Sep 19, 2014 3 min read

Clemmy Allen, executive director of the United Mine Workers Career Centers Inc., heads from county to county in Appalachia asking commissioners to pass a resolution supporting cleaner, coal-fired power plants. He didn’t have to dig too deeply when prospecting before the Washington County Commissioners this week.

Commissioner Harlan Shober said his late father mined coal for 42 years.

“We ate because of the coal industry. We lived because of the coal industry,” said Shober, a Chartiers Township resident.

One of the most dangerous ways to make a living, underground mining has claimed tens of thousands of workers. According to the United States Department of Labor, the deadliest single year in coal mining was 1907, when an estimated 3,242 deaths occurred. That year, America’s worst mine explosion killed 358 people near Monongah, W.Va. Although safety increased over the decades, “any mining death or injury is still unacceptable,” the Mine Safety and Health Administration said on its website.

Despite the dangers, Allen called miners, “drivers of their local economy … Coal helped build this country.”

There is, however, a specter looming over the mining industry that Allen said induces more fear than the mining profession itself – shutdown of coal-fired power plants. He predicted the loss of 52,000 mining jobs in just six years, which he said would ripple “through the coalfields and beyond, jeopardizing retirement security for retirees, widows and spouses. People who will be mostly affected are being shut out.”

Allen said he intends to send the resolution the Washington County commissioners unanimously approved to U.S. Reps. Tim Murphy, Bill Shuster and Mike Doyle, and called on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to “schedule public hearings in the coalfields” when it considers emissions standards for coal-fired power plants.

The agency convened two days of public hearings in mid-summer in Pittsburgh, which many members of United Mine Workers attended and voiced concerns.

The Obama administration identified the plants as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, making up about one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions. The plan set a goal to cut carbon pollution from the power sector by 30 percent by 2030. The Clean Power Plan estimates there would be public health and climate benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion, far outweighing the costs of $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.

Allen said this spells doom for 13 percent of the coal-fired power plants in the 13 years between 2012 and 2025, adding there is not a single coal-fired power plant on the drawing board in the United States while 1,500 will be built worldwide.

Instead of Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Denver and Washington, D.C., he called for the EPA to convene its meetings in Washington, Logan, W.Va., and Charleston, W.Va., to enable more people to “come and listen and make comments. We want clean air, all of us. Over the last 30 years, the power-generating industry has eliminated 50 percent of the pollutants.”