The program that provides miners with safety and health training is eligible for more than $10 million in grants.
The U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday that its Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is providing $10.5 million in grant funding for mine safety training across the nation.
Grants to the State Grants program will fund the delivery of federally mandated training and re-training for miners working at surface and underground coal and metal and nonmetal mines.
“The State Grants program is one way that MSHA can focus on protecting the health and safety of miners across the country,” Chris Williamson, assistant secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health, said. “That training needs to include educating miners about the hazards associated with silica and how they can exercise their rights to minimize their risks.”
The recipient is required to provide at least 20 percent of the total program costs, while MSHA may fund up to 80 percent of the program costs under a state grant.
Grant applications must be submitted by Aug. 20, 2024, and grants will be awarded on or before Sept. 30, 2024.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting with support from Marshall Health.
West Virginia University researchers are extracting minerals from toxic mine water runoff and converting it into industry materials, with the help of the U.S. Department of Energy.
Coal mining can expose minerals like pyrite to oxygen from rainwater and the air. In turn, this pyrite creates sulfuric acid — a toxin to aquatic wildlife that frequently enters water runoff.
But new research at West Virginia University (WVU) aims to remove harmful minerals from acid mine drainage, and repurpose them into usable industrial materials.
Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of WVU’s Water Research Institute, began working on the project in 2016. His team has already developed technology to extract minerals like pyrite from local water supplies, effectively ridding it of mine pollutants.
“You have to treat the acid mine drainage… [in] a treatment plant or facility,” he said. “We have a process that basically is a way of treating acid mine drainage while recovering valuable minerals and cleaning up the environment at the same time.”
Ziemkiewicz said that his team helps operate a plant near Grant County that treats from 500 to 1,000 gallons of acid mine drainage per minute. According to Ziemkiewicz, facilities like these help proactively treat drainage before it enters a body of water.
Minerals extracted from this drainage can be repurposed for industrial benefits, which brings additional value to the extraction process, he said.
An additional $5 million in funding secured this week from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will help the team embark upon part two of the project: converting extracted minerals into industrial materials.
Ziemkiewicz said his team secured the funding after responding to a DOE project solicitation sent out nationally. The group has received funding from the DOE roughly 10 times, he said.
“What we’re doing now is taking that concentrate and developing new processes that are very environmentally friendly, and that will take those mixtures of rare earth and other metals and separate those into individual, usable components,” Ziemkiewicz said.
Rare earth elements are used in a variety of goods ranging from cell phones to alternative energy technology, he said. Many of these elements are primarily imported from China, but Ziemkiewicz said projects like his own could develop methods of obtaining them domestically.
Additionally, state law grants individuals or groups who treat acid mine drainage rights to the usage of extracted materials. This means treatment plants can sell the materials they extract and use them to finance operations, Ziemkiewicz said.
Beyond sustaining environmental upsides, Ziemkiewicz said that the prospect of self-funded treatment plants would also stand to create jobs for coalfield communities devastated by the decline of the mining industry.
“Being able to bring in an industry that cleans up the previously polluted water while creating economic opportunities through the extraction of the rare earth is creating wealth for these communities,” he said. “It creates wealth where previously you had basically environmental degradation.”
Chris Williamson, the assistant secretary for Mine Safety and Health at the U.S. Department of Labor, says participation in the Part 90 program is up 750 percent.
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration says participation is up in a program that helps coal miners avoid exposure to silica dust.
Chris Williamson, the assistant secretary for Mine Safety and Health at the U.S. Department of Labor, says participation in the Part 90 program is up 750 percent.
Last year, MSHA said it would look for ways to encourage more miners to take part in the program, which allows those who have been diagnosed with black lung disease to continue to work in the industry but in positions where they won’t be exposed to as much silica dust.
The move can slow the progression of a disease that’s affecting miners at younger ages and more severely than it did in the past. That’s in part because miners must grind through more rock to extract coal, and that rock dust contains silica.
Part 90 has been around for decades – it even predates MSHA. But Wiliamson and mine health advocates say the program is underused.
Last year, Williamson says seven miners signed up for the program. This year, he says 34 have opted to participate, most of them in West Virginia and in southern West Virginia in particular.
“If those miners either want to continue to work or they have to because of economic reasons, or whatever the rationale,” he said, “there is this right that’s out there that’s incredibly powerful that can help them preserve what bit of health that they have left.”
As MSHA finalizes a rule to reduce the maximum silica dust exposure for all coal miners – to 50 micrograms per cubic meter per shift – Part 90 is a tool that can benefit those who already have the disease but slow its progression.
“I think it’s hard to argue with a 750 percent increase in the number of miners that are exercising their right,” Williamson said. “We know there’s still many, many, many more miners out there that could benefit from this.”
A Kentucky coal company has been found in contempt for failing to submit court-ordered plans to clean up two polluted West Virginia mine sites.
A Kentucky coal company has been found in contempt for failing to submit court-ordered plans to clean up two polluted West Virginia mine sites.
U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers issued a contempt order against Lexington Coal Company LLC. Chambers wrote last week that the company “shirked its responsibility to satisfactorily comply” with an order to submit a plan by April 16 to address selenium discharges and other pollution at the sites in Mingo County.
Chambers said he will fine the company if it does not submit a cleanup plan within 10 days, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported.
Environmental groups alleged in a 2019 lawsuit that the company was discharging pollutants illegally at its Low Gap Surface Mine No. 2 and No. 10 Mine.
A 3,000-acre solar energy farm is planned on a former coal mining site in southern West Virginia, project officials said.
A 3,000-acre solar energy farm is planned on a former coal mining site in southern West Virginia, project officials said.
The estimated $320 million project will be built at the Rock Creek Development Park along the borders of Boone and Lincoln County by the newly formed SEVA WV, a unit of Kansas City, Missouri-based Savion Energy.
The park itself will be renamed Sun Park and is expected to include industrial and commercial development, educational facilities and tourism and hospitality venues, officials said at a news conference Monday. The solar panels are expected to provide 250 megawatts of power.
Up to 300 workers are expected to be employed during construction on the solar project. In addition, 80 miles of new trails are planned on the property as an extension of the Hatfield-McCoy ATV system.
Development of the former Hobet surface mine site as a business park was the vision of former Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in 2016.
The Mountain State isn’t the only place to reckon with the difficulty of transitioning away from a coal economy into something different.
West Germany emerged from World War II as one of the leading coal and steel producers in the world. Then, in the 1960s, oil emerged as a competitor, and the country found itself in the midst of an economic crisis. But there, the emergency prompted a strange and unusual alliance.
“The state government, the regional governments, the trade unions, and the employers, the industrialists, sat together and tried to find solutions to the problem,” said Stefan Moitra, historian at the German Mining Museum in Bochumin the Ruhr Valley — a densely populated valley in West Germany that’s home to five million people.
On the one hand, the coal employers were motivated to cooperate by their revenue losses. “On the other hand,” Moitra said, “it was in the interest of, obviously, the workers but also of the state to have one of the major industrial regions not falling into the darkness.”
Friedrich Heinrich/Rheinland Mine. Courtesy: Betriebsrat Bergwerk West
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Miners protest against the threat of mass closure in 1997.
This coalition of stakeholders eventually settled on a surprising idea — they agreed to shrink the coal industry. They merged all the coal companies into one corporation, called “RAG Aktiengesellschaft,” formerly known as Ruhrkohle AG. And the government poured lots of money into helping miners retire early. They invested in emerging industries, like auto manufacturing and tourism, to diversify the area’s economy.
They also built universities.
“Until the 1960s, there was no major university in the Ruhr. Today the universities in the Ruhr are one of the major employers,” Moitra said.
It wasn’t easy, but West Germany survived the contraction of coal and steel jobs. Then in the 1990s, the coal industry that was left declined even worse. And once again the coal companies, the government, and the unions sat down and worked out a plan to completely phase out of coal mining by 2018.
Sure enough, three years ago, the last mine in the Ruhr region, and the last “black mine” in Germany, closed.
It wasn’t a perfect solution. The Ruhr area has still faced high unemployment at times.
Workgroup for Infrastructure Policy (WIP), University of Technology Berlin, “Lessons from Germany’s hard coal mining phaseout: policies and transition from 1950 to 2018.”
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But the earlier transition efforts in the 1960s made this latest shift to close the mines much easier.
No Unified Plan For Appalachia
West Virginia’s economic future may hinge on what leaders do in the next few years to plan for the next 50.
But politics in the United States are different than in Europe. And when people talk about economic diversification in coal country, there isn’t a clear path forward. Should such an effort be funded by the federal or state government? Or, by private investment?
Earlier this year, West Virginia Del. Ed Evans, D-McDowell, pleaded with his colleagues in the House of Delegates to plan for a transition away from coal.
Courtesy W.Va. State Legislature
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Delegate Ed Evans is a state lawmaker from McDowell County
“We’ve closed Walmart. We’ve closed Magic Mart. We’ve closed everything. Y’all have no idea what my people go through,” Evans said in a speech on the House floor.
In the 1950s, his county was booming economically, fueled by coal jobs. Now, McDowell County is filled with ghost towns and ranks as one of the poorest in the country.
“I’ve asked for help many times on this floor. What have I got? Failing to plan is failing to plan,” Evans said, urging fellow lawmakers to invest a chunk of the state’s federal COVID-19 aid into helping coal communities plan for an economic comeback.
His request was denied.
How Pittsburgh Dealt With Collapse Of Steel Jobs
One way to examine this issue is by looking at neighbors to the north.
“The bureaucracies that develop in large corporations are not known for their flexibility and their ability to quickly adapt to new situations,” said Dieterich-Ward.
Smaller companies are more adaptable, and they were a big part of Pittsburgh’s renewal. Aided by lots of government funding, as well as help from philanthropic organizations, entrepreneurs created smaller start-up industries in tech, the arts, and restoration of the city’s historic resources.
“Pittsburgh really [became] a laboratory for what and how to save the past in a way that allows it to be integrated into the future,” Dieterich-Ward said.
Some businesses in West Virginia already are reinventing and reimagining themselves, according to Derek Scarbro, business development director at the Robert C. Byrd Institute at Marshall University in Huntington.
“Companies are definitely more and more interested in learning how they can broaden their base,” Scarbro said.
Photo Mike Friel/ Robert C. Byrd Institute
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An employee with Vintec Manufacturing creates a camera mount, using a laser cutter at the Robert C. Byrd Institute in Huntington, West Virgnia.. The company, which used to primarily work with the coal mining industry, is pivoting to now sell outdoor cameras.
The RCBI opened 31 years ago with funding from the Department of Defense to assist defense contractors in the region, and to support workforce needs for advanced manufacturing.
Today, it works with large scale businesses, as well as small entrepreneurs. Business owners can use 3D printing and other machines at the center to help revamp their business.
A mining equipment company based in Nicolas County uses the equipment to make mounts for outdoor cameras. “And they’re selling them online and they have done extremely well with that,” said Scarbro. “Talk about a pivot, going from mining equipment servicing to outdoor cameras.”
These are small glimmers of signs that entrepreneurs are moving towards retooling. But many are still reluctant, Scarbro said.
Attracting Investors
Avinandan Mukherjee, interim provost at Marshall University, said he sees an increasing number of venture capitalists looking to Appalachia to invest. “And there is a lot of interest in our part of the country in terms of what these ideas are, and which ones can win.”
When West Virginia Public Broadcasting interviewed Mukherjee in July, he pointed to a company called App Harvest, which specializes in growing hydroponic vegetables on former strip mines and has attracted investors from all over the country. A month after the interview, AppHarvest reported a net loss of $32 million in its second quarter. Following this announcement, stocks in the company plummeted.
Courtesy AppHarvest
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A farm worker at a hydroponic tomato farm in Kentucky, operated by AppHarvest
West Virginia also falls behind in other aspects of infrastructure, including roads and bridges. One national study gave the state a D. A few communities, like Keystone and Northfork, in McDowell County, even lack access to potable water.
Mukherjee also mentioned Ascend West Virginia as an effort that could have lasting impacts. The program offers virtual workers $12,000 to relocate to West Virginia. About 7,500 people applied to the program this year, and 53 were selected.
Over the next 20 years, Mukherjee said he expects West Virginia to see an increase in virtual jobs like cyber security and software engineering.
Employers are already hiring in these sectors, said Natalie Roper, executive director for Generation West Virginia. But “very often they have job openings and are struggling to get qualified applicants.”
When Roper’s organization created a fellowship program to match qualified employees with employers, half of the jobs were in software development, and most were virtual. That poses a problem in some areas of West Virginia, where there is a lack of high-speed broadband.
According to the West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council, the Mountain State ranks third-lowest for broadband access, and 30 percent of rural residents are without an internet connection in their homes.
A Bottom-Up Approach
West Virginia also falls behind in other aspects of infrastructure, including roads and bridges. One national study gave the state a ‘D.’ A few communities, like Keystone and Northfork in McDowell County, even lack access to potable water.
Courtesy American University
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Priya Bascaran, assistant professor of law at American University
Priya Bascaran, assistant professor of law at American University and director of the school’s Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, said she thinks that without these essentials in place, the state won’t be able to keep people from fleeing.
“If we give them an employable skill, and they don’t have good, safe water, or a decent road, of course, they’re going to take this skill and leave town,” Bascaran said.
Bascaran has worked with communities across the country that are dealing with a hollowing out of jobs, and people.
She said leaders often neglect to ask people what they actually need and want.
“And when you turn that conversation internally, you really see that, maybe, what people really want is a grocery store,” Bascaran said.
She wonders if helping people get grocery stores, or better water infrastructure, could be where economic development begins.
“What if instead of training people to be coders, we trained people to be wastewater engineers, or water system operators,” Bascaran said. “Because there’s a real need for that in West Virginia and greater Appalachia.”
Not Enough Investment In Appalachia
Jim King is the president and chief executive ofFahe, a network of more than 50 nonprofits that funds about $330 million each year in projects throughout Appalachia. But he says much more investment is needed, and he adds that philanthropy and other institutions of wealth lag behind.
“There is a historic disinvestment in West Virginia and Appalachia,” King said. “And not only was the coal taken out, but the wealth went with it. And other parts of the country benefited.”
King estimates that it would take nearly a billion dollars a year just to get West Virginia at the same economic playing field as the rest of the country.
Janet Kunicki/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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Lavender growing in Boone County W.Va. in 2018 on top of a reclaimed strip mine, as part of a grant funded project to train people to become lavender farmers. Follow up reporting by West Virginia Public Broadcasting found that the project did not result in permanent job creation.
Jobs In Mine Land Cleanup
The coal industry in West Virginia has also left behind thousands of acres of land in need of reclamation. In Germany, years of ongoing work to undo environmental damage, and infrastructure decay, have provided needed jobs, said Christian Wicke, assistant professor in political history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
Wicke specializes in communities that have moved away from an industrialized economy, like in the Ruhr region of Germany.
“You have to imagine the Ruhr region as is hollowed out like Swiss cheese with lots of mines,” he said. “And it’s incredibly difficult to organize a water system.”
Wicke said Germany hasn’t buried its coal and steel history. In fact, they’ve built museums about it. Artists have built steel statues on former mining sites, that now attract millions of tourists a year.
“One might argue if you have a good job that the region is more livable than ever before,” Wicke said.
Back at the museum of mining, Moitra, the historian, said that some of the older miners in West Germany say they miss what mining was.
“But they all they are also very aware the times are changing,” Moitra said. “What many find important is that they can be sure that their kids and their grandkids can work and live without having to move away.”
Those words ring true in Appalachia as well, where many worry about sustaining the next generation.
The losses in both places go deeper than economics. Cultural identities are deeply woven into the fabric of societies in places that have predominantly been fueled by coal. Finding new realities and retooling the economic landscape means these cultural ties also have to be reimagined.
“One might argue if you have a good job that the region is more livable than ever before,” Wicke said.
Back at the museum of mining, Moitra, the historian, said that some of the older miners in West Germany say they miss what mining was.
“But they are also very aware the times are changing,” Moitra said. “What many find important is that they can be sure that their kids and their grandkids can work and live without having to move away.”
Photographer, Frank Martin. Photo courtesy Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum
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The front of a small mine in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, in the early 1980s.
A former miner in the Ruhr region of West Germany told historian Moitra in 2017: “You cannot turn everything into a museum, that’s for sure.”
Said Gottfried Clever, who began working in the coal industry in 1977: “In the beginning we joked with bitter irony: ‘Well, we can create new jobs if we travel the Ruhr region as museum miners. So we’ll all be a museum ourselves. And people can visit us as a vanished reality.’”
Clever worked in several coal mines in the Ruhr, including the Walsum colliery in Duisburg, Consolidation and Hugo in Gelsenkirchen, and Ewald in Herten.
As in Germany it will probably take many decades, or even generations, for Appalachia to get through this transition to the other side — and what that other side looks like is still unknown. But what’s certain is that planning for that future will probably help the state have a better outcome.
In 1986, the city of Essen in West Germany closed its last mine.
Now, 35 years later, this region has a labor participation rate of 71 percent, more than 25 percent higher than West Virginia’s workforce rate of 55.2 percent, the lowest in the United States.
The highest number of employed people in Essen today work in the service sector, followed by manufacturing, forestry and agriculture.
If people in West Virginia decide to follow Germany’s lead, it’ll mean those from different industries and leadership roles agree on a plan. Most importantly, they’ll have to figure out a way to support coal miners, and their families, in the years to come.
Tom Hansell from the After Coal project and West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s David Adkins contributed to this report.
