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Powering Down: Ohio Community Reckons With Coal Plant Closure

Brick buildings line the wide sidewalks of Main Street in downtown Coshocton, Ohio. On a recent spring day the dogwood trees are blooming. Bright red and white tulips dot the grassy public square, home to the local courthouse and a gazebo.

There are barber shops, an optometrist, a florist, a railroad-themed steakhouse is open for lunch. A trendy public art installment features a small roller coaster designed and built by the local high school and a marquee that blinks “be nice to others.”

But there are also vacant buildings.

Paula Wagner has lived in Coshocton for more than 40 years. She taught Spanish at a local high school for 35. Standing on Main Street, she says Coshocton has been a wonderful place to live, but it isn’t thriving like it once was.

A train runs through downtown Coshocton, Ohio.

“We still have some businesses, but I think every time one of these big businesses goes out, it takes so many people too,” she said. “They have to move to find jobs outside of town, or they’ll move their whole family.”

In recent years, thousands of jobs have been lost as major employers like General Electric, automotive mat maker Pretty Products, and a WestRock paper mill have closed their doors in the region.

Now, Coshocton is bracing for another blow. At the end of May, two of the three remaining units of American Electric Power’s Conesville Power Plant went dark. The last unit will shutter in May 2020, years earlier than expected. Coshocton is joining the growing list of Ohio Valley communities where coal plants are powering down.

“It’s an integral part of the community,” Denise Guthrie, owner of Mercantile on Main, said of the power plant, which has been operating here for over 60 years. Her shop has for 20 years sold vacuum cleaners and cotton quilting materials. Guthrie, a Coshocton native, greets everyone who comes through her doors like she knows them, largely because she does. Many of her customers, or their families, have worked at the power plant.

“We’re hurting,” she said. “You can physically see that there’s empty buildings, and that’s hard …I remember what it was, you know, but that was the past.”

Guthrie knows first-hand what that loss looks like. Her husband was laid off when the paper mill closed.

“It’s like, bam, bam, bam, you know, our community is hit, you see that,” she said.

Located in eastern Ohio, Coshocton has a mix of rural landscape and industrial labor common to much of Appalachia. It has rolling green hills and the occasional farm stand, but it’s also a place where people take pride in making things. And like so many communities in Appalachia, coal mined here, then later burned here to make electricity, shaped the fabric of this community, and helped give rise to its industrial roots.

In recent years, the community has tried to diversify.

“We have a lot to offer,” said Guthrie. Local wineries have banded together to create a wine trail, and a brewery has opened. Visitors can visit historic Roscoe Village, a restored 19th Century canal town, and hunting and fishing opportunities abound. Coshocton County is home to Kraft Heinz, the country’s largest bacon manufacturer, and American flag producer, Annin Flagmakers, as well as more than a dozen smaller manufacturers.

County and local officials haven’t been sitting idly by as Conesville’s retirement approaches. But as many communities in Appalachia have found, the loss of a coal-fired power plant is a major blow, even in places like Coshocton that are used to dealing with loss.

“I will say, we’re resilient, we’ll survive, we’ll find jobs, somehow we find jobs, we find new opportunities,” Guthrie said. “But it is a concern.”

Closing Conesville

The Conesville power plant began burning coal to create electricity in 1957. Over time, the plant grew to include six coal-fired boilers and could generate 1,590 megawatts of power.

The plant was a significant purchaser of Ohio coal, much of it mined by now-bankrupt Westmoreland Coal Company. At its peak, the plant employed 600 workers.

Plant Manager Ryan Forbes has worked at Conesville for 12 years. He will now oversee its closure.

“I’ve had four family members make lifelong careers here at Conesville, so it’s definitely close to me,” he said.

Shortly after he took the job, AEP announced it was moving up the timetable for the plant’s closure by two years.

Units 5 and 6 at the plant, which were originally scheduled to shut down in 2022, are closing now. Unit 4 is scheduled to close in May 2020. As of June 1, Forbes said, the plant will have 95 workers. They started the year with 160. About 25 employees have found other jobs elsewhere within the AEP system, and some are retiring.

Coshocton is not alone in facing a future without a coal-fired power plant. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, from 2007 through 2018, more than 500 coal-fired generators, representing roughly 22 percent of all coal-generated electricity capacity, retired. In the Ohio Valley alone, 34 coal-burning facilities closed from 2009 to 2017.

Cost is the biggest force in the decline of coal, as renewable sources and gas-fired generation are proving cheaper and more flexible.

And there are more closures to come. Utilities have announced the retirement of at least 36.7 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity through 2024 — 117 units in total, according to a recent study by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Increasingly, utilities are moving up retirement dates for their old coal burners.

Communities in the Ohio Valley are expected to be hit especially hard. In addition to the Conesville closure, utility FirstEnergy Solutions is shuttering three power plants over the next four years. The Bruce Mansfield power plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, W.H. Sammis power plant in Jefferson County, Ohio, and Pleasants Power Station in Pleasants County, West Virginia, are all set to close by 2022. The Tennessee Valley Authority voted in February to close the last of the coal-burning units at its Paradise power station in Kentucky, after switching to a new natural gas generator two years ago.

“These are huge economic drivers in the regions that they’re in,” said Gilbert Michaud, an assistant professor of practice at the George V. Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University.

Since 2010, eight coal-fired power plants have closed in Ohio alone. Michaud has studied the associated impacts of these closures.

“They employ hundreds of workers, they have this rippling effect through the use of vendors and supply chain … where they are really driving activity and creating jobs and a lot of ancillary industries too,” he said. “A lot of these rural communities that don’t have very diverse economies, these are core industries and core facilities that are really driving economic development and jobs in these regions.”

Michaud and colleagues published a study in February that examined the impacts of the closure of two Dayton Power and Light coal-fired power plants last year in Adams County, Ohio. They found the county and local government and school districts were set to lose $8.5 million in tax revenues due to the closures, 370 direct jobs and another 761 associated jobs.

Michaud said displaced coal plant workers have limited local options to find new employment.

“We did find that there were emerging industry clusters in things like tourism and rural healthcare, but the problem here is that these folks would face like a wage challenge if they were to transition to new careers altogether,” he said. “And so a lot of these folks have been moving away, both throughout Ohio and out of state altogether, unfortunately.”

Cutting School

Conesville lies just a few miles outside Coshocton. The power plant’s three massive smokestacks have been a fixture of the small town’s landscape for decades, alongside a convenience store, post office, and a school, Conesville Elementary.

River View Local School District Superintendent Dalton Summers said having the power plant in the district was a huge advantage.

“When you have a power plant in your district it’s almost a separate tax source,” he said.

Conesville Elementary depended on the power plant for revenue.

Until recently, Conesville was valued at $72.2 million, and it paid a significant amount of property tax and a state utility tax to the county and school district. Of River View’s $22.1 million annual budget, 10 percent comes from the power plant.

Because of that high level of local funding, Summers said River View has traditionally received less funding from the state. Still, the millions paid by the plant locally in taxes made that a worthwhile trade-off.

“River View was able to offer a lot of things that a lot of rural communities wouldn’t be able to offer,” he said, including eight advanced placement courses at the high school, three foreign languages, a swim team, and small class sizes.

The last time the district built a new school it didn’t have to ask local taxpayers to chip in. In fact, Summers said the district hasn’t asked for a new operating levy in more than 25 years.

In October 2017, the Ohio Department of Taxation devalued the plant from $72.2 million to $34.7 million, resulting in a $1 million revenue loss for the school district. When the plant is fully closed, the district is expected to lose $2.2 million.

“We tell people if you just take 10 percent out of your own income, you’re going to have to make adjustments to that,” he said. One adjustment: River View will close one of its four elementary schools next year. In order to avoid other cuts, Summers expects the district will need to ask for taxpayer support in the coming year.

Conesville’s closure is more than just a financial blow, he added. AEP has been a partner to the schools. If they needed something, they could call.

“It’s not going to just affect the school in the sense of money,” Summers said. “You know, we have a lot of employees, we have a we have a lot of kids’ parents that work for this plant, and this could cause relocation on their account.”

Summers said he thinks this closure, unlike some of the others the region has weathered, is different.

“Make no mistake it is a big impact. Any plant that closes in a small community is a big impact,” he said. “A plant like AEP, with the level of jobs that it did provide, the good livings people made that work there, the tax base to the schools — it’s really big.”

United Front

Local officials are not sitting idly as the plant closes down.

Inside a former hotel now converted to office space, Coshocton Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Amy Stockdale sits with Tiffany Swigert, executive director of the Coshocton Port Authority, and Sherri Gibson, with Ohio Means Jobs Coshocton County.

“This group of ladies sitting right here, we have a really strong united front locally as to how we’re going to help our community through any type of loss,” Swigert said.

Sherri Gibson, far left, at a job fair in Coshocton, Ohio.

Each of these women work with the local business community. They’ve also each been personally affected by a past business closure in the region.

“We have had moments of heartache and then picked ourselves back up and said, ‘okay, we can pull through this, we’re going to be able to do it,’” she said. “And we’ve done it quite well in the past.”

As AEP prepares to close its doors, they have devised a multi-pronged plan to help the community that borrows heavily from their experience dealing with past manufacturing losses.

It includes working to identify sites for new manufacturers and cleaning up existing brownfield sites to boost the tax base. Swigert admits the efforts, driven in part by grant funding, are in the early stages.

For workers facing unemployment, Ohio Means Jobs and Coshocton County Job and Family Services have stepped in to offer resume writing and interviewing classes at the Conesville plant.

“I think it’s really important to recognize that these employees, a lot of them graduated high school and went straight to AEP afterward,” Swigert said. “It’s not that they don’t necessarily know how to interview or create a good resume, but they never had to.”

The local branch of Central Ohio Technical College hosts job fairs. Gibson said interest in employing laid-off AEP workers is running high.

“Just the initial rumors of AEP closing, the surrounding counties lit up on my phone because they know that these workers are loyal, and that they’re faithful and that they are skilled,” she said.

Heidi Binko, executive director and co-founder of the Just Transition Fund, a nonprofit that works with coal communities undergoing transition, said as a growing number of communities find themselves facing coal plant or mine closures, it’s smart to throw everything they have at what comes next.

“There is no one silver bullet, right?” she said. “There is not one thing that is going to work.”

Ohio University Professor Michaud agrees and said in Ohio local economic development organizations and others are heavily involved in supporting workers affected by coal plant closures. But he said his research has shown limited participation by workers.

Michaud has examined transition efforts by communities across the country and the world, and said many try to leverage local assets, such as tourism or agriculture, with varying levels of success. A coal plant closure, he said, is a uniquely large economic loss that is hard to get past.

“A lot of these communities, we found haven’t really fully been able to bounce back to what they once were after a large coal plant closes,” he said.

He said rural communities with limited job options are wise to offer technical assistance, job training, and reemployment.

“Basically, give folks options so they aren’t forced to leave,” Michaud said. “I think that there’s a lot of people who really care about these issues, and that really love these rural Appalachian communities and counties, and that are trying to do things to help enhance the well being of the folks that live there and keep them in the region.”

Moving Forward

Joe Eggleston has worked at the Conesville plant for six years and he hopes to stay in Coshocton. He attended both a resume and interviewing class hosted at the plant by Ohio Means Jobs. During a mock interview, Eggleston used his quiet confidence to win over Gibson, even when she threw him a curveball question: “If you were a tree, what type would you be?”

Resources for job seekers at a recent job fair in Coshocton, Ohio.

Without missing a beat, Eggleston answered. “An oak,” he said, “very strong, very sturdy.”

“I like that,” Gibson grinned. When Eggleston mentioned he’d only missed two days of work in the last six years, she exclaimed, “You’re hired.”

Working at Conesville was a lifelong dream for Eggleston. His father worked there for 25 years before him, and he’s enjoyed his time at the plant.

“It is sad, you know, there’s been a lot of generations that went through here,” he said.

But he also isn’t worried about his last day; he’s confident he will find a job.

“I hoped it would last longer,” he said. “It is what it is, and I’m just going to move forward.”

EPA Declines to Regulate Waste as Ohio Valley Fracking Booms

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week said it will not strengthen regulations on waste created by oil and gas production, a move that could affect communities across the Ohio Valley where the oil and gas industry is booming in the Appalachian Basin.

No federal agency fully regulates oil and gas drilling byproducts — which include brine, or salty water laced with chemicals and metals, as well as similarly-contaminated sludge, rock and mud — leaving tracking and handling to states.

EPA’s decision released last week stems from a 2016 lawsuit filed by environmental groups, who had petitioned the agency to make new rules for how it regulates oil and gas waste. When the agency failed to respond, a federal judge required EPA to formally respond by this spring.

The decision reaffirms that states are in charge of regulating the disposal of chemical-laced and often radioactive liquids and solids created by the oil and gas industry.

Environmental advocates decried the move. They argue regulations for both onsite storage of waste and offsite disposal vary widely from state to state.

A 2016 report from the Center for Public Integrity calls the radioactive waste stream from horizontal oil and gas operations “orphan waste” because no single government agency is fully managing it. Each state is left to figure out its own plan. Advocates say EPA rules would create a baseline for how millions of tons of liquid and solid waste should be disposed.

“In a word or a sentence, the Trump administration hung out to dry communities that host oil and gas development,” said Aaron Mintzes with Earthworks, one of the group’s that pursued this issue in court.

Mintzes said a loophole in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a federal law that governs how solid waste should be disposed, allowed EPA in 1988 to classify waste from oil and gas operations as “non-hazardous.” This gives operators wide latitude in how to dispose of it.

For example, some states allow drillers to dispose of wastewater by injecting it back into the ground, but that can lead to pollution and even earthquakes.

In its decision document, EPA acknowledged that the rise of hydraulic fracturing, in which drillers go much deeper and are more likely to bring up waste products with naturally-occurring radioactivity, has changed the composition of waste. Ultimately, however the agency said state programs appear to sufficient.

In its review, the agency looked at state regulations for 28 of the 34 states with oil and gas production and concluded while the scope and specificity of the regulatory programs varied, “the existing state programs incorporate a majority of elements found in federal waste management program programs, which indicates that the scope of the written state regulation is robust.”

However, activists and some regulators worry that inconsistencies in state regulations could mean that waste is being “shopped around” by companies seeking or unsafely reused.

That is what happened in Estill County, Kentucky.

Estill Landfill

In 2016, the Ohio Valley ReSource reported tons of radioactive frack waste was hauled from state to state before being improperly disposed of in a county landfill not designed to hold radioactive material.

The waste was deposited in the Blue Ridge Landfill, which is across the street from the Estill County High School and Estill County Middle School.

In the years since the waste was discovered, the landfill owners have been fined and are required to create a corrective action plan. Officials with the Kentucky Energy and Environmental Cabinet want to keep the waste in place.

The waste contains an unknown amount of radium 226, which has a half life of 1,600 years, but the liner below the landfill where it was dumped is only slated to last 450 years.

Local residents with the group Concerned Citizens of Estill County disagree with the state’s plan and say officials have not been transparent in the process. They have filed a petition with the EEC’s Office of Administrative Hearings seeking a review of the state’s decision.

Mary Cromer is a lawyer with the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center that is representing the group.

“The uncertainty about the health impacts and how much was really brought in and how hot it is, makes those health concerns even more prevalent and concerning,” Cromer said.

She said the group expects a hearing this summer.

CBD Uncertainty: Sales Soar But Science Lags on Hemp Health Effects

Inside the Bluegrass Hemp Oil store in Lexington, Kentucky, the CBD oils and lotions lining the walls have an origin story — a story of a family’s struggle.

“We took a huge risk, to be perfectly honest, because we didn’t know. We weren’t trying other people’s CBD products that were out there,” Bluegrass Hemp Oil Co-owner Adriane Polyniak, said.

Polyniak’s son, Colten, began inexplicably having violent seizures in 2009 when he was three. He was diagnosed with idiopathic generalized epilepsy.

“Essentially what that means is that he went from zero seizures to hundreds of seizures in a week, and the doctors didn’t know what was causing it,” Polyniak said. “We started a game called ‘pharmaceutical roulette’ — a lot of epilepsy parents are familiar with it — where we try a lot of different types of epilepsy medication to bring seizure relief to our kids.”

Adriane Polyniak, posing by her products inside Bluegrass Hemp Oil in Lexington, Kentucky.

The various prescription drugs controlled Colten’s seizures but caused harmful side effects including hair loss, weight gain, and cognitive delay.

Adriane’s family saw on online forums that CBD might be of help for seizures. CBD, also known as cannabidiol, is a compound commonly sourced from the flowers of hemp, a type of cannabis related to marijuana. CBD doesn’t get a user intoxicated, unlike the better known cannabis compound, THC.

CBD is commonly put into oils and lotions, but some novelty products like CBD in water and vaping CBD have recently been put on the online market.

When Kentucky began growing hemp under a pilot program in 2014, Polyniak’s family tried it. And she said it worked: Colten’s seizures disappeared.

Adriane Polyniak’s son, Colten, who suffered from seizures when he was younger.

The Polyniaks now want their business to help others with what they say are benefits from CBD.

“I think a lot of people are seeing relief with CBD products, and I think it goes a long way to prove the efficacy of what’s going on and what people are saying,” Polyniak said.

People across the country say CBD is helping them with a wide variety of issues including sleep problems, mental illness, arthritis, skin conditions, Crohn’s disease, and more.

But there is little to no scientific evidence to support these claims. Clinical researchers in the Ohio Valley say there’s still not a lot known about the substance, and some express concern that the CBD business boom is moving faster that the scientific research.

Adriane Polyniak poses with a picture of her now 13-year-old son, Colten.

Lacking Research

“I think there’s a lot of concern amongst physicians, medical providers and research scientists like myself, that we’re moving too fast without proper evidence or information,” said Dr. Anup Patel, Section Chief of Pediatric Neurology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Patel has been involved in several studies the past five years to look at CBD’s effect on various forms of epilepsy. The promising results of those preliminary studies led to a more intensive, groundbreaking study in 2018, where he worked with patients who have a severe form of epilepsy called Lennox–Gastaut Syndrome.

The study results showed patients saw a median reduction in seizures of more than 40 percent. Months later, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CBD-sourced drug, Epidiolex, because of that study. It remains the only FDA-approved CBD drug.

Yet beyond epilepsy, CBD research is still very new.

“There is potential benefit for certain types of patients with seizures or epilepsy. Beyond that, we have no idea. There aren’t any good studies using CBD in other areas,” Dr. Patel said.

Dr. Patel is referring to the current lack of “double-blind” studies, which are considered the most legitimate among researchers. Double-blind studies are where both the researcher and patients don’t know who is and who is not receiving the drug being studied.

This helps control for the placebo effect, a phenomenon where an individual may experience benefits because of their belief in a treatment, not because the treatment is actually working.

Dr. Alex Straiker, an Indiana University professor whose primary focus is studying cannabinoids’ effects on the brain and eye, is one of many researchers who think the hype and media coverage surrounding CBD could contribute significantly to the placebo effect.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm on one hand, from the public and manufacturers, to market this. It’s kind of a bonanza mentality,” Dr. Straiker said. “The whole process of science is that you have to have multiple studies, and they have to be well done. A lot of [the claims] you have to take with a grain of salt.”

Bottles of CBD Oil on display at Bluegrass Hemp Oil in Lexington, Kentucky.

Studies Underway

In the meantime, researchers worldwide are getting busy. Human trials, some of them double-blind, are being conducted to determine CBD’s effects for a variety of issues, from cancer therapies to Parkinson’s disease.

Some preliminary CBD research has shown promising results toward CBD’s potential anti-inflammatory properties and how it affects brain chemistry, helping people with issues including anxiety disorders, rheumatoid arthritis and quitting tobacco.

Yet research on CBD’s potential side effects is also surfacing: a recent Indiana University study that Dr. Straiker led indicated that CBD could increase the risk of glaucoma.

West Virginia University dermatologist Zachary Zinn helped conduct one of these new studies. His study looked at CBD’s effect on three patients suffering from a rare skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa that causes severe blistering and extreme pain.

“The improvements the patients noted was marked,” Zinn said. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh, I’m having a little less pain.’ It was, ‘I no longer require morphine for my dressing changes.’”

Zinn thinks CBD is relatively safe to ingest in small doses, and he’ll tell patients that if they inquire about it. But he isn’t actively recommending it to patients because there’s still little clinical research.

“To think that it’s going to be a wonder drug for all the things patients are reporting, that benefit in, is probably not going to happen,” Zinn said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not effective, but it equally does not mean that it is effective.”

Pushing Forward

The expanding Ohio Valley hemp industry is pushing forward despite a lack of scientific backing. Roger Hayes of Louisville-based Green Remedy, a CBD product wholesaler, said clinical studies matter to verify their products’ value.

Like other CBD companies, Green Remedy doesn’t make any claims about CBD’s effects because they’re not approved by the FDA. But he said the company doesn’t necessarily need clinical studies or the FDA’s approval to be confident the products work.

“The [studies] on what the therapeutic effects are going to be, that takes years,” Hayes said. “America doesn’t need to wait that long to determine that something that has been around for thousands of years that people take for various reasons — we shouldn’t have to wait that long.”

Many in this expanding industry, including Hayes, want the federal government to hurry up with regulation, regardless of studies.

The FDA said in December that CBD in food products is still illegal without FDA approval. Ohio stores selling CBD food have been raided.

Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles is one state government official in favor for approval of CBD-infused food because of the boost it could give to regional hemp farmers.

“We don’t want to regulate hemp to death in America now that it’s finally legal,” Quarles said. “Because a lot of folks are making investments right now, we’re hoping CBD can be marketed as a healthcare supplement.”

Yet some in the industry are more hesitant. Matthew Smith is a licensed massage therapist in Parkersburg, West Virginia, who uses CBD oil to ease muscle pain and arthritis in his clients.

“Anecdotally, there’s a lot of people that it’s helped,” Smith said. “It is possible that we’ll find that it’s overblown, or that there are a lot of cofactors that go into making it more useful, or making it more safe. There’s still a lot of science to be done.”

The first FDA public hearing on CBD-infused food is scheduled for late May.

ReSource reporter Mary Meehan contributed to this story.

Coal Community Residents Again Ask Congress For Health Study Of Mountaintop Removal

Residents of Appalachian coal communities told a Congressional subcommittee Tuesday that the controversial mining practice known as mountaintop removal should be halted until its health effects are better studied.

Late in the Obama administration the National Academy of Sciences launched a study into the health effects for communities near mountaintop removal coal mines.

Donna Branham of Lenore, West Virginia, was among the many residents with questions and concerns about effects on air and water quality. She was hopeful the National Academy study would bring some answers. But in the summer of 2017 the Trump administration’s Interior Department abruptly cancelled funding and ordered the National Academy to halt the study.

“We felt abandoned, we felt as if our lives didn’t matter,” Branham told lawmakers.

Branham was one of four witnesses from Kentucky and West Virginia who told members of the House Natural Resources Committee that the National Academy study should continue. Until such a study is complete, they argued, regulators should place a moratorium on mountaintop removal mining.

Former coal miner Carl Shoupe of Benham, Kentucky, organizes for the citizens’ action group Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. He said mining also threatens cultural and natural areas that could be part of the region’s new economy.

“As we speak, a coal company is seeking a permit to strip mine the ridge behind my home,” Shoupe said. “They plan to go up the entire valley.”

West Virginia University Environmental Health Professor Michael McCawley pointed to what he called strong evidence linking the mining practice to a variety of negative health effects.

Several studies show correlation between mountaintop removal and high rates of illnesses in neighboring communities. McCawley said his work on air quality near mines also shows high levels of fine particulate matter, which are known to present health hazards.

“In my opinion these independent studies should allow the conclusions to be considered more than simply correlative,” he said. “They should be considered causal.”

McCawley said he thinks that mounting evidence of health effects is what motivated the Interior Department to cancel the study.

“I think they believed that the study was going to come out with evidence that supported banning mountaintop mining, that they knew what the evidence was,” he said.

Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth, a Democrat who represents the Louisville area, also testified about his legislation, the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act, which would ban new permits for the mining practice until a comprehensive health study is completed.

Kentucky Coal Association President Tyler White countered that Yarmuth’s bill is too broadly worded and would have negative economic effects.

“This would effectively delay or halt coal production throughout Appalachia and set a staggering precedent that could affect mining nationwide.”

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who chairs the committee, said in an interview with the ReSource that the Interior Department had declined to answer requests for information and declined to send a representative to answer lawmakers’ questions. Grijalva said his committee is considering using its subpoena power to get documents relevant to the department’s decision to cancel the National Academy study.

“We’re being very diligent in the way that we’re doing it. We want to make sure that our subpoenas have standing,” he said. “When we do it, it’ll mean something.”

ReSource reporter Sydney Boles contributed to this story.

Mine Safety Debt For WV Gov. Justice’s Family Companies Grows to $4M

An Ohio Valley ReSource analysis of federal mine safety data shows that the companies belonging to the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice owe $4.3 million in delinquent debt for mine safety violations. That is far more than the companies owed when Justice ran for governor in 2016, when he pledged to make good on such debts.

The Justice companies still have the highest delinquent mine safety debt in the U.S. mining industry.

Unpaid mine safety violations have been a chronic problem for the Justice companies. In 2014, an NPR investigation showed Justice companies owed just under $2 million in delinquent federal mine safety penalties, which are levied by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA.

Two years later, when Jim Justice was running for governor, a follow-up investigation showed that the companies’ debt had climbed to $2.6 million, making the Justice companies the nation’s top delinquents in unpaid mine safety fines.

Then-candidate Justice said those debts would be paid.

“When it all really boils right down to it we’re taking care of them,” Justice said at a rally announcing his gubernatorial bid. “We’ll absolutely y’know, take, make sure that every one of them is taken care of.”

But the ReSource analysis of 2018 MSHA data shows that more than four years after that initial investigation, the Justice companies — now mainly controlled by the governor’s children, James Justice III and Jillean Justice — have not significantly paid down their debt.

Instead, as of the end of 2018, the Justice companies’ debt had ballooned to $4.3 million.

That’s according to MSHA data which was obtained by NPR and correspondent Howard Berkes using a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The data set, known as “Debt By Age,” provides a snapshot of delinquent mine safety fines, and the history of each penalty, as of December 5, 2018, and includes interest, late fees, and the original fine amount.

The ReSource analyzed that data and other information available on MSHA’s website and found the Justice family companies had a mix of new delinquent penalties and mounting interest on old debts.

The delinquent penalties were accrued between June 2009 and August 2018 at 71 mines in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Virginia. Collectively, the Justice companies’ unpaid fines and penalties account for nearly 10 percent of all delinquent debt owed by mining companies in the U.S.

Former federal mine safety officials and industry experts say the continued disregard for paying mine safety fines shows a lack of respect for the regulatory system created under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act to keep miners safe.

“[Gov. Justice] and his family has simply chosen to disregard, flagrantly violate, continually violate and increasingly violate the rules of mine safety and the penalties of mine safety,” said Davitt McAteer, a retired lawyer and former head of MSHA during the Clinton administration. “The signal that that sends to the whole state, and in fact the region or the coal industry, is that this is a person who has utter disregard for the agencies, for the people who do enforcement and for their employees.”

Company Response

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. The Justice companies referred questions to Lexington, Kentucky, attorney Richard Getty, who represents the company in Kentucky. In a written statement, Getty acknowledged that MSHA had assessed $4.3 million in unpaid fines and penalties. But, he said, the company “vehemently denies responsibility for this total.”

“A very significant portion of this total is made up of penalties assessed to Mechel OAO, a Russian mining company, while it owned Bluestone Coal and related companies in WV prior to acquisition by the Justice Family,” he stated.

In May 2009, Mechel OAO purchased Bluestone Coal Company from Justice. In 2015, Justice bought the company back. The metallurgical mining company has operations in West Virginia’s McDowell and Wyoming counties.

Proxies for the Justice companies have in the past claimed that delinquent mine safety fines now being attributed to Justice were actually incurred by Mechel OAO.

However, the ReSource analysis of the MSHA debt data used a system that includes only debt for violations assessed to owners at the time of the initial violation. In other words, the debts associated with violations assessed to those mines while they were owned by Mechel are not included in the $4.3 million total that MSHA data show the Justice companies are responsible for. This would dispute Getty’s argument, something MSHA echoes in a terse written statement to the ReSource.

“MSHA stands by its assessment of fines and penalties for the Justice companies,” an agency spokesperson said in an email.

The agency also said it was not “currently involved in negotiations with the Justice group.”

That also contradicts the Justice company’s statement. Getty stated the Justices were “currently involved in negotiations with MSHA and related government agencies to reach a fair and reasonable settlement of fines imposed.”

The ReSource filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all settlement agreements and payment plans made between the Justice companies and MSHA dating back to 2014. The agency replied with a document on one such agreement, finalized in late 2015, that covered about $1.5 million in assessed penalties to be paid down over 21 months.

It’s unclear if the Justice companies completed the payment plan. The final payment was due in September 2017.

However, the ReSource’s analysis of MSHA data shows delinquent debt owed by the Justices increased by $1.35 million between March 2016 and December 2018.

Delinquent Mines

While the Justice-owned companies are the top delinquents, they are not the only mining companies in the region that fail to pay their fines and penalties.

The ReSource analysis found thousands of mine operators around the country continue to not pay fines and penalties assessed for health and safety violations at the nation’s mines. MSHA is owed more than $45 million in overdue fines, some as old as 1994, the data showed.

Delinquent mines represent about 8 percent of the nation’s more than 40,000 coal, metal and non-metal mines.

But that percentage rises when just looking at coal mines. Eleven percent of the nation’s coal mines have past-due, unpaid fines and penalties. Of the country’s active, producing coal mines, 23 percent are delinquent.

“I think what your numbers represent suggests that there are an awful lot of responsible operators,” former MSHA head McAteer said. “There are an awful lot of people who play by the rules, pay when they’re fined and continue mining.”

The analysis shows there are potentially major impacts to the health and safety of miners working in the small subset of mines that fail to pay penalties.

According to the ReSource analysis of MSHA accident and injury data, injury rates for miners working in delinquent underground coal mines are 31 percent higher than rates at mines that are not currently delinquent.

The enforcement regime used by MSHA — mine inspections, citations and penalties — exists to protect the nation’s coal miners, said Patrick McGinley, a professor of environmental law at West Virginia University.

“Any friend of coal has to admit that there is no greater responsibility of a coal operator than to protect the lives of miners,” he said. “And the failure to pay civil penalties is a way of saying: safety doesn’t matter. We don’t care, we can get away with it.”

Justice Safety Record

In the statement to the ReSource, Justice attorney Getty touted the company’s safety record, despite owing millions in unpaid mine safety fines and violations.

“The Justice Group is also very proud to report that its accident and incident history of currently operated mines is very favorable,” he stated.

The ReSource analysis found that injury rates at delinquent Justice mines fall close to the national industry average.

However, that does not mean those mines were free of unsafe conditions.

While delinquent, from 2009 to 2019, Justice mines had 5,560 violations for things like failing to maintain equipment, accumulation of combustible materials, and failure to develop and follow ventilation plans.

Nine violations were for conditions that federal regulators say placed miners in “imminent danger” of death or serious physical harm.

About one-third of violations issued at delinquent Justice mines were listed as what MSHA calls “Substantial and Significant,” meaning that the observed conditions at the mine present a reasonable likelihood that an injury or illness will occur.

Regional Debtors

In addition to the Justice family companies, three other mine controllers in the Ohio Valley owe more than half a million dollars in unpaid mine safety fines and penalties, according to the ReSource analysis.

The data show Revelation Energy LLC founder, president and CEO Jeff Hoops is the controller responsible for more than $926,000 in delinquent mine safety mines from citations at 50 mines.

The Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, a nonprofit founded by Virginia businessman Tom Clarke, owes about $736,000, according to MSHA data. The fines were accrued at two mines.

Martin County, Kentucky, native James Booth, longtime coal magnate and president of Booth Energy, also makes the list. Booth is listed as controller for about $582,000 of debt in the MSHA data, stemming from violations at 18 mines.

Multiple phone calls requesting comment from Hoops and Booth were not returned. A representative for Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.

Joe Main, former head of MSHA during the Obama administration, said mine operators that run delinquent mines are operating at an advantage.

“If you have a strategy as a mine operator to ignore those fines, it really undercuts mine safety and it really disadvantages other mine operators that are trying to sell their coal in the same marketplace at a higher cost,” Main said. “Because they’re putting the investment of money to begin with into the safety of the mine.”

Matt Hepler, environmental scientist for the environmental group Appalachian Voices, said the Justices stick out in the region not only for failure to pay federal mine safety fines, but also for debts to their suppliers, overdue taxes, and delayed work to adequately reclaim land at surface coal mines.

“I think it sends a message that ‘I am above the law and if you are wealthy you are above the law,’” Hepler said. “When too many mining operators do this, people get hurt and the environment gets damaged, plain and simple.”

MSHA’s Role

During the Obama administration, MSHA began taking steps to reduce the amount of delinquent debt. Main ramped up those efforts, forming the agency’s “scofflaw” program.

Efforts under the program included notifying delinquent operators they would face closure if fines continued to go unpaid. For companies that had long stopped mining, the agency began sending 1099 tax forms, which meant mining companies would owe taxes on unpaid debt. The agency also worked with the U.S. Attorney and other federal agencies to go after debtors.

“We had a toolbox of different approaches to take,” Main said.

Under the Trump administration, the agency says it has continued efforts to reign in scofflaws.

MSHA did not respond to an interview request for this story. But at a September 2018 speech at West Virginia University, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Mine Safety and Health David Zatezalo said the agency was “pushing this hard.”

“I don’t like people who don’t pay their fines and penalties,” he said. “If you drive your car and break the law and don’t pay the fine when the policeman catches you, you’ll lose your driver’s license.”

In October, MSHA issued a press release that stated the agency had recovered $5.2 million in fines “after taking action to strengthen enforcement efforts regarding delinquent fines and mine violations.”

The release said 49 mine operators had either taken steps to enter into payment agreements or had satisfied their delinquent debts, but the agency has not identified those companies.

McGinley said it’s hard to know to what extent MSHA under the Trump administration is working to collect delinquent debts.

“They’re not being transparent with regard to any efforts that they’re making,” he said.

Distress Grows For Ohio Valley Farmers As Trade Deals Stall

West Kentucky Farmer Barry Alexander doesn’t have an answer on when the Trump administration will reach a trade deal with China, now a year into tariffs that have hamstrung some Ohio Valley industries.

Alexander is optimistic these continued negotiations will be worth it, but his plan in the meantime lies in massive, silver storage bins on Cundiff Farms, the 13,000-acre operation he manages.

He pulls a lever, and out tumbles a downpour of pale yellow soybeans.

“These beans have been in here since Halloween day,” Alexander said. “The large bin on the right, that’s 350,000 bushels. The next-size bins down, that’s 180,000 bushels. To give reference, a thousand bushels is one semi-truck load.”

He’s been trying to hold onto about half of his soybean and corn bushels, waiting to see if he can sell for a better price before he’s forced to start planting again in early April.

Crop prices have crashed partly because of Chinese tariffs, and the losses have put a strain on some farmers he knows.

Massive, steel storage bins, half-full with grain, on Cundiff Farms in west Kentucky.

“There are farmers that have decided to retire because they didn’t want to work through these things now. We’re to that point,” Alexander said.

Alexander said he’s survived in part because his sprawling farm has resources to work with: eight full-time employees, two new $550,000 combines he traded up for, and the storage bins to help ride out bad crop prices.

“Our large structures are not cheap, but financially for our farming operation, they’re a necessity for us to do what we do,” Alexander said.

Farmers like Alexander are coping with losses from tariffs and a continuing trade war, and it’s not clear when it will end. A March 1 deadline for negotiations with China was delayed indefinitely by President Trump, and an agreement with Mexico and Canada that Trump signed in November has yet to be ratified by Congress. The retaliatory tariffs on U.S. crops and dairy remain, compounding problems caused by overproduction and low crop prices, and small farmers are suffering the most.

Barry Alexander, a lifelong west Kentucky farmer, in his small office.

Size Matters

“If you look at all the large farmers, these guys have the storage facilities to wait out bad prices,” Kent State University-Tuscarawas Agribusiness Professor Sankalp Sharma said. “For a lot of these small guys…they couldn’t actually store their commodity, they still had to deal with those lower prices.”

Sharma and others argue grain prices have been low for five years because farmers are overproducing, and tariffs are only making the situation worse.

“The United States soybean harvest this year in general was just crazy. There was a bumper crop, and prices were down because of that,” Sharma said. “This was just your classic demand and supply situation.”

Both Ohio and Kentucky set records for soybean harvests in 2018: 289 million bushels and 103 million bushels, respectively. This is up significantly compared to two decades ago, when Ohio harvested 162 million bushels and Kentucky harvested a little over 24 million bushels in 1999.

Farmers are also becoming more efficient than ever before — Ohio set records in 2018 for most corn and soybean bushels produced per acre.

Oversupply problems haven’t been limited to grains, though. Small dairy farmers are also dealing with excess supply and tariffs, with hundreds of cases of extra milk being dumped at Ohio Valley food banks.

Farms At Risk

Greg Gibson’s operation is small, but his family has made it work for decades. He milks 80 cows at his dairy farm in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, and he took over the operation in 2002. The past year of tariffs hasn’t been easy.

“Everything’s down. Historically, if milk price is down you can sell some corn or you could sell some replacement animals are something,” Gibson said. “But nothing has a lot of value to sell right now, so it’s really hard to generate any additional revenue. And a lot of that is because of the trade problems we’re having.”

Like many Ohio Valley farmers, Gibson is receiving payments from the $12 billion in federal relief from the Market Facilitation Program intended to to help those who suffer losses from tariffs.

Small farms are squeezed by the dairy crisis.

Gibson appreciates Trump’s efforts to renegotiate trade deals, and like Alexander, is cautiously hopeful about the prospects of new trade deals.

But he said he’s also disappointed in Trump because the payments are not nearly enough to recoup his losses. He says milk’s price has plummeted nearly a dollar per hundred pounds of milk sold and the payments only reimburse 12 cents of that.

“I would have rather him said ‘I got to do this. You’re going to take the hit. Sorry.’ Don’t promise me you’re going to take care of me and then don’t,” Gibson said.

Some commodity associations including the National Corn Growers Association and the National Milk Producers Federation have called on the Trump administration in past months to bolster what they call lackluster relief payments.

Gibson’s squeezed budget has had him extend paying off his farm loans and put off paying several repair bills. He’s also had to put up his 150-year-old family farm as collateral for his loans.

Farm lenders say Gibson’s situation isn’t unique right now. Senior Vice President of Agricultural Lending Mark Barker helps oversee lending for Farm Credit Mid-America, which serves most of Ohio and Kentucky.

“Are we doing things differently? Well, sure,” Barker said. “Because we have customers coming in now and telling us ‘I’m struggling at this point. I’m challenged.’”

Barker said while most people are making their loan payments right now, the rapidly increasing amount of debt farmers are taking on to deal with depressed prices is concerning, especially for smaller operations.

“It seems like the larger producers, you think about their equipment and everything else, they’ve got some added advantages,” Barker said. “It doesn’t mean the smaller producer is necessarily ‘out,’ but I do think they got more challenges in this current environment.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture economists predict nationwide farm debt will reach $263.7 billion in 2019, levels of debt not seen since the 1980s farm crisis, when thousands of farm families defaulted on their loans amidst a trade embargo with the Soviet Union and high loan interest rates.

New Farmers

Tom McConnell leads the Small Farm Center at West Virginia University’s Extension Service and tries to help small farms succeed, in a state that has the highest proportion of small farms in the nation. He’s lived through the 1980s farm crisis and saw many dairy and beef farmers lose their farms.

He said one solution for small farmers to withstand these depressed prices is to switch to crops that bring a higher value, like vegetables. But those can be more labor-intensive, and the transition can be difficult.

“If you’ve been in a family that has milked cows or grown row crops for three generations, and I suggest you grow three acres of sweet corn and five acres of snap beans, there will be some resistance to that,” McConnell said.

McConnell said it might take a new generation to redefine what a successful small farmer business model can look like.

One of those younger small farmers is Joseph Monroe, who moved from Indiana to central Kentucky to raise beef cattle and grow tomatoes and greens. Monroe believes a way forward for smaller farms is to find ways to work together to sell products and have a greater market impact.

“I think there needs to be some pioneers and some examples out there of how to draw up a contract to work together,” Monroe said. “I think we need to throw all the darts and see what hits.”