West Virginia Coal Association Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton led a delegation of the Mine Safety Committee to meet with members of the U.S. House and Senate and their respective staffs July 8-9 regarding mine safety proposals recently outlined by Congress.  We hope to have a more complete report on the meetings in the next issue of Coal Bits.

The Association is scheduled to meet with representatives from the Government Accountability Office next week to discuss the review process for mining-related Clean Water Act Section 404 permits in the wake of the June 1, 2009 federal Memorandum of Understanding that established new review and comment processes for EPA in the Corps’ permitting processes.  For more information, contact jbostic@wvcoal.com

The City of Logan believes in the importance of coal to the nation’s economy and to keeping our country free and strong. That much was obvious this past weekend when the City of Logan made coal a central theme of its Freedom Festival.

Friends of Coal signs were posted on almost every utility pole and in every business window. Friends of Coal banners hung across the streets in the grandstand area along with the familiar “Coal Keeps the Lights On!” signs of Walker Machinery and the green-and-white signs of the Coalition for Mountaintop Mining.

Mayor Serafino Noletti said his city is proud of the coal industry and of its coal miners. Rupie Phillips, busy roasting corn at the Beni Kedem Shriners’ booth, said it isn’t a stretch to combine the themes of coal and the nation’s independence.  “Coal has built this country,” Phillips said. “As so many have said, it is the foundation of this country’s economy, has helped win its wars and here in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky it is our bridge to the future, through the use of these former surface mines as sites for so many economic and community development projects.

“The folks around here recognize the importance of coal. It puts food on our tables and pays our bills. It sends our kids to college and provides for our future. We just want everyone to know that West Virginia supports the coal miner.”

The Friends of Coal joined the Citizens for Coal at informational booths near the Logan County Courthouse. Friends of Coal filmed “man-on-the-street” interviews with several local residents. These videos will be posted to the West Virginia Coal Association and the Friends of Coal websites over the next few days.

West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney was the guest speaker at the Martinsburg Chamber of Commerce monthly breakfast meeting Friday, July 9. Raney provided an overview of the importance of coal to the state’s economy with a focus on the impact the state’s coal production has even on areas of the state where coal is not produced, such as the Eastern Panhandle. Raney outlined the basic findings of the joint study released earlier this year by the West Virginia University/Marshall University business research groups, which showed total economic impact to the state of some 63,000 jobs and the $25.5 billion in total business volume generated by the industry in the state each year. He also noted $630,000 in severance money received by just the three easternmost counties in the Panhandle and that a significant amount of the $26 million the industry pays to support the state’s infrastructure bond fund goes to projects in the area. Raney also joined FACES’ Jay Murphy in encouraging the Chamber to sign the petition supporting FACES.

The State Journal printed an op-ed by West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney in response to the recent report by the Morgantown-based anti-coal group Downstream Strategies, suggesting that the industry costs the state more than it provides.

In his response, Raney took the report to task. “Instead of being a “definitive cost-benefit analysis” of the coal industry, the study actually looks only at the amount of taxes the industry pays versus the author’s “estimates” of what the industry costs the state’s taxpayers. The authors then further restrict their estimates by only looking at some of the taxes paid by the industry (completely ignoring the $90 million in property taxes paid by the industry to the counties) and seriously understating others,” Raney wrote.

Unbelievably, the study also left out the $3.6 billion the industry and its supporting vendors and service companies pay each year in wages. Clearly this report falls far short of providing a thorough look at the economics of the state’s coal industry,” Raney continued. The column has also been submitted to other print publications around the state.