Guess who wants your kids to work in a coal mine?

© Photo R. L. Mullins

There are two resources in Appalachia that make men wealthy. Fossil Fuels and people. After all, no one has been able to design fully autonomous machines to produce coal. Without coal miners the coal industry has no way of retrieving their billions of tons of reserves. When they look to the long term future of their business they realize they must have an ample supply of young men (and in some cases women) willing to work in their mines.

Several months ago I read a quote on the Friends of Coal website that perturbed me and I have been preaching it to people ever since. For those of you who are just now tuning in, Friends of Coal is an organization developed and funded by the West Virginia Coal Association and other coal associations. Coal associations are groups of coal companies who combine their resources to campaign for and lobby politicians with the goal of gaining better legislation to help their profits. See my previous post, “Still a Friend of Coal?”

Friends of Coal isn’t just about gaining support from coal miners to help force their issues in Washington. It’s also about building a pride amongst Appalachian people to help insure they have a continued supply of coal miners. Here is the Friends of Coal Mission Statement. Pay particular attention to the last sentence, the quote I have preached about….

The Friends of Coal is dedicated to inform and educate West Virginia citizens about the coal industry and its vital role in the state's future. Our goal is to provide a united voice for an industry that has been and remains a critical economic contributor to West Virginia. By working together, we can provide good jobs and benefits for future generations, which will keep our children and grandchildren close to home.

When I first read this my jaw dropped. Could the coal associations really be saying what they are saying? It’s smooth, I’ll give them that. The coal industry is asking us to ally with them as constituents to force their agenda, so they can "provide good jobs", mining jobs, "for your children and grandchildren so they can stay close to home."

I began asking all of the older generation coal miners I could find what they thought about their kids going to work in the mines. The responses were often that of utter disappointment. “We wanted you kids to do well in school so you could go to college and avoid having to work in the mines,” my uncle told me when I read him the quote, “that way you could’ve had a chance at a better life.”

What are we teaching our children?

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

  

There is an old proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”. I began pondering this when I watched a video on the FACES of Coal’s website and shortly thereafter noticed teenagers wearing coal miner work jackets with the trademark orange safety stripes and reflective tape. The boys I encountered seemed to be proud to wear them as if making the statement "I am proud to be a future coal miner".

Should we really be telling our children that coal is our future?  Has everyone forgotten the cyclical nature of a coal economy? Coal is booming now, but it will surely bust leaving everyone in the same predicament our fathers were in only twenty years ago…or worse. The coal executives and stock holders will walk away from Appalachia with their fortunes and we will be left with a crushed economy built upon debt. The only things we’ll have to show for it are poisoned streams full of sediment along with massive “elk habitats”. Haven’t we learned anything from the past? I guess we’ll just look back and say, “Well it was good while it lasted.”

Growing Up in the Coalfields: The South Mountain Mine Explosion

After the first year or so my father finally landed a job working in the mines, this time working for Ridley Elkin’s coal company. When he applied he’d hoped to work at the South Mountain No. 3 mine since it had the highest coal, but, as fate would have it, he was sent up the road to their Plowboy #4 mines. Less than a month later, on the cold morning of December 7, 1992, an explosion occurred at South Mountain No.3. It was the first explosion to rock the mining communities of Southwest Virginia since the explosion at McClure #1  which killed 7 men in June of 1983.

While we were getting ready for school that morning my mother received a call. She went in and woke my father to tell him the news. There was no communication with the men inside and the local news showed smoke billowing from the portals. We still held hope that the men working the # 1 Left section were still alive, including the father of one of my schoolmates who had been there less than 6 months. Despite the emotional turmoil occuring just down the road my dad still had to report to work at Plowboy #4.   To this day he still recalls passing by the entrance to the South Mountain No.3 mine and seeing it lit up at night with all of the news crews swarming the area. "It was the hardest thing I think I ever had to do,” he told me solemnly, “go to work knowing them boys was still in that mine."

Two and half days later all hope was lost when mine rescue teams reached the section. The lives of eight men had been lost.

Claude D. Strugill       

Palmer E. Sturgill       

Mike D. Mullins                     

Brian Owens  

James E. “Garr” Mullins                    

David K. Carlton                     

Danny R. Gentry         

Norman D. Vanover

Still a "Friend of Coal"?

Aparently these organizations see us as a bunch of stupid backwoods inbred hicks. I guess for the price of a coal mining wage and good benefits we can be bought. I know I was for a while...now I see through their bullshit.

I am going to preach it until I am blue in the face.

These are the same organizations who create and fund groups like "Friends of Coal" and "FACES of Coal" to build miner's pride about their job and the money they make. In the end coal miners are cutting their own throats because these organizations are about profit and nothing else.

What the hell are we thinking by supporting the coal industry? Do we honestly believe these associaitons are funding campaigns for politicians who will give miners better safety regulations and fair labor laws? Do we think their full time lobbyists in Washington who probably make six figures a year actually think about Joe Coal Miner who lives up Georges Fork? They just want him to have a job because if he and everyone else is working,  the coal is rolling, and the companies paying their salary is making fortune.

Below are just a few links to help you better figure out who and/or what the National Mining Association is and the other mining associations which lobby in Washington and commit vast resources to getting their politicians voted in.

West Virginia Coal Association

Kentucky Coal Association

Virginia Mining Association

Why Be a Coal Miner?

What is it that makes men risk life and limb and their long term health for a wage? What justification does it take? For a time I believed it was the honorable thing to do for my family, working in the coal mines to feed and clothe them. The work wasn't so bad. Some days were harder than others, but all in all I was making damn good money in an economically depressed area.

Then I began realizing I was risking my life and destroying my health to make someone else very rich. Of course I was benefiting in many ways, but mostly I was just able to buy more stuff, nice stuff, bigger stuff. In the end would it be worth it? How much food did we really need to eat? How nice did our clothes have to be?

Alpha Natural Resources.... Running Right?

I'm not a "hippy treehugger" but I do know when I see something wrong.

For the past decade Dickenson Russell Coal Company a subsidiary of Alpha Natural Resources has been dewatering the abandoned McClure #1 mine to make room for coal slurry (liquid waste) injection from the McClure # 1 Coal Preparation plant. This occurs at the former air return shaft located beside Highway 83 just 6 miles east of Clintwood, Virginia. The water is discharged untreated into the McClure River which flows into the Russell Fork (just before the Breaks Interstate Park), then the Big Sandy, Ohio, and Mississippi.

According to Eric Greear who works for the Department of Mines Minerals and Energy’s Division of Mined Land Reclamation, only acidity and metal tests are performed on the water before it is discharged into the river. When asked about chemical testing, he said tests for chemicals were not required.

The McClure #1 mine was in operation from 1978 to 1995.  Has no one thought of the thousands of gallons of used hydraulic oil and gear oils that leaked from the machinery over the mine’s lifespan? There are also many other chemicals that are left behind in the mining process including adhesives, strong cleaning agents, and anti-freeze to name a few. How can it be legal and considered “Running Right” to pump stagnant polluted mine water straight into our streams? What is their thinking. If it doesn't kill all the fish it must be okay?

Alpha Natural Resources….Running Right?

Two Miles to Hell: A Miner's Story

When I first began writing this article for the Appalachian Voice I was still working at Deep Mine 26. Fearing retribution from the company I worked for and possibly even some of my co-workers I took the editors advice and used the pen name of Daniel Hawkins. I also changed my job description and omitted many things which could have identified the mine I worked at or myself. Although I wasn't a pinner man at the time I wrote the article, I had been before. The first six months I spent as an undgeround miner I ran a roofbolter and a shuttle car on a coal crew. I was then accepted into the mine electrician training program and received my electrical certifications. I was an electrical repairmain or "Maintenance man" until I left in August of 2010. 

Photo by R.L. Mullins

It is 10:06PM on a Sunday night and I begin getting dressed in my high visibility work uniforms, the trademark navy shirt and pants with orange stripes identifying the Appalachian coal miners in our area. My wife has taken time to fill my thermos with coffee and pack my “bucket” with the night’s lunch and necessities. The children have already gone to bed with hugs and kisses from their daddy, and now it’s time to bid a loving farewell to my wife. We hold one another and softly kiss, both of us wishing I didn’t have to go. I go outside where the crisp winter air meets me and climb into my truck. She watches me through the storm door, a darkened silhouette as the glass begins to fog, obscuring her features. She waves and I blow her a kiss and we both sign to one another “I love you”. Sometimes I can faintly see her lips moving in a prayer for my safe return.

My state of mind is relatively poor when the weekend is brought to a symbolic end as I turn the key to start the diesel engine hidden beneath the hood of my ten year old Dodge truck. I begin backing down the driveway struggling with the notion of stopping, putting the gear shifter in 1^st making a defiant return home. Each weekend feels meaningless and I am never ready to return to work.

The third shift, or “Hoot owl” as we call it, makes enjoying time with my family difficult. The two “days” off I receive are spent trying to switch my sleeping habits around to match the rest of the world. It isn’t uncommon for me to spend the first and last days of my weekend staying awake for 24 hours in a futile attempt to maximize time with my family.  As a result I am often quick tempered and hateful though I do not mean to be. Leaving the homestead I begin regretting the things I have said to my family. Some nights I hope I will have the chance to apologize to them the next day.

My trip to the mine only takes fifteen minutes traversing the mountainous roads. Snow sparsely begins to fall into the illumination of my headlights. I realize I am extremely fortunate to live so close to this particular underground mine site. Some of the men I work with must travel upwards of one hour or more from distances over forty-five miles away. I cannot fathom how someone would be willing to give up an extra two hours a day to make the drive, time they could be spending with their family.

A few miles up the road I pass by the Longs Fork Elementary School where I attended kindergarten through seventh grade. Some nights I recall the many aspirations I had and the countless times my dad told me to do well in school so I wouldn’t become a coal miner. I smirk a little as I remembered wanting to be a cardiologist after our teacher told us about heart bypasses and transplants. Although I never made it into the “Gifted and Talented” program the more wealthy kids were in, I still made honor roll more times than not. Now, each night I pass by the school I am reminded of my many failures in life, especially on nights I am depressed.

The Return of "Out of the Coal Mines and Into the Fire"

Over the past several months I have placed "Out of the Coal Mines and Into the Fire" on a moratorium of sorts. The reasons were many, but if I were to specify any particular reasons they would certainly be

1. I felt I lost direction with the blog, and
2. My paranoid fear of reprisal as I once again sought employment within the coal industry.

In the time I was unable to write I was at least able to go back and read over many of the articles I posted on the blog. It became overwhelmingly evident to me that I was speaking from only my experiences as an underground coal miner. I had lost my sense of altruism and replaced it with an arrogance as I wrote in a tone which made it seem as if I knew everything there was to know about the coal industry. The truth is, in my job as a coal miner I was treated very poorly. Though I was a coal miner, I wasn't a coal miner.

The seven years I spent prior to working in the mines I was a supervisor in a cube farm, 100% white collar and heavily involved in the consumer electronics market. My friends there shared many of the same thoughts and ideals about the life and our current economic and political climates, not to mention a love of computers and all things politically incorrect. My move to a job within the coal industry to make more money came with a bit of a cultural shock to say the least and while I could certainly do the work of a coal miner and was able to easily slide into the position of a coal mine electrical repairman, I still in no way shape or form possessed the traditional persona of a coal miner. As a result I was treated much differently and was often made fun of from the lowest man to the highest. Even the superintendent of the mines began calling me "Professor Mullins" since I tracked the hours I worked on an Excel sheet I had created. Together with a long running lack of self confidence, my three year tour within the hell of a coal mines brought about a different person within me.

This is not to say my perspective of the industry and the lives of my fellow Appalachians was flawed, but it was...unique. I was able to take away from the experience an entirely new point of view than that of most. While many coal miners were able to accept their future as being coal miners, I couldn't, and for this reason I began to see many things wrong they were unable to see.

While I tried to relate these things in my blog I still felt as if "Out of the Mines" came across as an "end all" descriptor of life working in the coal mines. Now that I have put some time between life as a coal miner and even life as an environmentalist, I feel I can give a more balanced view of the coal industry and its effects on the lives of my fellow Appalachians.

To formally kick off the restart of "Out of the Coal Mines and Into the Fire" I might as well go back to the beginning....the first article I published. The article was not on the blog, it was actually in the Spring 2010 edition of The Appalachian Voice entitled "Two Miles to Hell: A Miner's Story". I wrote it under my pen name of Daniel Hawkins (again I was terribly paranoid a the time) and I was in a state of true desperation to get out of the mines.