re: U of Alabama's Coal mineral rights

I don't know about the government limiting their ability to be mined. Some of them are in environmentally sensitive areas where the most efficient method of extraction - strip mining - would also pose the potential for significant impact on the Black Warrior river. Other coal beds are suitable for shaft mining, but with the current economic climate, opening new shaft mines may not be very profitable. Most Alabama coal is high sulfur, which means it creates more sulfur dioxide and requires more "scrubbing" of the stacks, which adds money to the fuel costs and makes it less competitive. The Chinese, though, don't care about that, but there's so much easy to get at coal in the US that it'll probably be a while before the market changes too much.

The coal holding were given to the university in 1880 as reparations for the US Army destroying the campus in April 1865. The deal was negotiated through the senate by John Tyley Morgan, Alabama "Ambassador to the United States," father of legal segregation and the "Isthmian Canal" (though he wanted to build it in Nicaragua). For nearly a century after that, the central steam plant used UA coal to generate steam to heat campus buildings (they switched to natural gas several years ago and tore down the giant chimney that was used in coal-fired boilers). Money from coal built Manly and Clark Halls and there are still numerous faculty endowments on campus that are supported by coal royalties.

You can view all UA land holdings here.