Coal’s Decline Is Choking Appalachia Towns

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) In Kentucky’s Letcher County, emergency response time for sheriff’s deputies averages an hour, up from 30 minutes a year ago. Martin County, also in eastern Kentucky, couldn’t afford to open its public swimming pool this summer. West Virginia’s Boone County, once the richest in the state, is considering ending free garbage pickup. The cutbacks stem from a steep drop in coal production as tougher environmental regulations and low natural gas prices make coal less competitive. “It’s just been devastating to us,” says Kelly Callaham, judge-executive of Martin County, which has a $7 million budget, down $1.5 million from three years ago. “You take a million and a half out of a budget that size, it’s a disaster.”

The Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal-state economic development organization, classifies 93 of 420 counties as distressed. Many of them are in central Appalachia, which straddles Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The region has been mined for two centuries, and the cheapest and best coal has been dug up. The remaining seams are lower quality and more expensive to mine. Many utilities have replaced Appalachian coal with cheaper fuel from Illinois and the Powder River basin in Wyoming and Montana, or switched to burning natural gas. Coal’s share of electricity generation in the U.S. will fall to 35 percent this year, from 50 percent a decade ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Coal production is expected to fall to less than 914 million tons, the lowest in 29 years. The number of active pits in the U.S. has plunged 39 percent from the end of 2005 through June 2015.



Most of Appalachian counties’ lost revenue comes from a drop in payments known as severance taxes, which mining companies pay into state coffers based on the value of coal tonnage taken from the earth. West Virginia’s Boone County got about $2 million this year, down from almost $6 million in 2011, says Commissioner Mickey Brown. In Kentucky, severance money paid to counties totaled $23.4 million in 2015, compared with $62 million five years ago. Letcher County’s quarterly severance checks dropped to $200,000, from about $700,000 two years ago. The sheriff’s office had to lay off employees so it could make its pension payments. “You take all of that money out of our budgets, and what do you expect us to do?” asks Jim Ward, the county’s top official.

Neighboring Knott County gets less than $600,000 a year from severance taxes, compared with as much as $1.6 million a decade ago. County Treasurer Kevin Jacobs says he’s told elected officials to plan for no severance dollars at all. “You see downturns, but not like this,” he says. “I keep telling people, ‘It’s not coming back.’ ” ...............(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-10/coal-s-decline-is-choking-appalachia-towns

[napi21]

1. I do have sympathy for all the coal miners, however,

I have to believe they saw the handwriting on the wall by now. The industry has been loosing ground for years. Those jobs are going the way of the cobbler, the switchboard operator, and thousands of other occupations that have been replaced by new technology. The leaders in those counties better get to work searching and recruiting NEW industries to locate in their towns or there will be no towns left.

[Skittles]

2. the problem is, other jobs they could have done have been pimped offshore

there's nothing to really replace those jobs

[brer cat]

3. That is why the Jessica Lynch's

end up in the military. Heartbreaking, but it is sometimes their only way out.

[YabaDabaNoDinoNo]

5. Yet they continually voted for those who send the jobs overseas

at least they got what they voted for.

Looks like people are going to have to relocate if they want a good job, it will suck for some but that is life, one moves to where the jobs are.

[Skittles]

7. yup

[1939]

9. If there was never any coal there

Most of those places would just be a few dinky towns supported by a small number of hard scrabble farmers. The railroads accessed those places because of the coal. Many of the little branch lines running out to the mines have been pulled up. There is little incentive for industry to locate there without considering offshoring. Transport to and from the area isn't good.

[tabasco]

15. Actually, timber was the reason rail first reached into the hollows

West Virginia was almost completely clear-cut.

[1939]

17. It was clear cut to provide supports and cribbing for the mines. NT

[tabasco]

21. Ummmmm....no.

That was only a small fraction of the wood cut. The vast majority cut into boards in huge sawmills powered by the same steam engines that powered the locomotives.

[ileus]

12. No company that ships items will relocate in these areas.

No company that is technology based is going to locate in hicksville where there are no qualified workers beyond miners and welders. There will be a demand for divorce lawyers...

[DemocraticWing]

4. You wanna know why Democrats lose in Eastern Kentucky?

A lot of it is this. People in Appalachia think we don't care, and honestly a lot of them don't even bother voting. On the one hand it's laudable that Democrats have proposed some kind of aid, but it might be too little, too late.

[Skittles]

8. why would they think repukes care about them

all evidence to the contrary?

[DemocraticWing]

13. A lot of the poorest know they don't.

They just don't vote. As for the ones who do vote Republican, it's because the GOP says the Democrats took all the jobs away (having complete control of local and state governments while all the jobs went away hurts our image) and a lot of voters don't bother looking into what's really happened. It's easier to say Obama has a "War on Coal" causing all the jobs to leave than explain complex market forces, or God forbid, stand on the merits of regulations which have supposedly done so much harm.

The Kentucky Democrats are entirely complicit in the fraudulent defense of the coal industry, fwiw.

[tabasco]

16. Lots and lots of propaganda

It works.

[eridani]

6. And mountaintop removal improves them?

Or huge fucking pools of sludge and acid?

[Oilwellian]

10. Mountain top removal was also the beginning of the end

Why spend months mining coal and paying decent wages, when you can just blow up the entire mountain and scoop it up in far less time? Many areas became poverty stricken because it just didn't take that many workers to blow up a mountain. Some coal producing counties reported an increase in poverty of up to 70% after mountain top removal began. So not only have these people lost their livelihoods due to ravenous greed, they've also lost their land to what is now a toxic stew.

[belcffub]

11. Other end of the Coal Train

Our local coal power plant is closing taking with it $3 million for our schools budget that it paid in property taxes which have already been stretched by cuts from the state... Coal dammed if you do and dammed if you don't...

[kelliekat44]

14. But have you heard any pol from the area even suggesting major economic moves to replace

the coal industry in those areas? Training, education, building environmental industries there, creation of manufacturing or textile-based industries there instead of moving or building these industries in Asia and China?

[KamaAina]

18. Does Rowan County, KY have coal?

I have an idea that would save them $80,000 a year.

[KamaAina]

19. Xposted to Appalachia group

Yes, Appalachia has its own group.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1272

[KamaAina]

20. Not to worry. They'll just frack the whole region until everyone can light his or her faucet.