This week on Inside Appalachia, Rev. George Mills Dickerson of Tazewell, Virginia was born in the years after slavery ended. He’s remembered today through his poetry. And a new wave of black lung disease is ravaging Appalachia. We’ll hear more from a black lung town hall in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Coal miners have their own thoughts about black lung, too.
This week, Rev. George Mills Dickerson of Tazewell, Virginia was born in the years after slavery ended. He’s remembered today through his poetry.
And a new wave of black lung disease is ravaging Appalachia. We’ll hear more from a black lung town hall in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Coal miners have their own thoughts about black lung, too.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Celebrating Poetry About 20th Century African American Life
Poetry has been a tradition in Jeanette Wilson’s family for generations. They’ve recited the poems of Wilson’s grandfather and her uncle George for nearly a century. Now, these poems about African American life in southwest Virginia are reaching a wider audience — and connecting the past to the present.
Folkways Reporter Connie Kitts brings us this story.
The Voices Of Black Lung Miners
For years, it looked like black lung disease was on the decline, but a new epidemic has emerged. In 2018, NPR and the PBS program Frontline investigated a resurgence of advanced black lung among coal miners across Appalachia. They found that despite mounting evidence and a stream of warnings, federal regulators and mining companies failed to protect workers.
The result was that thousands of miners were afflicted with an advanced stage of black lung disease — known as Progressive Massive Fibrosis.
We bring this story from the miners themselves, as told to NPR’s Howard Berkes and Ohio Valley ReSource reporter Benny Becker. It was originally broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered on Jan. 22, 2019. The full documentary Coal’s Deadly Dust is available on pbs.org.
Black Lung Town Hall Meeting In Kentucky
In July, the Appalachian Citizens Law Center hosted a black lung town hall in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The nonprofit law firm invited miners and their families to hear from experts about the current state of black lung disease in Appalachia. One of those experts is Kentucky radiologist James Brandon Crum, who first alerted federal researchers to what they later labeled an epidemic of complicated black lung.
Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by Jeff Ellis, Charlie McCoy, Southern Culture on the Skids, June Carter Cash, and Tim and Dave Bing
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
Coal has been “king” for most of the last century in West Virginia and central Appalachia, but in recent years, global market forces, governmental regulations and alternative energy sources like natural gas have reduced its dominance.
That drop off has caused job losses as well as losses in income and severance taxes. At the same time as those coal companies close down, and often declare bankruptcy, it has left abandoned mines behind.
christiadi
/
Brian Lego is a research assistant professor at West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. He was one of the authors of a 2018 study called “The Economic Impact of Coal In West Virginia.” He said that coal production peaked most recently in 2008, when oil prices were high. Natural disasters and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in 2011 also prompted strong global demand.
But coal production has only fallen since then. In an email he noted that “coal production averaged a shade under 80 million short tons (annualized rate) in the first quarter of 2021 and appears to have increased to somewhere in the low- to mid-80 million short tons range during the second quarter.”
That is down from 150 million short tons in 2010.
Lego expects the short-term outlook for coal exports from West Virginia to remain stable through 2023 and 2024 — exceeding coal exports for 2019 and 2020. But, he wrote, exports would likely fall short of the 2017/2018 period – barring some stronger-than-expected growth in metallurgical coal demand.
In more general terms, he said he expected exports to decline over the next decade and then fall off more sharply in the 2030s.
From his perspective, natural gas is a major factor.
“Particularly here in the Mid-Atlantic region,” Lego said in an interview. “With the Marcellus and Utica shale, that was a major emergence of a competitor to coal-fired power in the entire U.S. The amount of growth in electricity generation that’s come from natural gas has, essentially, tripled. Natural gas accounts for half of the region’s electricity generation.”
Jobs
Since 2010, West Virginia has seen a net loss of more than 6,000 direct coal mining jobs since 2010, according to WorkForce West Virginia. There are 14,780 men and women currently working in mining in West Virginia, down from 43,875 in 1971.
The Appalachian region as a whole lost 27 percent of its coal jobs between 2005 and 2015, according to a report released by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The U.S. Energy Information Administration indicated there were about 30,000 people employed in coal mining throughout Appalachia in 2019.
Budgets
The fall in coal production has brought more than just layoffs. Coal severance taxes, which pay for things like schools and senior services, have also taken a hit. In 2010, these taxes brought in more than $300 million or about eight percent of the state’s general revenue fund.
In 2020, according to numbers supplied by the state Department of Commerce, total coal severance taxes were just over $200 million. That’s about four percent of the state’s General Revenue Fund.
Employment taxes from those directly associated with coal mining amounted to just over $125 million in 2010, according to a report from the Center for Budget and Policy. At the time there were 21,012 West Virginians directly employed in coal mining. The report estimated that each coal mining employee paid just under $6,000 per person in income taxes to the state.
Using the CBP estimate of approximately $6,000 in income taxes per miner, that reflects a drop of payroll tax income for the state of nearly $37 million to just less than $88 million.
Legacy costs
Coal mining also has a number of legacy costs– from abandoned mine lands to road damages from coal trucks.
A report from the Ohio River Institute says that Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) in West Virginia — these are coal mines abandoned before 1977 — account for just over 20 percent of the U.S. total and more than 24 percent of the costs.
Those mine lands account for 173,000 acres of land that need reclaimed with reclamation costs estimated at $5 billion. Only Pennsylvania has more unreclaimed pre-1977 mine lands than West Virginia. More than 30 percent of West Virginians live within a mile of an unreclaimed mine site.
Since the AML law passed in 1977, federal law has required mine owners to establish bonds that would pay for clean-up costs for coal mines. The law gave states considerable leeway in how they set up those bonds, however, and most are severely underfunded.
A report by Appalachian Voices, called Repairing the Damage, looked at the costs associated with more modern coal mines that have been abandoned as coal companies have declared bankruptcy. Much of the necessary clean-up costs are not covered by existing bonds.
Between 2008 and 2017, the number of coal mines plummeted from 1,435 to 671 mines in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration.
In a seven-state area, there were 633,000 acres of land that needed some level of cleanup. More than 200,000 acres of that was in West Virginia — the highest total for a single state. Kentucky was slightly lower.
The total estimated outstanding cost of this reclamation ranges from $7.5 to $9.8 billion. The total available bonds amount to approximately $3.8 billion.
The clean-up process is expensive, says Erin Savage, who wrote the Appalachian Voices report and calculated clean-up costs for various mine types.
“A fully unreclaimed surface mine, I have at about $12,000 per acre to reclaim. Underground mines at about $29,000 per acre. And the other mines are the processing facilities and those are at $26,000 per acre,” she said.
West Virginia has approximately $3 billion of reclamation liability, from mines abandoned after 1977, but only has approximately $1.2 billion in bonds to secure that reclamation.
A recent legislative audit of the state’s reclamation fund found that the bonds the coal companies are supposed to obtain to reclaim land once mining is done are set between $1,000 and $5,000 per acre. That’s simply not enough, according to Savage.
“For West Virginia, I estimated that the bonds cover roughly 31 to 49 percent of the potential liability,” she said.
Savage noted that this problem may be too big for the state government to deal with on its own.
“The water pollution, the erosion, flooding, those aren’t just environmental issues, those have direct impacts on the communities that live around those mines,” she said. “And that’s why we really think the federal government needs to step in here.”
But she also wants to see the private companies that created the messes held accountable.
“We wouldn’t want to see some new program that really lets coal companies off the hook and incentivizes bankruptcy and just walking away,” she said.
Restructuring bankruptcy in most cases allows companies to shed prior environmental and other obligations. From 2010 to 2019, more than 50 U.S. coal companies declared bankruptcy.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed by the U.S. Senate and pending before the U.S. House of Representatives includes additional money for the AML program.
Anna Cavalier
/
Town of Smithers
Reclamation work on an underground mine just above the town of Smithers.
Reclamation
One conclusion made in the Appalachian Voices report was that if the “remaining 633,000 acres in need of reclamation were reclaimed, this would create between 23,000 and 45,000 job-years across the Eastern states. Proper mine reclamation could have significant positive economic impacts, and contribute to carbon sequestration and climate change resilience.”
An example of how reclamation can change things is in the town of Smithers in Fayette County, West Virginia. An underground mine in the hill above the town was full of water and literally buckling U.S. Route 60 — a road that sees 7,000 cars a day during the non-tourist months.
Smithers Mayor Anne Cavalier said they called it the “mountain on the move.”
“That was created because abandoned mine lands from probably 50, 70 years ago had been mined out and they had filled with spring water,” she said. “Mountains are just full of springs and the water pressure was simply pushing that mountain out.”
She said that if Route 60 had been forced to close, even for a few years, none of the businesses in the town would have survived.
Anne Cavalier
/
Town of Smithers
An aerial view of the reclamation project that saved U.S. Route 60 and the town of Smithers.
But now the town has a completely different future. A reclamation project through the state Department of Environmental Protection stabilized the hillside with pilings and relieved the water pressure, preserving the road. Traffic continues to move past the town with travelers stopping for gas and food.
Just two miles from Smithers, another reclaimed coal mine has been turned into the Mammoth Preserve by the West Virginia Land Trust. Cavalier noted it is 5,500 acres of land for camping, mountain biking and horseback riding.
“I see us sitting here now in a sweet spot. I see new jobs and new futures for the members of those families who can make that transition from coal to tourism,” she said.
The ability for the town of Smithers to go from facing an uncertain future to one where the future looks bright is thanks to the reclamation of former mine sites. And Cavalier looks forward to what she hopes will be a time of renewal for her home.
“I’ve never been more excited about this town’s history,” she said.
Thousands of people have found themselves working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, essential workers don’t have that luxury. But that’s not the only type of work that can’t be done from home.
Scientists across the country have struggled to maintain access to their research, including researchers who take care of living collections — those libraries of living things, usually housed at academic institutions, and used for study or preservation.
West Virginia University is home to an important collection of living fungi. These are especially useful in West Virginia, because they can help plants grow on former mining sites.
“We spend a lot of time restoring lands that have been used for mining. And these fungi help plants colonize those lands,” said Matt Kasson, associate professor of plant pathology at WVU and the scientist who oversees this collection.
Kasson said these fungi help restore former mine lands.
“These lands are often depleted of nutrients,” he said. “Plants don’t often find it a hospitable environment to grow in. Through this partnership with these fungi, the site’s become more hospitable because these fungi are able to secure nutrients that plants otherwise themselves couldn’t extract.”
Kasson and his lab grow more than 900 individual strains of these fungi called INVAM, which, according to WVU, is the world’s largest collection of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi — these are fungi that have formed an intimate, beneficial partnership with plant roots.
For the fungi to flourish, each individual strain must be partnered with a plant host, and maintained in a greenhouse for several months to a year. WVU’s space can only culture about 250 to 300 strains at a time, and they must be watered daily.
But we’re also in a public health pandemic, which has made it harder for scientists like Kasson to meet the needs of these fungi.
He and his team had to work with WVU to defend their status as essential workers. They also had to figure out how to get personal protective equipment, decrease the number of people in the lab, and alter their travel routes within the building in order to continue doing their work.
They also saw a huge decline in orders from potential buyers, like other academic institutions, organizations and entities that purchase the fungi to use them.
“We have shut down that aspect of the collection since March. So anyone who wanted to purchase strains have not been able to so,” he said. “We’re not sure when we’re going to start that back up.”
As of last week, though, Kasson and his team have been able to start fulfilling orders again after a decline by 70 percent compared to this time last year.
Kasson said they weren’t able to fulfill orders until now, because they couldn’t begin new cultures. But he also said they didn’t see many orders come in as most institutions that would want to purchase these fungi have been closed due to the pandemic.
But these fungi also appear naturally in nature, so why is it important to keep them alive in labs like WVU’s? Kasson said it’s to ensure diversity, and because of the uncertainty caused by climate change.
“As we deal with the impacts of climate change, and we lose land that is more suitable for growing crops, and we have to move towards less suitable lands, these fungi can make a real difference,” he said.
As we continue to face the coronavirus pandemic as a state, nation and globe, Kasson said it’s important for scientists to be able to access their research, as we never know where the next big discovery will come from.
“With regard to medicine, right now we’re in a pandemic, and a lot of people are working on vaccines, and there’s a lot of great scientists leveraging a lot of collections and things like that. And I think it’s really important to know that there’s a lot of potential in these collections that have yet to come to the surface, and that’s one of the reasons we need to maintain them.”
Isabella Back, 18, pulls her jacket tight around herself as she crosses the gravel driveway. “So we’re going about 10 feet from my house to my dad’s workshop,” she says, and pushes through a door in a big, red barn.
The Kona, Kentucky, shop is crowded with cluttered work tables and hulking machines, and the sound of whirring and grinding fills the air. The shop smells of paint and other chemicals. Back’s dad, Rod, started this metal fabrication shop after he got laid off from coal mining. He mostly makes signs for local businesses. He waves a friendly hello.
Credit Sydney Boles / Ohio Valley ReSource
/
Ohio Valley ReSource
Isabella Back at her father’s workshop in eastern Kentucky.
“He uses so many chemicals to paint the metal, strip the metal, stuff like that,” Back said. “It scares me a little bit, because I don’t want him to get sick.”
Back documented the shop for the Mountain Air Project, a study with the University of Kentucky that explores potential environmental contributors to lung disease in the southeast corner of the state.
Credit Photo courtesy of the Mountain Air Project
/
Spray paints in the Back’s workshop
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 15 percent of adults in Letcher and Harlan Counties reported having an asthma diagnosis, compared to 8 percent nationally. Rates of COPD were also higher in eastern Kentucky.
Higher rates of smoking explain some of that disparity, said Mountain Air Project manager Beverly May, but not all of it. “The question from a research perspective is,” May asked, “what other things might be contributing to the disease, and could it be our environment?”
In addition to an epidemiological study, researchers employed a research practice called Photovoice, which asks people in a given community to use photography to share their experiences and perspectives with researchers who are typically not from that community. After receiving photography lessons from esteemed Appalachian photographer Malcolm Wilson, 10 young people between the ages of 12 and 18, all attending Letcher County schools, set out with digital cameras to document contributors to lung disease in their communities.
“To our knowledge, this is the first Photovoice project in the Appalachian region to specifically involve youth focusing on environmental health,” said University of Kentucky researcher Katie Cardarelli.
Health vs. Livelihood
Researchers analysed the students’ photographs to identify larger themes which might have gone unnoticed in a traditional health study. One such theme was the choices many east Kentuckians have had to make to earn a living.
Several photographs expressed deep concern for the dangers that coal mining posed not only to individual coal miners, but to whole communities exposed to particulates from resource extraction. One student submitted a photo of a coal-transport railroad visible from their backyard. “Our area has been coal country for years,” wrote the student photographer, “exposing us to things that people in most parts of the country are not exposed to.”
Credit Photo courtesy of the Mountain Air Project
/
Participants were also concerned about coal dust exposure.
Several earlier studies show higher incidence of disease in communities near large-scale strip mines. This one, however, did not. UK researcher Jay Christian said his analysis of the current contributors to lung disease did not point to environmental exposure from coal mining or oil and gas drilling. “We’re not finding clear evidence of population-level exposures that appear to be driving the high rates of lung disease,” Christian said. But previous exposure may still have contributed to current instances of disease.
“Coal mining has decreased very rapidly in the region,” he said. “So it’s hard to know how airborne particulate levels in the region now compare to those 20 years ago.”
Occupational exposure to coal dust remains a significant factor in the region, with rates of black lung disease skyrocketing in recent years.
Cultural Legacies
“There were a lot of photos that our participants shared with us that took place on porch settings,” Cardarelli said. “A lot of these youth talked about, for example, if they wanted to spend time with their families, that might have to occur on a porch where a lot of smoking was going on.”
Smoking rates in Kentucky are among the highest in the nation, behind only Guam and West Virginia.
Kentucky had the dubious distinction of placing three counties among the country’s top 10 for highest rates of smoking in 2012. Eastern Kentucky’s Clay County had a smoking rate of 37 percent. In Letcher County, where Back lives, 30 percent of adults smoked cigarettes.
Back said the health impact of smoking weighed heavily on her. “It’s not just second-hand smoke you’re exposed to; you’re exposed to that way of life,” she said.
Back recalls an instance from when she was 17, driving home with a member of her family who smokes. The pair stopped at a gas station, and Back wanted some water and some chips. But she knew her family member only had enough money for gas and a pack of cigarettes. So she kept silent. “I didn’t want them to not be able to get their cigarettes,” she said. “I didn’t want to inconvenience them like that.”
Back documented the incident in a photograph for the study. In the image, a package of cigarettes lies open on a table next to a scattered handful of coins.
“It’s not an everyday thing for me to choose between food and a pack of cigarettes, but I know for so many people in eastern Kentucky, it is,” Back said.
Credit Photo courtesy of the Mountain Air Project
/
Photo Courtesy of the Mountain Air Project
A Voice’s Value
The Photovoice project wasn’t the only part of Mountain Air to use alternative research methods. The researchers collaborated with a community advisory board made up of east Kentucky residents to make sure local people’s perspectives were taken into account.
Roy Silver is a professor at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, and he served as the chair of the advisory board. “Frequently, when researchers want to research what’s going on here in the mountains, they don’t work with the local people to figure out what are the best ways to do that, and also how to take that research and make it of use to people locally to improve the quality of life.”
One day in 2014 when researchers and community members were gathered together on someone’s porch, they stumbled upon a novel approach to collecting and analyzing: Hollers.
Those narrow valleys, with their central streams and single-access roads, define the mountain way of organizing communities.
“Wouldn’t you think, if you’re concerned about environmental exposures, that the people who all live in the same holler would have pretty much the same exposure? And that’s just us talking as hillbillies,” researcher May said.
Back at the University of Kentucky, Christian took the idea and found that where county-level environmental health averages may obscure variations of exposures, hollers corresponded neatly with federally recognized 14-digit hydrologic unit codes – that is, small segments of creeks and streams that all lead into the same body of water.
“They tend to be formed around these little valleys and areas with little creeks running down them, which is why they line up so well with hollers,” Christian said.
May said innovations like that, coupled with the community involvement, meant that the project “helps us dig down into how people really live.”
The community advisory board also suggested including local young people in the research.
Although the Mountain Air project considered Photovoice an “exploratory study,” students identified factors contributing to poor air quality that the researchers might not otherwise have considered. Students photographed citronella candles, moldy showers, dusty air vents and heavy pollen. Those factors are unlikely to be significant contributors to eastern Kentucky’s higher rates of lung disease, Cardarelli said, but the researchers may include at least some of them in a second iteration of its household survey.
Credit Sydney Boles
/
Mountain Air Project participant Isabella Back at her Letcher Co., KY, home.
“My colleagues and I were so impressed with the youth participants from Letcher County,” Cardarelli said. She hopes to involve youth in the next Mountain Air project, and is already working to involve young people in some data collection. “They clearly have a role in the future to make their communities better.”
The project brought lasting value to participant Back. “I don’t think there’s a lot of young people to talk about things like our environment,” she said. “You don’t have a class in high school to teach you to speak up about things like this.”
Now a freshman at Georgetown College in central Kentucky, Back hopes one day to move home to help the community move forward. “I feel like I have a greater appreciation for using my voice as a young person, because people will listen to you, and people will take your ideas and your perspectives into account.”
The youth Photovoice study was published in October in theInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. An article on the novel use of hollers for conducting epidemiological research will be published this month in the Journal of Progress in Community Health Partnerships. The full epidemiological study is forthcoming.
West Virginia University and the West Virginia Mine Drainage Task Force are presenting a symposium this week on mining and reclamation regulations and practices.
The event is Tuesday and Wednesday at the Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place.
The program will be presented by university representatives and other mining and reclamation experts.
Soil science professor Jeff Skousen says researchers present findings at the annual meeting, and industry representatives share techniques they apply at their mine sites and results.
The university said it expects about 250 people to attend from neighboring countries and across the U.S.
The United Mine Workers of America is suing the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, after the agency reduced its heightened oversight of a West Virginia coal mine with a poor safety record.
MSHA has the power to declare mines with a history of significant safety violations as having a “Pattern of Violations.” Known as “POV status,” the declaration is an enforcement tool that allows the agency to increase regulatory scrutiny at a mine with repeated safety issues.
Under the Obama administration, MSHA used that authority to place the Pocahontas Coal Company’s Affinity mine in southern West Virginia on POV status in October, 2013, after two minerswere killed in separate incidents within a two-week span.
This year, under the Trump administration, agency officials decided to remove POV status for the Affinity mine in an agreement with the company that resolved litigation on the matter, despite a continued record of spotty safety performance at the mine.
The UMWA’s complaint claims that MSHA’s actions violate the Administrative Procedures Act and the Mine Act. UMWA spokesperson Phil Smith said MSHA should keep the pattern of violations status in place until the Affinity mine is proved safe.
“The message that this sends to operators and miners is that the Mine Safety and Health Administration is not going to fully enforce the law is a wrong one,” Smith said. “We think that message needs to be countered immediately.”
Credit MSHA
/
An MSHA inspection photograph of the equipment that killed Affinity scoop operator Edward Finney in 2013.
The union’s lawsuit echoes concerns from mine safety experts and some lawmakers, including a former MSHA director, a former member of a federal mine safety review commission, and the incoming chair of a Congressional committee with oversight on mine safety.
Path To POV
In the wake of the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia, MSHA leadership used the POV designation to press for safety improvements at problem mines. In 2010, MSHA identified 51 mines that had safety records that could place them at risk for being given a pattern of violations notice.
In order to have the POV designation removed, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977 mandates that the mine must receive a full inspection with no serious and substantial violations.
MSHA data show the Affinity mine has received a total of 37 significant and substantial violations in 2018. Three were issued as recently as August.
Robert Cohen, then a member of the federal mine health and safety commission, pointed out that record in a dissent to the Affinity decision when it was made public over the summer. The commission is an independent agency that provides review of legal disputes that arise under the Mine Safety Act. Cohen, who has since left the commission, said MSHA’s decision on Affinity was “legally unsupportable.”
Cohen stressed that under federal law, mines must have a clean health and safety inspection in order to have POV status changed.
Undermining Safety?
Joe Main, MSHA director under President Obama, said in a September interview that the agency’s decision to remove the POV designation from the Affinity mine may undermine the effectiveness of one of MSHA’s most powerful enforcement tools.
“I think whenever things happen where a mine can get into litigation and free themselves through a settlement agreement of the statutory penalty, that raises concern about…what kind of perception is this leaving in the mining industry?” he said.
Tony Oppegard, a mine safety lawyer based in Kentucky, said the agency’s decision to settle the lawsuit with Affinity sends the wrong message to the industry.
“They took the Affinity mine off of the pattern even though they had never complied with the statutory requirements,” he said. “I just think it’s wrong.”
The issue also caught the attention of some members of Congress who oversee MSHA. Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wrote to the Department of Labor in September requesting more information about the Affinity POV decision.
Specifically, Scott wanted “to assess whether MSHA’s actions to terminate the POV exceeded its statutory authority and whether the Department of Labor acted properly.”
As Democrats assume control of the House next year Scott will likely become become the committee chair, greatly enhancing his power to investigate.
Credit Jesse Wright / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Former mining executive David Zatezalo leads the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Industry Connections
In an August press release, United Coal Company, Pocahontas Coal’s parent company, said the Affinity site has greatly increased its safety record.
“The Affinity team was very relieved to hear that the POV is terminated, but understand our commitment and actions towards safety and compliance will not change,” Jeff Birchfield, Affinity mine manager wrote.
At a September event at West Virginia University, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health David Zatezalo, President Trump’s choice to lead MSHA, defended the Affinity mine’s safety record, calling it one of the best in West Virginia.
Zatezalo added that he has no concerns that the settlement might dilute the POV as an enforcement tool.
However, the agency’s Affinity decision has also raised questions about Zatezalo’s industry connections. Zatezalo worked for 40 years in the coal mining industry, including a stint as chairman at Rhino Resources, which operates mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.
In 2010 and 2011 the company received two POV notices from the agency Zatezalo now leads. Zatezalo also had leadership roles with coal industry associations in Ohio and Kentucky, both of which are parties to lawsuits challenging MSHA’s regulatory changes in 2013.
MSHA officials referred questions regarding the UMWA lawsuit to the Department of Justice, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The agency’s controversial decision comes amid a mixed two years of industry safety under the Trump administration. Following an uptick in mining fatalities in 2017, the U.S. coal industry is on track to complete one of its safest years on record in 2018. Eight coal miners have died on the job in 2018, half of them in West Virginia. Last year, 15 U.S. coal miners were killed during work, an unexpected spike in fatalities after a long downward trend.
The general decline in mining fatalities reflects both improvements in safety practices and a decline in the size of the coal workforce.
