Published: July 18, 2008 04:25 pm            

Resurgence of coal is reason for hope in hills and hollows of the Virginias

As the thermometer shoots past 80, let us be thankful the price of a barrel of crude oil is finally heading back down and closer to meeting it. With a few banks closing and several others across America having various problems, the energy concerns are still top priority for most us.

While I still think this nation can and should “bite the bullet” and develop energy sources that will generally eliminate the need for petroleum as fuel, it is worth noting that coal, like the temperature, is again rising steadily in its importance.

That fact is keenly felt by all of us in Four Seasons Country. Local outstanding athletes, for example, receive an annual lesson in the importance of coal.

Rick Taylor is a member of the Town Council on the Virginia side and is also a long-time official of the Pocahontas Coal Association as well as a sports enthusiast. He coordinates the annual sports banquets co-hosted by the PCA and the Daily Telegraph at the Princeton Elks golf complex. Rick always reminds the audience how important coal is when it comes to keeping electric rates low in West Virginia and he explains how coal is a staple of American industrial production, just as it has been for more than a century.

As the son of a coal miner and a hip-pocket historian of the coalfields I am pleased for the country and the area with the current resurgence of the black diamonds scattered beneath our feet.

Most, if not all, of West Virginia’s 55 counties are laced with coal and the majority of Virginia’s counties west of the Blue Ridge are coal producing.

We know that Bluefield was created by the Norfolk & Western Railway to serve the coalfields and the fine old railroad town of Princeton grew as a key hub of the stout-hearted Virginian line.

Some 100 communities around here all became known as coalfield towns. That coal provided the financial life blood of our whole area, with agriculture as the next most important local business.

We have to admit that the downside was outside, absentee ownership.

Wealthy investors made the coalfields possible but they were not interested in having too many “partners” in the business. Money from Philadelphia, New York and Pittsburgh made mining possible but the ordinary folks got little more than their wages out of the deal.

As the profits dwindled, company houses were sold off, stores closed, mines sealed and railroad tracks removed right down to the cross ties. Some communities, like Munson, W.Va., where my dad worked at U.S. Steel’s big No. 14 mine, have been wiped completely off the face of the earth.

All that aside, we remain loyal to the industry that did provide jobs for so long. It continues to, and in the current situation of extreme need, we are openly rooting for coal to make a nation-wide comeback. We want local jobs and coal can provide them. We want competitive utility rates and coal can certainly help with that. We want to steadily separate ourselves from so much dependence on foreign energy sources and coal is the foundation of that idea.

News this week of a merger in the resurgent coal industry that should positively impact our whole region is welcome.

It could not have come at a better time, on the same day a headline proclaimed that local community agencies are getting increased calls for aid from a population base that is struggling at many levels to maintain at least a semblance of a middle-class life style.

We certainly look forward to better jobs.

Our area is becoming saturated with employment that provides few hours, little more than minimum wage earning and small health benefits. Many of our neighbors are working two jobs or more to provide for their families. The payday-to-payday existence is spreading.

Local school systems can attest to the fact that an increasing number of boys and girls are on free or reduced price lunches and many of the children right here where we live get the only meals they have at school.

Maybe King Coal can work another miracle of sorts and help reverse that trend from coast to coast. There are still millions of tons of coal underground in Four Seasons Country and it remains the finest bituminous fuel on earth.

Dig in, folks, and bring up the black diamonds.

Larry Hypes is a teacher at Tazewell High School and columnist for the Daily Telegraph.

        

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