COAL REPORT June 30, 2009

Last week the US House of Representatives passed a bill that is the farthest-reaching step so far to come to grips with the whole issue of climate change. The bill is large and complicated, and it has a long way to go before it would become law. If it does, it is likely to change many things about the way we use energy. In essence we have always treated the air like it was, well, free as air. You could dump all the carbon you wanted into the air without paying anything. Now that would change. The bill sets a limit on the amount of carbon that the US will emit, and sets up a scheme for buying and selling the right to emit the carbon. It does a great many things besides, and is getting more complicated by the minute. Some say it does too much, some say too little.

What does this mean for coal and for mining communities? It’s far too early to tell. But most Appalachian coal representatives voted no, including all three West Virginia representatives. Voting yes was Virginia’s Rick Boucher. Boucher has said that the bill contains plenty of incentives for the coal industry to develop and use “clean coal” technology.

The debate over mountaintop removal mining took a step last week to what is, perhaps, another level. A high-profile group of protesters went onto a Massey Energy site in Raleigh County, West Virginia, to protest the mining practice. The group included the man who is probably the most eminent climate scientist, James Hansen of NASA. Hansen has been saying publicly for years that the earth’s climate is on the verge of a catastrophic change, and by his account—as well as that of a great majority of scientists—carbon dioxide gas is the culprit. As burning coal is the biggest single source of carbon dioxide going into the air, coal has become the target of those who worry about the earth’s climate. In the protest last week, the global-warming movement joined with the movement to ban mountaintop removal mining. The group went to the Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, which sits below a dam holding back 2.8 billion gallons of coal waste. The school, with the prospect of a dam failure there, has become a national symbol for MTR opponents. Last week’s protesters, besides the scientist James Hansen, included actress Darryl Hannah and former West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler, now 94, who was an outspoken opponent of strip mining when in office. About 30 people were arrested after they blocked an access road to a Massey Energy job above the school. The protest, while mostly peaceful, was not quiet. About 200 protesters were met by an equal number of mining supporters, who tried to drown out the protest with noise from horns and car stereos.

A very senior US Senator may be taking a fresh look at mountaintop removal. West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, long a firm supporter of all coal mining, may be rethinking the question. The Beckley /Register-Herald/ reports that Byrd staff members quietly went on a tour of MTR sites, described as a “fact-finding” trip. Senator Byrd, known as a grand master of the Senate’s complicated rules, has enormous power to help or hinder measures he likes or dislikes. If he decided to begin opposing MTR mining, it would greatly change the game in West Virginia and perhaps nationally.

Two new studies, from Kentucky and West Virginia, conclude that coal mining costs mountain communities and governments more than it brings in. In Kentucky, the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, or MACED, looked at the balance sheet for the state government. They figured that coal brings Kentucky’s government over $500 million a year, in taxes the companies pay and the taxes the workers pay. That’s a lot. But MACED figures that the state pays out over $600 million in coal-related costs. That includes the cost of regulating the environmental and health effects of coal, providing various tax breaks and subsidies, training coal workers, educating school children about coal, and keeping up the coal-haul road system. The MACED study concludes that direct coal employment is a net benefit to the state, but that when all the indirect costs are added in, the state government actually loses. In figuring the cost of coal, by the way, MACED did not include costs of coal workers injured or sickened from their work.

That human cost was the central focus of a study released last week by West Virginia University. In a nutshell, the researchers found that people in coal counties die sooner than people in similar non-coal counties. The researchers studied mortality rates for every year from 1979 to 2005. The highest mortality rates were from the areas with the most coal mining, and over time the mortality gap between coal and non-coal counties is increasing. This is not due to mining itself, they say, because it affects men and women equally and miners themselves are almost all men. Instead, the cause seems to be a general high level of stress, perhaps caused by economic and environmental stress.