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Appalachian miners decry what they call Obama's 'war on coal'
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LOGAN, W.Va. — When President Obama laid out ambitious plans in June for combating climate change, coal miners like Roger Horton heard what they considered the latest fusillade in the administration's "war on coal."
Until his retirement two weeks ago, Horton, 59, worked underground for decades in southern West Virginia's Logan County, then operated a 200-ton earth-moving truck to remove debris from blasted mountaintops.
A milestone in Obama's initiative will come this week, when the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue rules limiting emissions from new power plants. Next June, the EPA is to propose standards for existing plants.
Miners, industry and coal-state politicians warn that, depending on how the rules are crafted, they could slash utilities' coal consumption and, with it, jobs and tax revenue in mining states.
"There are lots of reasons to use coal," Horton said, sitting in the empty lobby of a conference center built on a flattened mountain. "And if they would just let us have the permits to mine, we wouldn't have enough people in the area for all the jobs available."
The widespread conviction that the Obama administration is waging a war on coal is in part shaped by Appalachia's decades of economic decline and loss of mining jobs. In struggling Logan County, the population is about half what it was 50 years ago. A flight over the area reveals mountaintops sliced away. Residents say prescription drug abuse is endemic. Young people often move away, leaving West Virginia as the state with the third-highest proportion of residents over age 65.
Daniel Johnson, 32, is among the few younger people to return. After years away as a rock band technician, Johnson and two partners bought Logan's defunct Nolletti family bakery and opened a cupcake shop. His father was a coal miner, as are many of his friends. People here hold onto the possibility of coal jobs, because there's little else that pays as well, Johnson and others said.
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