Sep 30, 2015 4 min read

Dewitt Walton didn’t need a wayback machine to return to the early 1980s in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

“We learned a lot from the decline of the steel industry,” said Walton, a United Steelworkers official recalling traumatic times in his industry. “We have to mitigate the damage to communities by job loss. We have to find ways and the wherewithal to make sure communities are not decimated. The quality of life has to be preserved.”

Lessons he learned three decades ago are still applicable. Walton, assistant to the USW’s international president, was among a group of five labor and environmental leaders who gathered Wednesday in downtown Washington. They released a report detailing how the energy transition has affected dislocated workers and the Southwestern Pennsylvania communities in which they live, and they discussed a case study examining the fallout from FirstEnergy’s 2013 closure of two coal-fired power plants in the region: Mitchell Power Station, in Union Township and Hatfield’s Ferry.

Khari Mosley, of the BlueGreen Alliance, moderated the session and spoke along with Walton, Mick Power of U.S. Climate Network; Randy Francisco of Sierra Club and Patrick Grenter, executive director of the Center for Coalfield Justice, the South Main Street venue for the event,

Addressing climate change, they advocated a transition to clean energy be made responsibly, not rashly, and be done in a way to create jobs – viable jobs.

“If all the coal mines closed tomorrow, it would be devastating to the region. You don’t have to choose between good jobs and environmental impact,” said Grenter, executive director of Coalfield Justice.

Francisco, Pennsylvania’s organizing representative for Sierra Club, said FirstEnergy may have acted too quickly in shuttering Mitchell, in Union Township, and Hatfield’s, in Monongahela Township, October 2013.

“If the closures had been staggered over a few years,” he said, “it probably would have been better. That is happening not just here, but across the country.

“We were surprised when the closures came, not so much Mitchell, but Hatfield’s because (millions of dollars were) invested (for coal-cleaning scrubbers). We want a just energy transition to happen.”

Mosley, regional program manager of BlueGreen Alliance, a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations, discussed job transition as well. He said there have to be ways to help dislocated workers move into new, viable positions during a switch over to cleaner energy. That, of course, could include retraining.

He lamented the far-reaching effects of job loss.

“Whole communities have to be prepared,” he said. “They not only have to be concerned about workers, but the effect they may have on laundromats, stores, other businesses in their communities.”

“Jobs in clean energy take attention and invention,” said Power, membership and campaign coordinator of U.S. Climate Action Network. He also was author of the report, which focuses on 12 counties surrounding Pittsburgh including Washington and Greene.

The roots of the report started growing in October 2013, about the time the coal-fired plants closed. Power, then a student at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, started working on it in September 2014 and did the majority of his research between November and this past March.

He is a native of West Australia, where coal-fired power plants were shuttered amid climate change. Power said coal, energy and climate change became primary interests.

“I asked where is this happening now and was told, ‘Here.'”

Mosley is hoping the switch over to cleaner energy can be done within a framework of growing jobs here – and elsewhere.

“We’re taking a compassionate approach,” he said. “It’s a serious approach. We want a clean environment, but with the mindset: How do keep a community growing? How do we bring a new economy into the region?”