Willow Lake Mine, an underground operation in Saline County north of Equality in Southern Illinois, first shipped coal in 2002. In 2007, the mine sold 3.6 million tons of coal to Midwest utility customers. The mine has 64 million tons of recoverable coal reserves.

 

The mine employs approximately 380 people and operates year-round, seven days a week, with two production shifts per day, operating five walk-between super section units to extract coal from the Springfield No. 5 seam. Coal is transported to the preparation plant via overland conveyor belt and radial stacker.

 

The Willow Lake Preparation Plant is a 1,400 raw-ton-per-hour heavy media plant with the capability to blend or segregate according to coal quality. The plant employs 49 and washes coal for the Willow Lake Mine, the Wildcat Hills Cottage Grove pit surface mine and the Wildcat Hills underground mine. Washed coal is primarily shipped by barge down the Ohio River to the mine's utility customers.

 

Willow Lake Mine is operated by Arclar Company, LLC, a subsidiary of Black Beauty Coal, the largest coal producer in the Illinois Basin. Black Beauty Coal is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Peabody Energy, the world's largest private-sector coal company, with 2007 sales of 238 million tons of coal and $4.6 billion in revenues. Its coal products fuel approximately 10 percent of all U.S. Electricity and more than 2 percent of worldwide electricity. The company is serving global coal demand from electricity generators and steelmakers, and is growing to serve new global customers and emerging Btu Conversion markets.