In this photo taken on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2012, and provided by China’s Xinhua News Agency, workers load coal onto a train in Jiujiang, east China’s Jiangxi Province. The Nanchang Railway Administration and Shanghai International Port (Group) Company have given priority to coal transportation to ensure power generation during this continuous cold weather period, according to Xinhua News Agency. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Hu Guolin)

Let’s start this week’s review of coal news and commentary with a great and timely piece from Scientific American that was headlined, Retiring Old Coal Plants: Bust or Blessing for Local Communities? It tells us:

Last month, when FirstEnergy Corp. decided to close six coal-fired power plants in its home state of Ohio and two other states, the moves became instant political ammunition for Republicans, who blamed the Obama administration’s environmental regulations for the closures.

Because of the regulations on toxic power plant emissions announced last month by U.S. EPA, “500 hardworking Americans in three states will lose their jobs — not to mention the countless indirect jobs,” asserted Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio).

But the causes for the closures were not quite as simple or as immediate as that. Other forces helped push the FirstEnergy plants to the brink, according to energy experts. They include an underperforming U.S. economy, which is suppressing growth of electricity demand, and the lowest natural gas prices in a dozen years, which have made new gas-fired generation a compelling choice for utilities.

Plus, there are offsetting benefits. They begin with the potential for many more jobs in drilling, pipelines, steel, tools, chemicals and related industries — employment that will be created thanks to the surge in development of natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale deposits running underneath the state’s east side. The benefits also include a substantial reduction in health threats caused by the toxic emissions, EPA says.

It’s a great read, and a piece that West Virginia political leaders should take a minute to consider.

In a somewhat related piece, Bloomberg reported this week:

American Electric Power Co. (AEP), the largest U.S. coal consumer, reduced by 13 percent the amount of coal-fired generation it will shut because of new environmental regulations, saying it may get state support to spend $940 million to keep a Kentucky unit operating.

The company still plans to close power plants with about 5,138 megawatts of capacity, Chief Executive Officer Nick Akins said at an investor conference in New York today. The Columbus, Ohio-based company said in June that new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules would force it to retire as much as 5,909 megawatts of capacity.

The difference stems from the company’s decision in December to seek a 31 percent rate increase to fund environmental equipment needed to keep its Big Sandy Unit 2 in Kentucky operating, Akins said later in an interview. State regulators have indicated American Electric may be able to recover from customers the almost $1 billion needed to keep the unit operating, he said.

And since I gave the Sierra Club what-for in a post earlier this week, I thought I’d point everybody to this blog post from Mary Anne Hitt of Sierra’s Beyond Coal Campaign, written in response to FirstEnergy’s announced plant closures in West Virginia:

All this news means cleaner air for thousands of Americans, and it’s a result of years of tireless advocacy by hard-working local residents and volunteers across these states. It also means less air pollution in my backyard, for my family – one of the retiring coal plants is just 20 miles away from my home here in West Virginia.

But there’s some unfinished business in these states. The transition from coal to clean energy needs to happen in a way that protects workers and communities, and FirstEnergy so far has shown no signs that it will do so.

We welcome this good news for our health, and for clean air and water, but we were disappointed to hear that – unlike other energy companies in the same position – FirstEnergy made no clear commitment that its affected workers would get new jobs in the clean energy economy.

We are calling on the company to do right by its workforce and the communities that rely on these plants for a sizable portion of municipal revenue. We are also calling on the company to invest in the enormous clean energy potential of these communities to create good, union jobs through energy efficiency, wind and solar. As the nation transitions away from coal, we must ensure that the workers and families who have dedicated their lives to producing coal-powered electricity are helping lead the way into a clean energy future.

She continued:

Last March in Washington, the state senate approved a landmark agreement between the Sierra Club, Governor Chris Gregoire and TransAlta to phase out the state’s massive 1400MW coal plant between 2020 and 2025. The local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers also supported the agreement.

That agreement created a $55 million fund that will be invested in the Centralia community to help move away from relying on the plant.  Not only will tens of millions of dollars be invested in Centralia community development, but a significant portion of the transition fund will additionally be dedicated to innovation and new technologies that will help reduce Washington’s carbon pollution and create jobs.

Then, last April the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of directors approved a landmark agreement with three citizen groups – including the Sierra Club –, four states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to phase out 18 units at coal-fired power plants and install modern pollution controls on three dozen additional units in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee.

That agreement also required provisions for affected workers: TVA must invest $350 million in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee on additional air pollution-reduction projects over the next five years, including funds to help consumers and business cut their energy bills, support local businesses that are creating jobs in local clean energy projects and cut carbon pollution.

We are committed to clean energy, and we are committed to good jobs. And we will continue pushing FirstEnergy to do the same.

One of the best pieces of journalism I saw this week came from Jim Morris of the Center for Public Integrity (who is, without doubt, one of the best reporters covering health, safety and environmental issues in this country). He wrote:

Publication of a landmark government study probing whether diesel engine exhaust causes lung cancer in miners — already 20 years in the making — has been delayed by industry and congressional insistence on seeing study data and documents before the public does.

A federal judge has affirmed the right of an industry group and a House committee to review the materials and has held the Department of Health and Human Services in contempt for not producing all of them.

The much-anticipated study of 12,000 miners exposed to diesel fumes carries broad implications. If the research suggests a strong link between the fumes and cancer, regulation and litigation could ramp up — with consequences not only for underground mining, but also for industries such as trucking, rail and shipping.

Exposure isn’t limited to workers; people who live near ports, rail yards and highways also are subjected to diesel exhaust laced with carcinogens such as benzene, arsenic and formaldehyde.

But for the time being, at least, the results of an $11.5 million investigation by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health are under lock and key.

Richard Clapp, emeritus professor of environmental health at Boston University, is among several public health experts who called the situation unusual.

“I’ve never heard of an industry group demanding manuscripts from a government agency before a study has been accepted for publication,” Clapp said. “My guess is it would give the industry a chance to prepare their rejoinder early. They want to delay anything that’s going to implicate them in liability for lung cancer.”

There was also more news this week about the Pike River Mine Disaster in New Zealand:

The Labour Department’s probe into Pike River coalmine’s fatal blast has uncovered some major failings with gas and ventilation controls, the inquiry into the tragedy heard yesterday.

An expert mining panel investigating what caused the November 2010 explosion for the department found the underground West Coast mine had poor gas management and ventilation.

Australian mine safety consultant David Reece, one of the panel of five experts, continued yesterday to give evidence at the royal commission into the deaths of 29 men at the mine.

Outside the inquiry, Bernie Monk, spokesman for some Pike families, said it was heartbreaking to hear the mine’s problems and he had shed tears listening to Reece.

“Our men were relying a hell of a lot on these mine managers and designers and everything else to protect them and they were let down extremely badly,” Monk said.

“It brought tears to my eyes sometimes just to hear some of the things that they had to put up with and they’ve been sadly let down.”

Out in Montana,  the AP reports that a judge has rejected a lawsuit challenging the state Land Board’s lease of 587 million tons of publicly owned coal in southeastern Montana, removing a hurdle to a proposed mine with that could drastically expand the state’s coal production. And it was great to see that Wendell Berry was named deliver the 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. The annual lecture, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

Finally, the Economist’s website had an interesting essay and video about mountaintop removal, forests and reforestation in Appalachia.

Coal may well continue to provide more energy than any other single source for some decades to come, but it will probably never again generate the majority of America’s energy, as it did for much of the 19th and all of the 20th centuries. Still, coal will not vanish overnight. Neither will mountaintop-removal mining, which now accounts for much of the coal Appalachia produces. But, as this video shows, some ingenious Kentuckians are figuring out how to restore removed mountaintops.

Check out the video, and have a good weekend, folks.

We all know that the official federal investigation of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster didn’t fine that drugs or alcohol had anything to do with the April 5, 2010, explosion that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners. And it’s clear that separate reports by independent investigator Davitt McAteer and the United Mine Workers union made no recommendations about instituting a state-run drug-testing program for miners, especially when most of the state’s major coal producers already have such programs.

So how did Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin come up with the cornerstone of his mine safety legislation, a proposal to require drug-testing of miners?

Well, to hear the governor tell it — on statewide radio no less — the proposal was among the measures the state Office of Miners Health, Safety and Training recommended be included in the administration’s legislative response to the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years.  That sure sounded like what the governor said on Thursday, when he appeared on the MetroNews program “Talkline,” to defend his proposal following two days of legislative hearings that included harsh criticisms of it. The governor said:

My staff sat down with both labor and industry in joint meetings, when the recommendations come to us from the director of mines to propose this bill … This is not something that just came unilaterally from my office.

That just didn’t sound right to me … What I knew was that the state mine safety office back before the session had sent the governor’s office nine legislative proposals to the governor’s office. Some of those ended up in Gov. Tomblin’s bill once it was finally introduced. Others didn’t. But drug-testing language was not among those recommendations.

I asked the public relations spokeswomen for Gov. Tomblin and for the state mine safety office about this … and here’s what gubernatorial communications director Jaqueline Proctor told me in an e-mail yesterday afternoon:

OMHST did offer 9 recommendations to the Governor’s office.  A drug testing program was not included. The Governor did not intend to suggest otherwise.  It should be noted, however, that OMHST strongly believes that we need a drug testing policy.   He believes that his legislation will make our mines safer, and he looks forward to working with the Legislature in accomplishing that goal.

So who did recommend this language? Whose idea was it to turn a bill about Upper Big Branch — a disaster caused not by drugs or alcohol, but by the flagrant violation of long-standing and recognized safety practices by Massey Energy — into a piece of legislation aimed at making coal miners relieve themselves in a cup?

Good question. I’ve asked the governor’s office that, but haven’t heard back from them yet. If they respond, I’ll update this blog post.

In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that Gov. Tomblin and his staff made significant and industry-friendly changes in a committee-written Marcellus Shale bill after meeting with oil and gas lobbyists — and then refused to make public any correspondence or other documents about those discussions with the industry, saying company lobbyists had acted as “consultants” for them on the issue …

It’s fascinating — but also terribly depressing — to watch the taxpayer-funded publicists in West Virginia government promote the state’s energy industries. Their statements often have such little connection to reality.

Take this morning … there I was, innocently checking over the latest feeds from all of my friends on Twitter, when this came in from the state Department of Commerce:

See the blueprint for why WV continues to be a leader in the nation’s energy production, now and in the future.

Their “tweet” referred readers to a link for a fancy little document they’re calling “West Virginia Energy Blueprint,” that amounts to little more than promotion of a couple of particular state industries — primarily coal, but with a fair amount about natural gas from the Marcellus Shale play.

What you won’t find in there is any real discussion of important issues like the global climate crisis (not even the lack of any real movement on development and deployment of coal-friendly carbon capture and storage technology), the growing science showing environmental and public health damage from mountaintop removal coal mining, the continued toll of coal on the industry’s own workforce, and the inevitable decline of Central Appalachian coal production that’s going to create major economic problems for the region.

At about the same time that Commerce Department tweet came over, I was calling up the latest earnings statement out from Arch Coal’s corporate office out in St. Louis. The company reported $70.1 million in income last quarter and more than $140 million in income in 2011 in full.  CEO Steven Leer said:

Arch delivered solid quarterly financial results despite weakening coal market conditions as the fourth quarter progressed. In particular, our Powder River Basin operations rebounded from flood-related disruptions earlier this year. Also, higher realized prices and solid cost control across our diverse operating platform helped to expand our per-ton operating margins versus a year ago.

Nothing in Arch’s prepared statement about Blair Mountain, by the way, but they did have some things to say about the future of coal, especially here in Appalachia:

Coal markets weakened in the fourth quarter of 2011 as abnormally mild weather and muted economic growth caused U.S. power generation to decline slightly for the full year. Domestic coal consumption declined 5 percent in 2011, resulting from the decrease in power generation as well as fuel switching by power producers given decade-low prices for natural gas and abnormally high hydroelectric availability. As a result, coal stockpiles at U.S. generators rose to an estimated 180 million tons by year end, a seasonal build that is above historical norms.

In 2012, Arch currently estimates that domestic coal consumption for power generation could decline by 50 million tons or more from 2011 levels, as mild weather has reduced power demand and the current oversupply in natural gas markets could induce more coal displacement. Given anticipated declines in domestic coal use as well as U.S. generator stockpile builds, Arch believes that coal production and capital spending levels industry-wide are in the process of significant rationalization, which should set the stage for the next market upswing.

Internal estimates suggest that a significant portion of Central Appalachia’s estimated 125 million tons of thermal production is uneconomic at current index price levels.

Missing from that? Any of the sort of stuff you hear continually from West Virginia political leaders blaming any sort of contraction in the coal industry or coal-fired utilities on President Obama and the efforts of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up air pollution and reduce on-the-ground impacts of mountaintop removal.

It’s funny how that goes … we saw the same thing earlier this week in the press.  Take this Gazette report about an appearance in Charleston by new AEP chief executive Nick Akins:

Although the amount of energy produced by coal will decrease in the nation — from 45 percent today to 39 percent by 2020 — a top electric utility company CEO said there is definitely a future for coal.

“Coal is naturally going to come down, natural gas will be the choice, but they’re really marginal,” said Nick Akins, president and chief executive officer of American Electric Power. “Once technology is proven, you’ll start to see coal come back. We still need coal . . . . If someone is trying to eliminate that, it’s just not going to happen.”

The Daily Mail had an even longer story on this, with the predictable editorial, proclaiming:

The supporters of the Obama administration have a clear vision of the nation’s energy future. It involves windmills and solar arrays – but not coal. They don’t like carbon. The administration takes no responsibility for whether the resulting power supply will be adequate, reliable or affordable. Accordingly, it has tasked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to kill the coal industry and coal-burning utilities as rapidly as possible through regulation.

It’s hard to know where to start when newspaper editorial writers have such little grasp for the facts, and often seem to ignore even what their own reporters know to be true — follow the recent tweets from the Daily Mail’s Ry Rivard, such as this:

Coal industry woes: companies blame a number of factors, many market driven, plus the regs. Pols & operatives emphasize EPA. The industry has been noting quietly for several years the power of market. I remember coal mine closed two years ago … After some prodding, company admitted it had too much coal on hand & bad market. Didn’t stop politicians from blaming in toto the EPA.

Industry executives, state agency flacks and newspaper staffers who throw out straw-men arguments about eliminating all coal production immediately aren’t doing West Virginians any favor. They simply don’t know what they’re talking about at best — or, at worst, they are deliberately misleading people.

The latest projections for the future of coal in this country don’t suggest the industry is going to die, no matter what EPA does about mountaintop removal, mercury emissions or global warming.  They do show major declines over the next quarter century in Appalachia, especially in Central Appalachia, which includes the Southern West Virginia coalfields where most mountaintop removal takes place. I’ve yet to hear a single major political figure in West Virginia address this in an honest way, and suggest that something needs to be done to prepare for it. I can’t figure out which these guys want to talk about less — the coal production trends or the WVU studies that link living near mountaintop removal to increased risks of cancer and birth defects.

Ironically, the press reports about the new AEP chief’s speech were bracketed on both sides by media accounts of far more troubling signs of our future: A few days before Nick Akins visited Charleston, both Alpha Natural Resources and Patriot Coal announced mine closures and layoffs.  Just after his appearance, rival utility FirstEnergy revealed it was closing three of its most ancient, least efficient and most polluting plants in West Virginia.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s response? Bash EPA. Same goes for Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Joe Manchin and Rep. David McKinley. The Parkersburg paper quoted all of them in a story, but couldn’t be bothered to mention any potential public health benefits that would come from eliminating the air pollution from these plants. And none of the political leaders seemed to know that, as we reported in the Gazette, FirstEnergy still has a significant generation presence in West Virginia — including three large plants where it spent billions to install scrubbers, in projects that improved air pollution and efficiency, while also providing thousands of construction jobs.

Just as the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd warned us it would, change is coming to West Virginia’s coal industry.

Interestingly, as we noted in our story about the FirstEnergy plant closures, the West Virginia Sierra Club had tried to get a discussion going in the Preston County area about the future of the Albright Power Station. They wanted to talk about what would happen if (when?) the plant closed — where would people find jobs, how would local schools be funded, and aren’t there cleaner alternatives for energy production that might help rejuvenate such communities?

Pam Kasey did a more complete story on the Sierra Club’s efforts for The State Journal, and she explained:

Communities in West Virginia and across the nation face losses as the oldest coal-fired power plants near the ends of their useful lives.

Families lose good livelihoods when plants are retired. The diversity and health of local economies are diminished.

But in some communities, residents, supported by environmental groups, have worked with utilities to craft closure plans that take local needs into account.

Last year, for example, workers and local governments in Centralia, Wash., assisted by the Sierra Club, negotiated a 15-year plant closure plan with TransAlta. The plan sets aside $50 million for energy efficiency and clean energy projects — initiatives that will keep electricity bills down and offset the jobs impact of the closure.

A similar settlement agreement on behalf of residents of Gulf states was announced later in the year. Audubon and the Sierra Club agreed to stop fighting AEP’s new coal-fired plant in Arkansas. To offset the new plant’s emissions, the utility will retire its old Welsh 2 coal-fired unit in northeast Texas by 2016 and will provide 400 megawatts of clean generating capacity for the region and $10 million for energy efficiency and land conservation.

My old buddy Jim Kotcon of the Sierra Club told me this week:

We think something like that has to happen in a lot of areas. We see a continued decision to reduce use of coal-fired electricity as the health impacts become more obvious. It’s important to being the path toward transition so we don’t end up with more communities where a company just announces they are closing a plant.

What if all of the energy that goes into distributing “urgent” social media messages and waging call-in campaigns about one mountain (no matter how historic) were instead funneled into working on what the Sierra Club is trying to do in Preston County? Maybe even half of that energy?

More importantly, why did it take the Sierra Club to put together a meeting like the one in Albright? Why aren’t Gov. Tomblin and our congressional delegation doing it?

Arch Coal hasn’t responded to my requests for comment about what’s going on down at Blair Mountain, but they did apparently provide a statement to the folks at E & E’s Greenwire … here’s what is being reported by that subscription-only publication:

Arch spokeswoman Kim Link dismissed the concerns that mining activity is imminent.

“We are not currently conducting any mining-related activities in the area in question,” she wrote in an email, “and we have no immediate plans to do so.”

Well, the folks at the Sierra Club just issued a press release headlined, “Is Arch Coal About to Mine Historic Blair Mountain? Local and National Groups Rally to Townspeople’s Defense.” They say:

Residents of Blair, West Virginia have noticed increased activity from mining company Arch Coal around the historic Blair Mountain Battlefield site. Members of the town have become more and more concerned about Arch’s activities and fear they are moving forward with plans to mine the Blair Battlefield site. There have been reports of proposed buy outs of resident’s property, increasing industrial activity in the area and other preparations indicative of a move towards mining operations on the battlefield itself. Blair Mountain is the site of the largest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War. In 1921 more than 10,000 coal miners fought forces backed by mining interests in an attempt to organize unions in Logan and Mingo County.

It’s interesting … because nearly a dozen people I’ve talked to today — including some with close ties to the Sierra Club and other environmental groups — have told me when I asked that they don’t really know what’s going on. Even local folks who are watching developments very closely aren’t sure that the increased activity is any indication that strip-mining of the site is imminent. (One even told me it’s possible that the movement is in preparation for planned longwall mining underground).

I first heard about this yesterday from filmmaker-activist Mari-Lynn Evans, who told me to get more information from retired miner-activist Joe Stanley. And Joe told me I should really talk to Brandon Nida, the executive director of Friends of Blair Mountain. I talked to Brandon today, and what he told me he’s witnessed himself and heard from residents was pretty close to what the Sierra Club recounted in its press release:

There’s been a huge amount of activity in Blair, with equipment and logging trucks. It does look like Arch is going to be doing something.

I asked Arch Coal for an update on their plants at operations and proposed operations in the area, but they haven’t responded. I also asked Kathy Cosco at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection what was happening on Arch permits near Blair Mountain and this is what she told me:

I was told that Bumbo No. 2 is doing high wall reclamation and has been for some time now, and there was an amendment approved for Left Fork, which was about 58 acres, but it is right in the middle of an area where mining has already occurred. But no one was immediately aware of any activity on Adkins Fork. Harold Ward is having someone look into it and get back to me.

It’s not clear that some new Arch Coal SMCRA permits in the area have obtained Clean Water Act Section 404 permits — but as long as the company’s mining activities stay out of waters of the U.S., citizen group lawyers might not have a way to get into federal court to try to block the company. Meanwhile, some of the citizen groups are clearly gearing up as I write this for a major PR campaign, worrying that if they wait for more concrete information, it will be too late. The risk to that, of course, is if they’re wrong this time it might be harder to get the public worked up the next time around.

Keep in mind that mining in the Blair Mountain area is still the subject of two major legal actions, one challenging the failure to place the battlefield on the National Register of Historic Places, and the other over the WVDEP’s refusal to grant the area “lands unsuitable for mining” status.

Stay tuned …

Here’s the latest SEC filing from Alpha Natural Resources:

FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) announced today that its Monongahela Power Company (Mon Power) subsidiary will be retiring three older coal-fired power plants located in West Virginia by September 1, 2012. The decision to close the plants is based on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), which were recently finalized, and other environmental regulations.

The following plants will be retired: Albright Power Station, Willow Island Power Station, and Rivesville Power Station. In total, 105 employees will be directly affected.

The total capacity of these regulated plants is 660 megawatts (MW), about 3 percent of FirstEnergy’s total regulated and competitive generation portfolio. Recently, these plants served mostly as peaking facilities, generating, on average, less than 1 percent of the electricity produced by FirstEnergy over the past three years.

Mon Power recently completed a yearlong study of its older, unscrubbed regulated coal-fired units to determine the potential impact of significant changes in environmental regulations. It was determined that additional investments to implement MATS and other environmental rules would make these plants even less likely to be dispatched. As a result, the decision was made to retire these West Virginia plants rather than continue operations.

This follows FirstEnergy’s announcement last month that its competitive generation subsidiaries would retire six older, coal-fired power plants located in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland by September 1, 2012.

“The high cost to implement MATS and other environmental rules is the reason these Mon Power plants are being retired,” said James R. Haney, regional president of Mon Power and president of West Virginia Operations for FirstEnergy.

The number of affected employees could be less than 105 as some will be considered for open positions at other FirstEnergy facilities and work locations. In addition, existing severance benefits will apply to eligible affected employees and certain employees may take advantage of an additional benefit being offered to those who are eligible for retirement.

All of the recently announced plant retirements are subject to review for reliability impacts, if any, by PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization that controls the area where they are located.

Since the Clean Air Act became law in 1970, FirstEnergy and its predecessor companies have invested more than $10 billion in environmental protection efforts. Since 1990, FirstEnergy has reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides by more than 76 percent, sulfur dioxide by more than 86 percent and mercury by about 56 percent. When the older coal-fired plants are retired and removed from FirstEnergy’s competitive and regulated generating fleet, nearly 100 percent of the power provided will come from resources that are non- or low-emitting, including nuclear, hydro, pumped-storage hydro, natural gas and scrubbed coal units.

FirstEnergy is a diversified energy company dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its 10 electric distribution companies comprise the nation’s largest investor-owned electric system. Its diverse generating fleet features non-emitting nuclear, scrubbed coal, natural gas, and pumped-storage hydro and other renewables, and has a total generating capacity of nearly 23,000 megawatts.

Davitt McAteer, who led the independent team that investigated the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster was just on Hoppy Kercheval’s Talkline statewide radio show, giving West Virginians a preview of his testimony this afternoon up at the Capitol. Lawmakers are holding the second in two days of discussions about rival mine safety bills proposed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and the House Democratic leadership.

We learned during yesterday’s session that the problem of drug abuse in the mines — the cornerstone of the governor’s bill — had nothing to do with the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. Really, anybody who has followed the issue knew that already, but the governor’s effort to get the industry bill through under the guise of his legislative response to UBB prompted lawmakers to ask the question.

On the radio this morning, Davitt McAteer reported that his team’s review of autopsies of the miners who died at Upper Big Branch revealed no drug issues — only one mine who had a small amount of cough syrup in his system.

It’s always, well, interesting, to listen in to long sessions where our state’s lawmakers ask questions. It was pretty disappointing yesterday, though, when nobody bothered to ask the witnesses the crucial question at hand: How specifically would either of these bills prevent the next mine disaster?

Maybe House leaders would have done so, if they weren’t so busy chasing down stuff related to the governor’s drug testing proposal, which while perhaps an issue worth dealing with, threatens to take attention away from any reforms that are actually based on the state’s experience at Upper Big Branch. Of course, maybe that’s exactly what the coal industry wants, as expressed in West Virginia Coal Association lobbyist Chris Hamilton’s remarks yesterday:

I would never attempt to defend what happened at UBB.  But please, don’t anyone think that is common place or happens elsewhere in the industry.

In any event, all this talk about the governor’s drug testing proposal made me want to go back and see what stance the National Mining Association took on the MSHA drug-testing proposal made in 2008 during the Bush Administration. Surprise: The industry opposed this proposed rule, at least in part because the language would have required coal operators to give miners who test positive the first time a chance to seek treatment and get their lives straightened out before they could be fired.

NMA lobbyist Bruce Watzman (pictured above) explained his organization’s thoughts during an MSHA public hearing in October 2008:

Most importantly, we believe that by denying mine operators the ability to exercise all disciplinary actions for a first offense of the operator’s program, up to and including dismissing the employee, the proposed rule will diminish rather than enhance the current level of workplace safety provided by NMA’s members.

Bruce elaborated in this NMA comment letter, calling the language the “most far-reaching regulatory provision” in the MSHA proposal:

NMA urges that consideration be given to whether the Mine Act provides authority for MSHA to displace the employment-at-will doctrine as it relates to the employer-employee relationship. More specifically, NMA does not believe that a legally sound basis has been articulated to substantiate authority for MSHA, under the Mine Act, to displace the employer-employee relationship under state law as it relates to more stringent policies for an alcohol- and drug-free workplace nor do we believe such Mine Act authority exists.

Of course, the MSHA proposal was never finalized, and it doesn’t appear to be on the Obama administration’s list of current priorities for that agency.

But remember that, just last week, a coal industry lawyer was praising the fact that Gov. Tomblin’s proposal doesn’t require mine operators to provide any sort of treatment assistance to miners who develop drug problems — apparently even if those problems can be linked to getting hooked on painkillers taken because of an on-the-job injury. Interestingly, the drug-free workplace rules for Kentucky’s coal industry appears to include at least some minimal requirement for programs to help employees with problems.

Today and tomorrow, the House and Senate Judiciary committees at the West Virginia Legislature are holding informational sessions to discuss the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster and to hear about at least two pending pieces of mine safety legislation.

We’ve talked before about Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s bill (see here and here), and you can read that legislation for yourself here (It’s SB 448, the same as HB 4351)  The House leadership’s bill was discussed here and the full text is available here.

Probably the most fascinating thing about all of this is how Gov. Tomblin — perhaps with the help of some coal industry lobbyists — managed to turn legislation that was prompted as a response to the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in 40 years into a drug-testing bill for the mining industry.

As best I’ve been able to tell from reading the reports out so far, there’s absolutely no evidence — none at all — that drug use had anything at all to do with the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. Yet a drug-testing mandate is the cornerstone of the governor’s bill. And somehow the legislation doesn’t include a requirement that mine operators provide drug treatment for miners with problems, even if those problems developed while a miner was taking prescription medication as part of recovering from a workplace injury.

Over at the State Journal, Taylor Kuykendall did a piece that compared the governor’s bill and the House leadership proposal.

But what about what isn’t in either of the bills?

– There’s really no legitimate question that the Upper Big Branch explosion on April 5, 2010, was the almost inevitable result of a a huge buildup of highly explosive coal dust in the Massey Energy mine. Yet neither piece of legislation does much about this problem. Gov. Tomblin’s bill purports to do so, by really all it’s doing is repeating a tighter rock-dusting standard that’s already been adopted by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

If lawmakers wanted to take the lead in this area, they could mandate that every underground coal mine in West Virginia do what U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin has forced Alpha Natural Resources to do: Install new meters that would allow better monitoring and detection of coal-dust problems and violations.

– Independent investigator Davitt McAteer’s team found that most of the miners who died at Upper Big Branch already were suffering from black lung, a deadly disease that claimed the lives of 10,000 U.S. coal miners in the last decade. While black lung wasn’t a contributing factor in the disaster, the McAteer teams’ findings were a clear indication of the continuing public health disaster from this disease.

Public health experts know how to end black lung — tighten the legal limit of coal dust in the nation’s underground mines. But the industry has succeeded in getting its friends on Congress to block the Obama administration’s effort in that direction. So if Gov. Tomblin really believes that one coal-mining death is too many, he could urge lawmakers to amend his bill to implement the tighter standard in all of West Virginia’s underground coal mines.

Those are just two examples, drawn from a very quick review of reports issued by McAteer, MSHA and the United Mine Workers of America … Look for more recommendations during testimony today and tomorrow, and watch and see if the governor and legislative leaders quickly adopt the absolute strongest among those recommendations.

If you don’t read the Saturday newspaper, you might have missed this story, outlining two troublesome announcements last week by major coal producers here in West Virginia:

Alpha Natural Resources announced late Friday that it plans to idle several Appalachian coal mines and reduce work schedules at others, citing reduced coal demand as more electricity utilities move toward using natural gas.

The company said many of the affected workers would be able to transfer to other Alpha operations but that about 320 workers would be displaced “within the next few weeks.”

The announcement is the second such move by a major coal producer this week, coming just one day after Patriot Coal said it was closing its Big Mountain complex in Boone County.

You can read for yourselves the announcement from Alpha here and the one earlier in the week from Patriot here.  Alpha made a separate announcement of its moves, in anticipation of the release of its quarterly earnings data on Feb. 24. Patriot wrapped word of its closure of the Big Mountain Complex in Boone County inside its quarterly earnings statement.

For those who missed the details of the Alpha closures and schedule cutbacks — Alpha didn’t bother to include that in its press release — here’s the way company spokesman Ted Pile explained it in an email to me:

West Virginia:

– #2 Gas mine in Kanawha County is being idled immediately as is the Randolph Mine in Boone County. Both are underground.

–The Black Castle surface mine in Boone County is reducing its work hours

–Camp Branch surface mine in Logan County is reducing work schedules

–Progress/Twilight surface mine is cutting back work schedules (Boone Cty.)

–Alloy Powellton mine in Fayette County s eliminating one underground section

Kentucky:

– the Cave Spur and Perkins Branch underground mines are idled immediately. Both are in Harlan County.

– the Coalgood surface mine in Harlan County will be phased out by the middle of this year and the Big Branch West surface mine in Knott County will close in early 2013.

Ted continued:

These moves altogether will displace about 320 people over the next few weeks. The number would have been higher but we were fortunate being a larger company to have other positions available for miners to fill, so all told, 234 people have been given a job opportunity elsewhere in our mine network.

While this was a decision driven by the reality of the tough market for coal, it’s still a hard decision because it affects working families. We’re trying to help by giving all displaced workers 60 days of continued pay and benefits even though it’s not required. Hopefully that’ll help them transition.

In its official press release, which is also a document that gets filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Alpha referred to the layoffs as production adjustments, which it blamed on “market conditions that have decreased coal demand.” Alpha’s release continued:

Alpha’s Central Appalachian businesses are seeing more electric utilities switch from thermal coal to natural gas to take advantage of gas prices at 10-year lows. A series of federal regulatory actions also have prompted utilities to implement plans for shutting down a number of generating stations that have traditionally run on coals sourced from Central Appalachia.

Patriot CEO Richard Whiting explained his company’s actions this way:

Metallurgical coal demand has trended downward in recent weeks, particularly in export markets.  As previously announced, we have taken actions to match our met production with expected sales volume. We are reducing production at both our Rocklick and Wells complexes, with particular emphasis on higher-cost operations, and delaying certain of our met expansion plans.

Likewise, given our view that the domestic thermal coal market is likely to remain depressed for an extended period, we have conducted a rigorous review of our Central Appalachia thermal mine portfolio.  As a result, we made the decision to idle the Big Mountain complex in Boone County, West Virginia, effective today.  Big Mountain produced 1.8 million tons of thermal coal in 2011.  This decision effectively positions Patriot with no remaining uncommitted Appalachia thermal coal in 2012.

We’ve gone over many times on this blog the problems facing the Appalachian coal industry … reduced amounts of quality reserves, increased competition from natural gas and from other coal basins, etc. (See here, here, and here, just for example). It’s true that increased air pollution limits on coal-fired power plants are part of this picture, but it’s worth remembering that many of the power plants that are closing were slated for demise anyway, as most are old and inefficient. And not for nothing, but these mines all had their environmental permits, so there’s no real way to blame the Obama administration’s crackdown on mountaintop removal this time — it’s a chance to see the future of coal a little more clearly, perhaps.

None of that really matters to the miners who are losing their jobs, and certainly not to their families. When you get a pink slip, it’s still a pink slip, no matter what the reason. Public relations battles between the Sierra Club and the United Mine Workers, or all the energy put into lobbying efforts by all sides don’t really change the immediate challenges those families now face. Though I wonder if Mayor Bloomberg or Aubrey McClendon would shell out a few million each for a job training or educational program for coalfield residents who are likely to be hard hit in the coming years …Or maybe a place for the Sierra Club and the UMWA to find some common ground would be to spend some of that “Beyond Coal” money for programs to help families who are experiencing the impact of that program first hand.

More broadly, it seems likely these announcements won’t be the last, at least if the Central Appalachian coal production forecast — a more than 50 percent drop over the next 25 years — comes to pass. So perhaps this is an opportunity for policymakers in the region to finally start thinking about what they’re going to do about this problem. EPA regulations aren’t the only cause here, and all the public relations and lobbying campaigns in the world aren’t going to change some of the factors that are behind the layoffs announced last week, or the additional layoffs likely to come.

So why is it acceptable to for our leaders to just write off the idea of coming up with some additional money for a trust that could fund future economic development, education and infrastructure that would help smooth this transition? Why should our kids have to wait for solutions so that politicians can be more comfortable running for re-election? Is that leadership?

Train cars full of coal head to the FirstEnergy Corp., coal-fired power plant in Eastlake, Ohio is seen on Thursday,  Jan. 26, 2012.  FirstEnergy Corp. says it will shut down six older, coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland, affecting about 530 employees on Sept. 1.  The Akron, Ohio-based utility said Thursday that the move is related to new environmental rules. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

Well, folks, Sunday is the 3rd anniversary of the launching of this blog. In a post called, “Welcome to Coal Tattoo,” I wrote:

… One thing that I want to note is that it seems that there are really two separate discussions going on about coal.

One of them is out there in the broader world. Scientists, policymakers and even investors are becoming more and more convinced that the downsides of coal have to be addressed. One way or the other, coal-fired power’s contribution to global warming must be dealt with. To these folks, the question is: Can coal have a place in our energy mix in a carbon-constrained world?

The other discussion is happening here in West Virginia, and in other coal communities. Locally, the issues are different, and in many ways much more emotional. It’s a battle between families who rely on coal to put food on their tables and send their kids to college, and folks who live near coal mines and are tired of blasting, dust, and water pollution. To these folks, the questions are: How can we protect coal’s future or how can we shut down mountaintop removal?

These two discussions are starting to intersect a little bit. Activists who don’t like mountaintop removal are talking more and more about climate change. But there’s still a huge disconnect between the way the broader world talks about coal and the way we here in the coalfields do.

Perhaps the scientists and activists who understand what coal burning is doing to our climate should try to understand a little more about how a third-generation coal miner in Eastern Kentucky feels. And maybe that coal miner should be a little more open to hearing what the world would be like if we don’t do something about rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Most importantly, maybe the policymakers in Washington need to understand what the economic impact of climate change regulations is going to be on places like West Virginia and Wyoming. And maybe politicians and government officials in places like Charleston, W.Va., need to come to terms with the fact that change is coming to this industry.

I hope this blog contributes a little bit to helping these discussions along. I welcome thoughts, comments, suggestions and criticisms on how to get this job done.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments on all things coal and on how this blog can do better.

The news everybody who is on the inside of these controversies — mostly PR people, lobbyists, and journalists — is talking about comes from a Time magazine blog reporting (later picked up by Politico) earlier this week:

… The biggest and oldest environmental group in the U.S. finds itself caught on the horns of that dilemma. TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past. It’s also sure to anger ordinary members who’ve been uneasy about the Club’s relationship with corporations. “The chapter groups and volunteers depend on the Club to have their back as they fight pollution from any industry, and we need to be unrestrained in our advocacy,” Michael Brune, the Sierra Club’s executive director since 2010, told me. “The first rule of advocacy of is that you shouldn’t take money from industries and companies you’re trying to change.”

I see this whole thing as a bit of a sideshow … it’s fodder for some of the coal lobbyists I heard at this week’s West Virginia Coal Association meetings to make nasty comments about the Sierra Club. And it was too bad that the United Mine Workers of America union joined in that, issuing a name-calling news release about the Sierra Club so soon after former UMWA President Richard Trumka called for constructive discussions between differing groups about the future of coal.

This reminded me that one of the folks I know whose been wrestling with Chesapeake Energy over its impact on his homeplace is a fellow I met many years ago when he was walking a UMWA picket line and I was covering a coal strike. The people and communities impacted by these industries are quite a lot alike and are even sometimes one in the same. Dust-ups that cause more friction between citizens who suffer damage from extractive industries and the folks who work for those industries do little but play into the hands of those in these industries who don’t want to be reformed.

Moving on to the rest of this week’s coal news and commentary:

– The Economist had a take on how “Tighter regulation, bountiful natural gas and declining installation costs for renewable energy herald the end of America’s coal era“:

To some, regulations prove the current administration’s hostility to coal. To others, however, they are a long-overdue attempt to gauge a putatively cheap fuel’s true external costs. A National Academy of Sciences report estimated that the external costs unrelated to climate-change costs (to human health, crop and timber yields, building materials and recreation) of coal-fired power plants in 2005 totalled $62 billion. A study of coal’s effects on Kentucky’s budget in 2006 found that it contributed $528m in revenue, but its on-budget costs—training, support, repairs to the roads, R&D for the coal industry—totalled $643m. A study in West Virginia in 2009 also found the coal industry a net cost to the state.

In this Tuesday Jan. 10, 2012 photo shows a  WV Guard C-130 practice drop at a Consol mine in Fola, W. Va.  The new drop zone, made available to the West Virginia National Guard at no cost by Consol Energy, replaces a practice airdrop area in Mason County previously used by the Guard.  (AP Photo/The Charleston Gazette, Kenny Kemp)

Without alternatives, America might need to resign itself to these costs. But alternatives are there. As coal’s share of America’s electricity-generation market fell between 2000 and 2010, those of natural gas and renewables rose: gas from 16% to 24%, and renewables from 9% to 10%.

The EIA forecasts that America will still obtain 39% of its energy from coal by 2035, but that assumes a consistent regulatory framework. Other sources are less sanguine. Deutsche Bank predicts that coal’s share will fall to 20% by 2030 as regulatory risk grows, with natural gas and renewables rising. That seems more likely. The EPA’s new emissions rules may have been stayed by the courts, but they loom nonetheless, hampering investment in coal.

The switch away from it will be painful for some. But as Robert Byrd, the late senator from West Virginia, once said, coal-dependent regions “can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it.”

The piece had this interesting section about coal exports:

Regulatory uncertainty and the emergence of alternative fuel sources (natural gas and renewables) will probably make America’s future far less coal-reliant than its past. In 2000 America got 52% of its electricity from coal; in 2010 that number was 45%. Robust as exports are, they account for less than one-tenth of American mined coal; exports cannot pick up the slack if America’s taste for coal declines. Appalachian coal production peaked in the early 1990s; the EIA forecasts a decline for the next three years, followed by two decades of low-level stability. Increased employment and declining productivity suggest that Appalachian coal is getting harder to find.

– But a Washington Post blog offered quite a different view in a post headlined, Coal’s not dying, it’s just getting shipped abroad:

The United States still has plenty of coal sitting underground, especially in Wyoming’s vast Powder River Basin. And other countries around the world would love to get their hands on that coal to burn for electricity. That’s why, over the past decade, even as domestic coal use has dropped, exports have surged (mostly to Europe). In 2010, exports accounted for 7.5 percent of all coal production, up from 4.4 percent in 2005. As Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute observes, that boom in overseas demand has helped coal production hold steady in the past decade.

So here’s one possible future: If we’re not going to burn our coal, someone else will. One Tokyo shipping company, Daiichi Chuo Kisen Kaisha, says that U.S. coal exports could double in the next three or four years. In Washington state, coal companies are proposing two large export terminals that would help ship tens of millions of tons of coal from the Powder River Basin to countries like China. That, in turn, could make coal even cheaper in places like China — which might spur the country to build even more coal power plants than its current, already hectic pace. And, since carbon-dioxide heats up the planet no matter where it’s burned, this outcome could cancel out many of the global-warming benefits of the U.S. coal decline.

I’d be especially interested in thoughts from Coal Tattoo readers who follow the markets closely about what all of this means …

– Pam Kasey, the great environmental and energy write at The State Journal, had her own piece about the decline in coal production:

Natural gas continued narrowing the gap with coal in U.S. power production in 2011.

Producing more than half of the nation’s electricity not long ago, coal dipped into the low 40-percent range, based  on 11 months of 2011 U.S. Energy Information Administration data annualized by The State Journal.

Gas, at the same time, neared a quarter of generation for the first time.

Total U.S. generation was on track in November to end about flat in 2011 with 2010, at 4.13 billion megawatt-hours — still shy of its 2007 peak of 4.16 billion mwh.

Coal remains well down from its 2007 peak of 2.0 billion mwh, at an estimated 1.8 billion mwh in 2011.

And coal’s share of generation continued a long slide. From a 1993 peak of about 54 percent of total U.S. generation, coal dipped below 50 percent in 2004 and likely finished 2011 at about 42.6 percent.

– The Courier-Journal in Louisville had a very interesting piece about coal money in the Kentucky gubernatorial election:

Although state law puts a $1,000 limit on contributions to a candidate in a single election, supporters of Gov. Steve Beshear found legal ways to give much, much more to him, his Democratic Party and other related political causes as he won re-election last year, a Courier-Journal analysis has found.

Consider James Booth, an Inez coal operator and businessman, and his wife, Linda.

In addition to the $1,000 each gave to Beshear’s re-election campaign committee, they contributed $37,500 to the Kentucky Democratic Party, and $60,800 to the national Democratic Party.

And after the election, James Booth contributed $100,000 to the fund that paid for Beshear’s inauguration.

Moreover, officials and employees of Booth’s companies donated another $79,000 to Beshear’s campaign and the state and national Democratic parties.

The $279,300 total puts Booth and his associates at the top among private-sector contributors to Beshear’s re-election campaign and other related causes.

“It’s really sort of sad, but it’s legal,” said Richard Beliles, chairman of Common Cause of Kentucky. “These groups that give so much — coal companies, road  contractors, a payday lender, those interested in gambling — get access (to the governor) that’s just not available to others. And that’s bound to affect public policy.”

– That piece prompted this editorial in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

With coal money talking so loudly and directly into his ear, the governor should try extra hard to hear average Kentuckians whose homes, health and future are imperiled by the coal industry’s most destructive practices.

The ridges that cradle Lynch — and are at risk of being destroyed — are part of Black Mountain, Kentucky’s highest point, which school children fought to save from strip-mining in the late 1990s.

You can’t put a price tag on the history and possibilities that will be lost if Beshear sacrifices this little corner of Kentucky.

Political greenbacks or the green hills of home? We wait to see which Beshear prizes more.

Finally, Gazette design editor Kyle Slagle pointed out to me this great slideshow of photos from coal-mining regions around the world … definitely check it out, and have a good weekend.

This morning’s sessions over at the West Virginia Coal Association’s Annual Mining Symposium didn’t disappoint, that’s for sure. Especially if you — like most of the industry crowd there — can get worked up about just about anything that criticizes President Obama.

I’m not sure which was the highlight … but here are my two nominations:

– My good friend Ben Bailey, the Charleston lawyer who represents the state in its taxpayer-funded lawsuit to block the U.S. EPA’s crackdown on mountaintop removal.

Ben hauled out an oldie but a goodie — quoting the lines from Isaiah 40:4:

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.

Ben cited this as proof of a “Biblical admonition to move earth.” But of course, as I’m sure Ben knows, some versions of the Bible talk about every valley being “exalted” — which I’m not sure really means burying it under millions of tons of waste rock and dirt from a mountaintop removal mine.

– Or, Mike Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association. First, Mike at least twice referred to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson as having been head of the state EPA in Delaware. I don’t think I misheard him, and perhaps I’m mistaken, but I think he meant to say she was head of the state EPA in New Jersey.

But the best one — and perhaps this gives Mike the edge over Ben — is that he hauled out the old, out-of-context attack that Sarah Palin tried to use against then-candidate Obama just days before the 2008 election, turning Obama’s simple explanation of how cap-and-trade works into proof of a plan by Obama to bankrupt the coal industry. (See our 2008 coverage of this issue, including a transcript of the comments, here). Not for nothing, but Mike didn’t bother to quote this part of what Obama said at the time:

The only thing that I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. I have said that, for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter, as opposed to saying that if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way we should pursue it, that I think is the right approach.

Anyway, probably the most interesting bit of real news to come out today was the discussion by John Craynon of Virginia Tech of the Appalachian Research Initiative for Environmental Science, or ARIES.  Here’s the official description of that project, posted on the university’s website:

The purpose of ARIES is to engage in detailed studies of the environmental impacts of the mining, gas, and energy sectors in Appalachia, focusing on both upstream (mining, drilling, and processing) and downstream (water, land, and air) issues. To meet that purpose, ARIES will conduct scientific inquiry and research, foster publication and contribute to the relevant literature, and engage in outreach efforts to share and disseminate results. Initially, work carried out by ARIES will focus on the coal mining industry.

But what caught my attention were comments by Craynon that one of the first projects is a set of reports that aim to see if there “different interpretations” of the data than those presented in the papers published by West Virginia University’s Michael Hendryx. Hmmm … you guessed it, here’s what else I found on the ARIES website:

Several companies have become industrial affiliate members of ARIES. These are: Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal, Cliffs Natural Resources, CSX, MEPCO, Natural Resource Partners, Norfolk Southern, Patriot Coal Corporation, and TECO. Other industrial partners will likely be added in the future. These partners have provided $15 million over the next 5 years to fund the work of ARIES.

A railroad bridge over the Ohio River begins to disappear from fog that developed around midday Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012 as seen from the river’s bank in Metropolis, Ill. A coal barge is also shown in the photo, pushed closer than usual to the bank due to Ohio rising rapidly. (AP Photo/The Paducah Sun, John Wright)

It’s always interesting to spend some time with my friends from the coal industry when the West Virginia Coal Association holds its annual mining symposium here in Charleston.

Some industry folks are often more candid about various issues at this event, perhaps not realizing — despite the best efforts of association lobbyists to warn them — that there might be a few reporters in the room.  And it’s fascinating to hear folks from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection play to the industry audience, often offering little more than what sounds like a parroting of mine operator complaints about interfering federal agencies or meddlesome citizen groups.

Honestly, though, it is helpful to get to hear more from folks who aren’t always the industry’s main public faces. Though I frequently wonder why the coal association, if it really wants this to be an educational event, doesn’t bring in some speakers who might tell the operators something they don’t want to hear … for example, why include four coal spokesmen from surrounding states on this morning’s event, “Obama’s No Job Zone – A Panel Discussion”? Why not put somebody like Bo Webb on that panel, and let the mine operators hear more directly from a citizen affected by their industry’s activities? Or why not invite WVU’s Michael Hendryx to come and educate the industry about what his studies have found about mining’s potential impacts on public health?

I mean, I heard Alpha Natural Resources vice president Mark Schuerger talk about how his company believes it needs to engage with ALL of its stakeholders, not just those it picks.  As Schuerger says, engaging everyone is harder, and it can turn into a bigger and sometimes more personal thing.

Lots of the state’s leadership are banking on the notion that Alpha is honestly trying to change from the “bad old days” of Massey Energy, that what Rep. Nick Rahall calls “the new ownership in Southern West Virginia” is going to move the industry beyond repeated environmental controversies and workplace disasters. One thing that’s troubling though, is that some of the positions being advocated by Alpha aren’t really that different from those advocated by Massey under Don Blankenship. They’re cleaned up and made to sound nicer and less confrontational. But then again, Schuerger made a point of labeling the EPA’s efforts to reduce mining impacts as  a “permitorium” and he called EPA air regulations aimed at saving thousands of lives “ill-conceived.”

Among the more interesting things I heard this week were the back-to-back pitches by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Senate President Jeff Kessler about the great benefits the state of West Virginia could get from increase natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, given that it came after Alpha’s Schuerger made a major point about the threat natural gas presents to coal (something emphasized by this week’s announcement that Patriot Coal is cutting back more on its thermal coal production here in West Virginia, to the tune of 250 jobs lost in Boone County).

It’s not surprising that our elected officials seem tone-deaf to what’s going on in energy markets.  It’s not like Gov. Tomblin or Sen. Kessler can go around questioning if natural gas is a good alternative, all the while they are practically giving away the store to try to lure a gas “cracker” plant to the state.  You have to wonder, though, if our political leadership is entirely incapable of looking to the future, what with the governor and the senate president both refusing to even consider legislation that would enact a small tax increase on coal and natural gas to pump billions of dollars into a fund for future economic development, education and infrastructure projects.

With all that said, one common refrain I’ve heard over and over at these and other industry events is that the coal business is just misunderstood by the public (and the press and, I assume, political leadership). Alpha’s Schuerger made that point this week:

Our business is more than challenging. It’s unforgiving. Our business is largely misunderstood. It’s up to us to tell the other side of the story.”

Part of the problem, though, is that — like most of us — coal industry folks who work hard and care about what they do don’t like to admit their failings. If there’s one thing that Alpha Natural Resources desperately wants to do, for example, it’s to not have the words “Upper Big Branch” mentioned very often, if ever again. No, the UBB Mine Disaster wasn’t Alpha’s fault. But the thought of those 29 miners who got blown up on April 5, 2010, is more of a reminder than the industry wants of what the coal industry has and can do to the communities where it operates. If Alpha officials really want to confront stakeholders and engage the public in honest discussions about the industry, Mark Schuerger would have mentioned yesterday that, while he was talking, one of his company’s contractors was being sent to jail for lying to federal agents — Schuerger could have said that what Raymond Dawson did was wrong, and Alpha won’t tolerate it. Instead, we witnessed a coal industry lawyer telling clients and potential clients they might want to consider taking the Fifth, rather than possibly get caught up in a federal charge for lying to the government.

Coal Association Chairman Gary White, who has taught me a thing or two about coal over the years, also talked this week about this issue of coal being misunderstood. As I reported in today’s Gazette:

“We have to continue to defend our industry,” White said. “We have moved the needle of public opinion. The public knows the size of this industry and the contributions to our economy. What they don’t know is that this is an industry that is caring and innovative.”

Gary’s point is partly backed up by the recent polling done for the Appalachian Mountain Advocates, which gave very strong favorable numbers to coal companies. Of course, that poll also showed strong opposition to mountaintop removal, and support for tougher regulations on strip mining.

This was the other thing that Gary White said that really got me thinking:

White said that, while the industry will continue to actively oppose tougher restrictions on mountaintop removal and some federal safety initiatives, many mine operators have found plenty of ways to comply with such rules.

“We will continue to find new, innovative and, in some cases, revolutionary ways to seek permits,” White said, “despite all of the challenges we face from the regulatory agencies.”

If the public doesn’t know that the coal industry has and is finding ways to obtain permits that can comply with the new water pollution guidance from EPA, well, how in the world would the public know that? That’s certainly not part of the industry’s massive public relations campaign. It is hardly ever reported by the region’s media.

And gosh, who have we heard recently say something very similar to what Gary White said? Well, it was the U.S. EPA, in its letter about CONSOL of Kentucky’s Buffalo Mountain Mine:

The EPA’s review of the mining operator’s proposal indicates that feasible, cost effective steps are available to be incorporated into the operation to avoid and minimize the significant, adverse environmental and water quality impacts associated with the Buffalo Mountain mine. Unlike Buffalo Mountain’s mine design, modern, technically feasible and cost-effective mining practices are being proposed and incorporated by many mining companies into their mine designs with the intent to significantly reduce the adverse effects to the aquatic ecosystem.

Instead of telling that story, what we get from the mining industry and its politician friends is more of the same — panel discussions called “Obama’s No Jobs Zone.” If the coal industry is misunderstood, maybe its own public relations agents and lobbyists are to blame. Of course, a PR campaign that explains how the industry is complying with tougher regulations might undermine their effort to kill off those tougher regulations …

There’s a fair amount of coverage out there this morning from yesterday’s start of the West Virginia Coal Association’s annual symposium, being held over at the Charleston Civic Center. A few examples:

– Vicki Smith from the AP reported that MSHA officials say the nation’s coal mines have made huge strides in safety, pointing to a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents and injuries in the nation’s single largest district in southern West Virginia.

– We ran my story in the Gazette about a presentation in which former U.S. Attorney Bill Wilmoth, who defended one-time Massey security director Hughie Elbert Stover, advised coal industry officials to be much more cautious in agreeing to talk with federal investigators, now that prosecutors have begun stepping up criminal cases involving lying to those investigators.

– The State Journal’s Taylor Kuykendall posted stories about extended cut mining, and about MSHA’s views of post-UBB compliance around the industry.

I wandered over to the Civic Center for some of yesterday’s afternoon presentations, and was treated to a talk by our friend Tom Clarke, director of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Mining and Reclamation.

As WVDEP officials unfortunately do every year at this industry event, Tom played to his audience, trying to be funny with a couple of silly cracks about his fellow public servants at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. For example: “We’ve been getting along reasonably well with them, as long as we don’t make them work too hard.”

For some reason, Tom also was critical of efforts by U.S. EPA to incorporate certain portions of DEP mining permits into his agency’s Clean Water Act pollution discharge permits for mining operations. Why would that be such a bad thing? Well, Tom noted that if “performance standards” for things like toxic materials handling plans are made part of the Clean Water Act permits, it might allow citizen groups to bring lawsuits in federal court to actually have those provisions of the permits enforced.  Gosh, the last thing anybody would want is for citizens to actually get to play a meaningful role in the environmental regulatory process and do things that WVDEP has been unable or unwilling to do … things like, oh, I don’t know — forcing a major mining operator to spend hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up its selenium pollution.

Tom spent a lot of time dissecting the recent U.S. EPA objection letter for the CONSOL of Kentucky Buffalo Mountain permit, and warning coal executives of all of the sorts of things EPA was questioning in that permit — kind of a cautionary tale for what other operators might be in store for from EPA in coming months. But I guess I must have missed the part where Tom explained exactly what his agency was doing to reduce the “pervasive and irreversible impacts” of mountaintop removal on the environment — let alone what WVDEP is doing about the increasingly clear links between living near mountaintop removal mining and having a greater risk of serious health problems like cancer and birth defects.

Don’t look for much discussion of those important issues at the symposium … but if you have time to drop by on Friday, you can catch not one, not two, not three, but four coal lobbyists in a panel discussion called “Obama’s No Job Zone.” And you can hear the lawyers from Bailey and Glasser talk about their taxpayer-funded lawsuit to help the coal industry try to put a stop to the Obama crackdown on mountaintop removal.

Today’s events should be more interesting, including presentations by MSHA chief Joe Main and especially this morning’s first speaker, Mark Schuerger of Alpha Natural Resources. His talk is titled, “Change is Upon Us, ” and it seems likely to include some discussion of Alpha’s “Running Right” programs and how his company is turning the page on the bad old days of workplace disasters and environmental messes under Massey Energy.

Unfortunately for Schuerger, at about the same time he’s speaking here in Charleston, an Alpha contractor named Raymond Dawson will be standing before U.S. District Judge Irene Berger down in Beckley, being sentenced after pleading guilty to lying to federal investigators about training practices at Alpha’s Cucumber Mine in McDowell County (a mine that Alpha owned prior to the Massey merger). As we previously reported:

Raymond C. Dawson, 57, of Raysal, pleaded guilty to a single felony count before U.S. District Judge Irene C. Berger in Beckley. Dawson faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 25.

Dawson had been certified by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration to provide certain training to miners at the Cucumber operation, an underground mine operated by Alpha subsidiary Brooks Run Mining Co.

A Brooks Run contractor, Griffith Construction Co., was using Dawson to provide training to its miners.

Dawson admitted that on or about Nov. 3, 2008, he falsely told government investigators that he always gave miners the required training and kept them in training classes for the required amount of time.

According to court records, as recently as Oct. 18, 2008, Dawson had provided miners with incomplete training courses while meeting with the workers at his home. Dawson admitted to doing the same thing on at least two other instances during the period from August to October 2008.

Let’s not forget, the Cucumber Mine was the scene of a massive roof fall in January 2007 that killed two workers, James David Thomas and Pete Poindexter. MSHA investigators later found the miners died because the company ignored roof control requirements and did not train miners in proper roof control practices.

UPDATED:

Word just in from Beckley that Judge Berger sentenced Dawson to 6 months in prison. U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin said”:

Keeping miners safe is and will continue to be a top priority of this office and we will continue to focus our resources on bringing to justice individuals who jeopardize that safety.

And MSHA chief Joe Main said:

Sentencing in this case serves as a sober reminder of the important role training plays in keeping the Nation’s miners safe and healthy.

Here’s today’s announcement from MSHA:

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration today launched the third phase of an outreach and enforcement program designed to strengthen efforts to prevent mining fatalities. “Rules to Live By III: Preventing Common Mining Deaths” will focus on 14 safety standards that were chosen because violations related to each have been cited as contributing to at least five mining accidents and at least five deaths during the 10-year period of Jan. 1, 2001, to Dec. 31, 2010.

“The goal of this phase of ‘Rules to Live By’ is to reduce numbers of deaths and injuries from the targeted standards by having mine operators identify and correct all hazardous conditions, direct MSHA enforcement toward confirming that violations related to these conditions are not present at mines, and ensure miners are better trained to recognize and avoid these particular hazards,” said Joseph A. Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health.

From 2001 through 2010, 609 miners lost their lives in workplace accidents. Violations associated with eight coal standards contributed to 75 deaths during this period, while violations associated with six metal and nonmetal standards contributed to 50 deaths.

The coal standards are as follows:

75.362(a)(1) on-shift examination

77.404(a) machinery and equipment; operation and maintenance

77.405(b) performing work from a raised position; safeguards

77.1000 highwalls, pits and spoil banks; plans

77.1605(b) loading and haulage equipment; installations

77.1606(a) loading and haulage equipment; inspection and maintenance

77.1607(b) loading and haulage equipment; operation

77.1713(a) daily inspection of surface coal mine; certified person; reports of inspection

The metal and nonmetal standards are as follows:

46.7(a) new task training

56.3130 wall, bank and slope stability

56.3200 correction of hazardous conditions

56.15020 life jackets and belts

56.14100(b) safety defects; examination, correction and records

57.14100(b) safety defects; examination, correction and records

Beginning April 1, MSHA will focus more attention on these 14 standards with enhanced enforcement efforts, increased scrutiny for related violations, and instructions to inspectors to more carefully evaluate gravity and negligence – consistent with the seriousness of the violation – when citing violations that cause or contribute to mining fatalities. MSHA inspectors will receive online training to promote consistency in enforcement activity across the agency.

As with the first two phases of “Rules to Live By,” online training will be available to the mining industry and the public on MSHA’s website, and MSHA will provide operators with program and resource information. The agency also will reach out to engage miners and their representatives during the course of MSHA inspections to disseminate appropriate compliance assistance materials – including engineering suggestions, safety target materials packages and other resources – so that they have the appropriate information to address and eliminate workplace hazards.

“In 2011, mining deaths fell to the second lowest annual total on record – a testament to the commitment of miners, mine operators, miners’ representatives, labor and industry organizations, state agencies and grantees, members of the mining community and MSHA,” said Main. “While the mining community achieved near-record low numbers of mining deaths in the United States and has seen a significant decline in fatal mining accidents during the past 10 years, too many miners still lose their lives in preventable accidents. The loss of even one miner causes devastation and pain to the victim’s family, friends and co-workers.

“Compliance with safety and health standards is the responsibility of mine operators, with the assistance of miners. Ultimately, all of us must focus on why these accidents happen and how to prevent them,” he added.

The first phase of “Rules to Live By” began in February 2010.

Gazette photo by Chip Ellis

We’ve written before about the proposal from the good folks at the West Virginia Center for Budget and Policy for a long-term trust fund to prepare our state for the day the coal and natural gas run out … well, today, the center has a new report out that discusses this notion in much more detail. They conclude:

West Virginia would benefit greatly from the creation of a permanent severance tax trust fund. An Economic Diversification Fund would help the state meet many of today’s economic challenges, while ensuring that future generations benefit from the mineral wealth of their state. In the past, West Virginia did not gain broadly shared prosperity for its residents, despite the tremendous wealth of natural resources in the state. As the Marcellus Shale gas play begins to boom in West Virginia, the state should take action today to ensure that it truly benefits from the extraction of its valuable natural resources. Without a permanent fund, the economic benefit from the natural resource extraction will decline along with the natural resources themselves.

The center proposes a 1 percent additional severance tax on coal and natural gas that could go into this fund, and be used a bit at a time to help pay for a variety of economic development efforts — everything from early childhood development programs and college grants to workforce training and infrastructure improvements.

Authors Ted Boettner, Jill Kriesky, Rory McIlmoil and Elizabeth Paulhus helpfully provide an overview of similar programs in other states — Alaska, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — that tax the extraction of non-renewable resources to pump money into state development efforts and put funds aside for future use.

According to the report, if West Virginia had created such a program in 1980, the state would now have a trust fund with assets of nearly $1.9 billion — that’s BILLION, with a B.  If started now, the fund would have generate revenues of $5.8 billion by 2035.  The report says:

If West Virginia wants future generations to benefit from the extraction of its natural resources, it must set aside a portion of the severance tax revenue from all natural resources to invest in important public structures that will build a stronger, more vibrant future for the state. To accomplish this task, West Virginia could follow the lead of six other energy states by creating a permanent severance tax trust fund (hereafter referred to as a permanent fund) that converts non-renewable natural resources into a source of sustainable wealth that serves the state today and in the future through targeted investing. Even after the state’s natural resources are depleted, West Virginia could use income from the fund to diversify the economy, make much-needed investments in infrastructure and human capital, lower future tax burdens, and deal with costs associated with past and future mineral extraction.

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin waves to the crowd Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012 prior to delivering his state of the state address at the Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. (AP Photo/Jeff Gentner)

UPDATED: The state mine safety office’s spokeswoman, Leslie Fitzwater says today:

The WVOMHS&T report [on the UBB Disaster]  is in the final stages of completion, and we expect to release it by the end of February 2012.

Nearly three weeks into the legislative session, and Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s mine safety bill — promised in the State of the State address — has finally been introduced. The Senate version is SB 448, and I’m told the House version should come out today.

Of course, the House leadership has its own legislation, and it will be interesting to see if lawmakers and the governor insist on weakening the language in one or a combination of these bills to ensure that the coal industry is on board with the changes — or if Delegate Mike Caputo can manage to get the Legislature to focus not on compromise but on what’s best for miners’ health and safety.

A few points to consider about the governor’s legislation:

–In expanding the requirements for new miners to work as supervised apprentices, the bill increases from 90 days to 120 days the length of time “red hat” miners must work within sight and sound of an experienced miner. The state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training had wanted to increase that apprentice period to 180 days.

– The bill does not close a loophole that allows mine operators to not report serious accidents to the mine safety office — the folks who dispatch mine rescue teams — within 15 minutes, as long as they call local 911 dispatchers within that time period. The language proposed allows calls to the state’s industrial accident hotline to come 15 minutes after that initial notification to 911.

As we’ve discussed on this blog before (see here and especially here), it’s not clear what any of these bills will actually do to deal with the root of mine safety enforcement problems: The control of the political process, and therefore captive regulatory agencies, by the coal industry.

Speaking of agencies, one last interesting thing here is that, while we’ve seen reports from special investigator Davitt McAteer, the United Mine Workers, and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, we have not yet seen a report on the state mine safety office’s investigation of Upper Big Branch.  The last I heard, state investigators were to complete their report by the end of January, but it was not clear when it might be made public.

In a Monday Jan. 23, 2012 photo, Sheila Combs, president of the Upper Big Branch Mining Memorial Group, looks over a sign showing what the Upper Big Branch Miners Memorial will look like in Whitesville, W. Va. Media outlets report that work began Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 on a memorial for 29 miners killed in the 2010 explosion of the Upper Big Branch mine.   (AP Photo/The Register-Herald, Rick Barbero)

One of the more interesting stories out there this week was a glowing profile of our buddy Joe Main, the assistant secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health. It was published on a site called govexec.com and is apparently part of a book about various Obama administration officials. Here’s a little to give you the flavor of it:

After an explosion in April 2010 killed 29 workers in Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, Main faced the competing demands of disaster management and day-to-day operations. His experience provides three leadership lessons for all executives responding to a crisis …

While the instinct might be to shift all of an agency’s resources into responding to a major event like the Upper Branch mine explosion, Main knew MSHA’s routine operations must continue without interruption. “I’ve lived through these experiences before, so I knew what to expect,” he says. “You have to be careful not to let everyone run into the fire. I knew I had to leave some people here in headquarters in order to keep the place running.”

Looking back, Main says, “I’m proud that I was able to keep the agency running in spite of Upper Big Branch. We had a successful strategy in place and we kept it going. We kept doing our work . . . The key thing is to stay focused.”

Starting on the day of the tragedy and during the months that followed, MSHA took a close look at its operations, Main says. “You have to ask yourself and the agency, ‘What did we miss? How did this happen? What have we learned?’ he says. “And finally, ‘What changes do we need to make?’ “

Regular readers of this blog have a pretty good idea about some of the things that went wrong … if MSHA ever publishes its “internal review” report on Upper Big Branch, maybe we’ll find out more.

Snow rests on the Coal Miners’ Statue at Turkey Hill in Minersville, Pa., Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. The Coal Miners’ Statue and Park is a tribute to those who worked in the anthracite coal mines. (AP Photo/Republican-Herald, Jacqueline Dormer)

In other developments this week:

– Over in Kentucky, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported on cuts in the state mine safety budget being proposed by Gov. Steve Beshear, and the Herald-Leader published an op-ed by retired federal mine inspector Stanley Sturgill:

It’s now January 2012, 21 months after UBB and Congress continues to do nothing. A total of 38 coal mine deaths have been recorded since the 2010 tragedy.

I live in the very heart of coal mining country, Harlan County, in the district of U.S. Rep. Harold “Hal” Rogers, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He does not support new mine safety reform to help protect the coal miners in the district he supposedly represents. Rogers was named, “Coal Miner of the Year for 2010″ by the Kentucky Coal Operators Association. It’s such a shame they would not recognize even one of thousands of hard-working Kentucky coal miners.

Sen. Rand Paul also does not support mine safety reform. Paul says mine safety should be dealt with on a local basis and that miners would not work at an unsafe mine. Since former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has indicated he might soon mine in southeastern Kentucky, he would be considered a “local.”

I was an underground coal miner for 41 years. Many miners would work anywhere we could in order to feed our families. It is just so depressing that our nation’s miners must continue to work in unsafe conditions that could be corrected by Congress. The GOP voted down mine safety. They told our miners they are not worth what it would cost Big Coal to operate safely. It’s an insult to our coal miners and to the memories of miners who have given their lives for a block of coal.

It seems to me that our present legislators and Big Coal have forgotten all the blood-soaked coal that it took to pass the 1977 Mine Act. I think they have forgotten the section of the Mine Act that declares “the first priority and the concern of all in the coal or other mining industry must be the health and safety of its most precious resource, the miner.”

– Out west, the Bellingham Herald reported:

With a musical kickoff from bandZandt singing “No Coal Trains,” local activists launched their “Coal-Free Bellingham” campaign for a citizen initiative to outlaw coal trains through a city ordinance.

Stoney Bird, a retired corporate attorney who is one of the key organizers, said it may be a week or two before signature-gatherers hit the streets. The language for the ballot title needs to be worked out with the City Attorney’s office. But judging from the Thursday, Jan. 26, turnout of 200 or more enthusiastic supporters, the signature-gathering process won’t lack for volunteers.

– The Associated Press reported:

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is preparing to auction off the right to mine more than 400 million tons of coal in the Powder River Basin.

The coal lease sale is set for Feb. 29 in Cheyenne.

The 3,200-acre tract is adjacent to the North Antelope Rochelle Mine operated by Powder River Coal, a subsidiary of Peabody Energy.

The BLM says coal royalties in Wyoming last year totaled $590 million. The money was shared nearly equally between the state and federal governments.

An ex-mine foreman who admitted faking safety inspection reports is suing Patriot Coal Corp. and the Federal No. 2 mine bosses who he claims pressured him to falsify data. John Renner is awaiting sentencing on federal charges. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Clarksburg in March 2010, but prosecutors have repeatedly delayed his sentencing, citing his cooperation in an investigation of the mine.

The complaint says mine management pressured Renner to fake methane gas readings on sealed sections of the mine to avoid a shutdown that would have stopped coal production. The managers’ conduct was “atrocious, utterly intolerable in a civilized community and so extreme and outrageous as to exceed all possible bounds of decency,” the complaint charges.

We’ve reported on this before here, here and here, and noted that Federal No. 2 has long been held up by industry, labor and government officials as a model mine. Renner has never been sentenced in his criminal case, and the public has never really been told what’s going on with this investigation.

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter waits for the commencement of a town hall meeting Monday, Jan. 23, 2012 in Wallace, Idaho where residents and business owners sought answers about the recent Lucky Friday Mine closure. (AP Photo/Coeur d’Alene Press, Jerome A. Pollos)

After 29 miners died in April 2010 at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine here in West Virginia, a lot of people — including the local political leadership — made a lot of noise asking why, if conditions were so bad at Upper Big Branch, federal Mine Safety and Health Administration inspectors didn’t shut the place down. Well, if you really wonder about the answer to that question, look no farther than what’s going on right now out in Idaho, where the local media and the governor are raising quite a stink over closure of the much-troubled Lucky Friday silver mine.

Here’s the latest news from The Associated Press:

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter plans to ask federal regulators to hold a town hall meeting in northern Idaho and further explain the decision to close one of the nation’s deepest underground mines for safety reasons.

Otter traveled Monday to Wallace to discuss the closure of the Lucky Friday Mine earlier this month and economic conditions in the depressed Silver Valley region, where dozens of workers recently received a pink slip.

There was standing room only as Otter held a public meeting Monday in Wallace to discuss the shutdown of the mine with local families and business owners. Otter said he would ask federal mine regulators to hold a public meeting in the Silver Valley to further explain their decision.

“When I get home, that letter will be on its way to Washington, D.C.,” said Otter, who has also met with Hecla representatives to discuss the closure.

What exactly is MSHA up to here?

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration ordered the operation closed following an investigation prompted by a series of accidents that killed two miners over the last year. The agency ordered Hecla Mining Co. for safety reasons to scrub the walls of the mile-deep shaft that is the main entrance to the mine.

Federal inspectors determined that sand and concrete material that had leaked from a pipe into a mine shaft over the years needed to be removed. The material is in the mile-deep Silver Shaft, the mine’s main access shaft, and workers will spend the next year essentially power washing the material from the walls of the shaft.

The shaft problems were flagged during a Dec. 20 inspection following two fatal accidents and a rock burst that trapped seven miners.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration’s closure order was initially issued Jan. 5, but Hecla officials said Jan. 11 that they had been negotiating for several days with federal regulators before resigning themselves to the lengthy shutdown.

In this file photo from Thursday, April 28, 2011, Sol Sandberg, a miner at the Lucky Friday Mine, holds his son Jimmy, 19 months, as they leave the memorial service for Larry Marek at Kellogg High School in Kellogg, Idaho. The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is investigating the mine after a series of accidents killed two miners past year. In mid-December, seven miners were injured in a rock burst at the mine. (AP Photo/Coeur d’Alene Press, Jerome A. Pollos)

Only this week, MSHA had this to say about Lucky Friday after a blitz inspection at the operation:

MSHA conducted an impact inspection Dec. 16-23 at Hecla Limited’s Lucky Friday Mine in Shoshone County, Idaho. Inspectors issued 59 citations and 15 orders to Hecla Ltd. and 22 citations to Cementation USA Inc., an independent contractor.

Among the violations cited was a repeated failure to maintain established ground support systems throughout the mine. In addition, ground support fixtures in several areas had not been installed or torqued properly; shafts had not been systematically inspected, tested and maintained, and steel structures in the shaft were not kept clean of hazardous materials; multiple areas of the mine had not been provided with two separate escapeways; explosives magazines had not been constructed and located to protect miners from the risk of unintended explosions; underground shop doors were improperly constructed to ensure fire protection; elevated walkways in multiple areas were not provided with substantially constructed handrails; and travel areas were not kept clean and orderly, resulting in slip, trip and fall hazards.

Two miners died at Lucky Friday Mine in 2011. In December, seven miners were trapped underground when a roof fall occurred, three of whom required hospitalization.

Of course, it doesn’t help the situation here that apparently MSHA hadn’t previously done what you might call a stellar job at Lucky Friday, at least from what local public broadcasting has reported:

… Federal mining inspectors have found a lot of safety violations at the Lucky Friday Mine since the rockfall that killed Larry Marek. Two months after the accident MSHA inspectors found 70 health and safety violations. The month before, they found eight.

Celeste Monforton is a former MSHA policy adviser. She notes that in March, before the accident, two inspectors spent 46 hours at the Lucky Friday Mine during the routine inspection. After the accident in June, five inspectors spent more than 300 hours.

“And when I see something like that, one can’t help but wonder whether whether those deficiencies existed on the previous inspection and they just weren’t observed,” says Monforton.

When overlooking safety problems or going easy on companies in the name of jobs or “compliance assistance” becomes routine, it’s no wonder the workers and the local political leadership (not to mention most of the media) react this way when MSHA comes in and actually does its job. But it’s maddening that politicians don’t understand the connection between their constant fist-pounding about protecting the mining industry from regulators and safety inspectors hesitating to shut down a mine. That doesn’t stop those same politicians from pounding their fists on the table just as hard after miners die in a disaster.

So ask yourself: What would Sen. Joe Manchin or Rep. Nick Rahall have said on April 4, 2010, if MSHA had shut down Upper Big Branch?