Charleston Gazette – Almost daily, stormy news surrounds West Virginia’s coal industry. Read
Alpha Natural Resources notified 1,100 Mountain State miners of possible layoffs coming in mid-October. Earlier, Patriot Coal warned of 850 layoffs, and performed 75 of them so far. If all occur, several southern coal counties will suffer painfully.
Thousands of miners and many politicians swarmed to Pittsburgh for hearings on proposed federal limits on carbon dioxide pollution. Gov. Tomblin called the cleanup plan “overzealous” and “simply unattainable,” saying it would “devastate our coal mining communities.” United Mine Workers leaders were arrested while protesting the pollution controls. State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed a federal lawsuit to halt them.
