Coal country rages against fall

Coal communities around America are looking for help. 

Over the last decade, coal states and industry towns have seen production steadily drop and jobs disappear as the nation moves toward cheaper and cleaner fuels.

{mosads}Lawmakers who have seen the layoffs are looking to help, even as battles along partisan and regional lines imperil their efforts.

Appalachian lawmakers in both parties are pushing a bill called the Reclaim Act, which would release $1 billion in federal funding for distressed coal communities.

The money, to be appropriated over five years, would help communities diversify their economies.

“The communities are not giving up on coal, the people haven’t, and I’m not, either. But … we are desperate for jobs,” said Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.), a member of the bipartisan group.

“They’re survivors, and they’ve been through tough conditions before. Now, this one’s about as tough as we’ve ever seen, and the causes are different than what we’ve seen. But people are fighters … we want to do what we can to create job opportunities.”

The legislation is backed by the White House and dozens of local communities. It has a powerful sponsor in House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), whose state — along with Virginia, West Virginia and Pennsylvania — would receive several million dollars under the bill.

Money would come from the Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) fund, a pool of $2.8 billion meant to help clean up mine sites.

Rogers said his bill is designed to expand the scope of that fund, giving cities and local governments the chance to use federal funding to also invest in public infrastructure needed to attract new industries.

He also makes it clear that it’s not meant to turn communities away from coal.

“We’re not giving up on coal,” Rogers said. “It’s going to be around for a good while, although greatly diminished. The number of jobs is getting smaller every day. But this is an effort to supplement — not replace, but supplement — the coal jobs that we’ve lost.”

Local communities have clamored for assistance, said Adam Wells, who works on economic diversification for the group Appalachian Voices. More than two dozen county commissions in Appalachian states have endorsed either the Reclaim proposal or the Power Plus Plan.

“What Power Plus has done — by offering all this federal funding to coal communities — it’s forced our local leaders to engage in a conversation about moving our economies forward,” he said.  

But political problems have already doomed parts of the proposal. 

Republicans and the energy industry view Obama’s Clean Power Plan as a major stumbling block for the American coal sector, and anger over that has fueled skepticism about federal efforts to help workers. 

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has floated a plan similar to Power Plus, but a 

recent gaffe  — “We’re going to put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business,” she said in March — illustrates the lack of trust coal country has toward Washington.

“I don’t agree with the push,” said Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.). 

“You hear Hillary Clinton saying it on the campaign trail. She basically admitted that she’s going to prosecute the war on coal, and states like West Virginia are going to be forced to find jobs in other areas. I guess she might mean putting up solar panels everywhere. I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Democrat Jeff Kessler, the minority leader in the West Virginia Senate, said he’s been flummoxed by efforts of his state leaders to deal with the crisis. This session, they passed a plan to lower severance tax rates on coal producers but did little to address the question of modernizing local economies.

“I would like to [undertake those efforts], but I’m in the minority,” said Kessler, a gubernatorial candidate.

“I would embrace it in a heartbeat, and if I become governor, I will cooperate with it absolutely and entirely. … You can’t just sit back and wring your hands. You have to figure out where you go from here.”

Kessler and others worry conservative lawmakers are afraid of “bailouts” for coal communities similar to those given to Wall Street and the auto industry during the 2008 financial crisis. 

Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) said he would prefer to focus on ways to beat back federal regulations than overhaul local economies.

“What are they going to retrain them to do? There’s no other job,” he said, expressing skepticism that older workers would be able to relocate for a new job. “The retraining, I have to ask: For what?”

Mooney also said coal country would be cool to a “bailout.”

“As a general policy, West Virginians want their good-paying coal jobs, not government bailouts,” he said. “Absolutely, yeah, I want to revitalize the coal industry. I think [the presidential election] will tell us a lot about where that’s going to go, as far as the presidential.”

The Rogers bill has run into opposition from Western lawmakers, who are worried about a raid on the mine clean-up fund.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R), in a letter to Congress last month, argued that it should be rejected, saying it would shift money from the West to Appalachia.

“Reclaim would shift $1 billion from states where mining and reclamation occurs to non-reclamation economic development activities in states where federal energy policies decimated viable industries,” he wrote.

Rogers has said those fears are overblown, noting that Western coal states could get funding under his bill, too. He’s looking for a hearing on the legislation, but the House Natural Resources Committee has yet to take it up. 

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), a subcommittee chairman, said last month that lawmakers should hold off on launching the broader effort until officials work through a $90 million coal community pilot program.

Obama requested a funding stream similar to the Reclaim Act in his 2017 budget, but Lamborn called that an “ill-conceived proposal.”

The administration, he said, “must buy off the people it has effectively put out of a job.”

West Virginia’s Kessler said he doubts coal’s ability to recover and that it’s time for local officials — and workers — to accept a renovated economy. 

“I’ll go into a room in West Virginia and say, ‘What’s been the most dominant industry in the history of the state?’ and they’ll say coal,” he said. “ ‘Is there a war on coal?’ ‘Hell yeah.’ ”

But, he added, “Coal has been king in this state for 100 years, but it hasn’t taken very good care of its subjects.”

This story was updated at 11:16 a.m. An earlier version misidentified a representative of Appalachian Voices.