Trump's Coal Promises Will Bring More Misery And Fewer Jobs
Everyone, even the people who live and work there, knows that coal jobs are not coming back to coal country, despite Trump’s campaign promises. As with everything else, Trump will eventually discover that it’s not as easy and far more complicated than he ever imagined. But that doesn’t mean he won’t bring more misery and sickness to those very people he made those promises to as well as the rest of us.
One of Trump’s first executive orders was to end the Surface Mining Stream Protection Rule. This rule forced mining companies to prevent the movement of mine waste, which may contain toxic materials like mercury and arsenic, from being dumped into streams and rivers, either through direct dumping or normal erosion. Now Scott Pruitt has decided to delay, if not kill, an Obama-era rule that would have required that the nation’s power plants put in place by 2018 the most up-to-date technology to remove toxic materials such as arsenic, mercury, and lead from wastewater before it is dumped back into the environment. The impact of this rule would have been far greater on coal-fired plants than others. Says Pruitt, “This action is another example of EPA implementing President Trump’s vision of being good stewards of our natural resources, while not developing regulations that hurt our economy and kill jobs.” Allowing arsenic and mercury to be dumped into public waterways is an interesting definition of “good stewardship”.
The coal industry is already one of the worst in terms of worker’s conditions and negative externalities. Last year, Don Blankenship, the head of Massey Energy, was sentenced to a year in jail and a $250,000 fine for the massive workplace safety violations at the company. And this conviction came down in the notorious pro-mining state of West Virginia. Massey Energy was a perpetual violator but the case really came to a head when an explosion at one of the Massey mines killed 29 workers. Subsequent investigation showed that Blankenship directed a vast conspiracy that mandated that safety concerns be ignored if they effected the firm’s profitability.
In addition, with workers forced to work more shifts and longer hours and a change in how some coal is mined, coal country has seen a resurgence in black lung disease. Some workers in their 30s are being forced to retire because of the disease, mainly because of all the extra time they spend in the mines these days and the introduction of a mining technique called slope mining which creates silica dust. In Pike County, Kentucky, alone over 60 cases were diagnosed in the last 20 months. That is more cases than had been identified nationwide since 2010. The whole, depressing story at the link is really worth a read.
Coal companies are already under serious economic pressure as demand for coal plummets due to the availability of cheaper natural gas and alternative energy solutions. The increase in black lung disease further strains those companies as they are responsible for the health benefits of those workers. This will force more coal companies to go bankrupt and then the responsibility of those workers’ benefits falls to the government, meaning us taxpayers, and the number of coal jobs further decreases.
Trump’s actions to support the coal industry will not create any new jobs. At best, they will keep a few hundred jobs in place for extra year or two. Meanwhile the damage to the health of the environment, the miners, and the rest of us will increase and it will largely be left to the American taxpayers to pay for those costs.