Coal and Water News

On March 29, nearly a 150 people from across Kentucky and central Appalachia gathered in Harlan County for a community conversation with each other and with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, as part of the national listening tour of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. 

I am a retired UMWA coal miner from western Kentucky and a KFTC member.

I worked underground for many years and very proud of that work. When I put on my bank clothes to go underground I did so secure in the knowledge that the benefits I was earning would be there for my wife and myself to survive during our retirement years. But now, thousands of retirees like me all across the coalfields will lose their pensions due to the 2008 financial crisis and coal company bankruptcies.

Senator Mitch McConnell is in a position to direct more than $100 million to economic and community development projects in communities hardest hit by the decline in coal mining.

Kentuckians held an action outside his Lexington office today asking him to waste no more time in doing that.

“The time is now to pass the RECLAIM Act,” said Lyndsay Tarus, the Economic Transition Coordinator for the Alliance for Appalachia. “This is a jobs bill. The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has estimated that 4,600 jobs could be generated through the RECLAIM Act across the country.

If legislators want to complain about solar subsidies, maybe they need to take a fresh look at coal subsidies. Commission an independent economist to add up all the costs and benefits to the state budget of coal, gas, oil, solar and other energy technologies and compare them. If we’re going to subsidize anything, maybe it should be the future and not the past.