Mines and Minerals to stop Old Ben Coal Co. from using the longwall mining system in extracting coal 600 to 700 feet below their home.
Mrs. Phillips said cracks began appearing in their 2 1/2-story, 12-room home on July 6, just four years after they moved in.
”You can stick your fist into one crack in the steel-reinforced basement and see daylight through it,” Mrs. Phillips said.
Cracks have appeared in walls throughout the house, she said. One of two 60-foot chimneys is crumbling and the other is cracking, she said.
The 108-foot-long house has dropped about six inches on the east end, and the worst is yet to come, she said.
”An engineer has predicted it will drop two feet on the west end and five feet on the east end,” she said.
”It`s unbelievable,” Mrs. Phillips said. ”There are cracking, popping and ripping noises.”
She said they had to abandon a building used in the grave-monument business they operated on their 80-acre farm.
Springs have developed along a creek that runs through the property because of the sinking.
Old Ben uses the longwall mining system that permits almost complete recovery of coal at its No. 21 mine near Sesser in Franklin County.
Old Ben, which employs about 2,000 miners, also has applied for longwall permits at three other mines it operates in the county. It says the system is more efficient and permits it to remain competitive in the coal business.
Old Ben is the only mining company in Illinois using the longwall technique, in contrast to the room-and-pillar system of mining, which leaves pillars of coal to support the roof.
Sinkage in room and pillar is more gradual, sometimes occurring years after a mine is abandoned.
Coal industry observers in Illinois say other mining companies are closely watching the outcome of the Phillips case.
The Phillipses and their attorney, Ivan Elliott Jr. of Carmi, contend that the mineral rights obtained by Old Ben around 1910 were based on the room-and-pillar system.
”They can say that it`s legal for them to take that coal and disturb the surface, but I`ll never believe it,” Mrs. Phillips said.
The Phillipses were denied a temporary restraining order against the longwall system.
Elliott said a permanent injunction request hearing is pending, as is another administrative hearing next Tuesday in Springfield before the Department of Mines and Minerals.
