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November 14, 2009
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Mountaintop-removal mining jobs are played up beyond the importance of their number in coal production and downplayed in environmental destruction, runs the growing trend of protests by environmentalists and demonstrators against mountaintop-removal mining.
The job issue adds to the problems facing coal. The Obama administration aims to reduce the environmental impact of mountaintop mining operations and the Environmental Protection Agency plans to review 79 pending Clean Water Act permits by the Army Corps of Engineers.
What's more, Patriot Coal says it's concerned about a new permit to continue operations of its Hobet 21 mountaintop-mining complex along the Boone-Lincoln county line.
The Hobet complex employs more than 300 members of the United Mine Workers of America, one of the few remaining unionized surface mines in West Virginia. These mines are now run and owned mostly by independents.
UMW President Cecil Roberts has made it clear that the union stands on the side of the jobs, despite mountaintop mining protests by environmentalists and organizations like the Sierra Club.
Protesters hold that the decapitation of mountains and the burying of streams desecrate the environment beyond the worth of a surface mine or strip mine job. Underground mining offers more jobs, more coal and less damage to mountains, streams and fish.
A general breakdown of coal production credits surface mining with about a third of the total, of which mountaintop mining contributes less than half of the surface or strip mining output. The trend for all types of mining is more production by means of machines and fewer workers.
It will be recalled that a move was made in the Mountain State during the first administration of Gov. Jay Rockefeller, also in a few other states, to abolish strip mining.
The proposal was shot down in its tracks like an atheist trying to make converts at a prayer meeting. The public, to say nothing of the coal industry, would have none of it.
But since then, the mountaintop-removal mining issue today, fixed up by the job question, has enlivened the whole matter with a string of protest demonstrations in southern West Virginia coalfields.
A target was Massey Energy operations that drew protesters from far and near. Many were arrested by police and fined for trespassing practically all summer.
A leader of demonstrations was Ken Hechler, 94, former congressman and West Virginia Secretary of State.
Nowadays, Rockefeller and other members of the West Virginia delegation in Congress as well as representatives from other coal states have banded together to protect the future of the industry, jobs and all.
They seek to protect coal from overregulation in attempts to curb greenhouse gases and global warming blamed on burning coal and other fossil fuels.
Their work is cut out for them. So is the need for improved technology to convert coal to liquid fuels and to control carbon dioxide from burning coal and make it more environmentally friendly.
Peeks is a retired business/labor editor of the Gazette.
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