Pennsylvania is receiving less money from the federal government this year to clean up its old abandoned mines.
The state is getting $32 million from the federal government’s Abandoned Mine Land (AML) reclamation grant this year, down from the $55 million it got last year. The drop is mostly because a one-time funding stream ended last year. That money came from funds originally withheld from states and American Indian tribes when the abandoned mine fund program was re-authorized in 2006.
Another factor is a decline in revenues the program receives from a per-ton fee on active coal mining. The money brought in by the fee — which is set to expire next year — has been dwindling as the country moves away from coal. The Energy Information Administration estimated that coal production declined another 9 percent last year, and expects another 14 percent decline this year.
About a dozen miners are still on the tracks in Kimper Tuesday, enduring the rainy weather as they demand the pay they are owed. Pike County miners are blocking a train loaded with coal from leaving a mine in Kimper.
About 50 employees claim they have not been paid since mid-December.
"I'm starving. I about lost everything I own and I'm tired of it," said one miner. "Somebody's gotta stand up to these guys and I guess it's us."
Around 12:30 p.m. miners said they could see a pay stub for two weeks' pay show up in their work accounts, but the money has not arrived in their bank accounts yet.
At one point Rhode Island produced Anthracite Coal from underground ....
The West Virginia coal wars (1912–21), also known as the mine wars, arose out of a dispute between coal companies and miners.
The first workers strike, in West Virginia, was the Cabin Creek and Paint Creek strike of 1912-1913. With help from Mary "Mother Jones" Harris Jones, an important figure in unionizing the mine workers, the miners demanded better pay, better work conditions, the right to trade where they pleased (ending the practice of forcing miners to buy from company-owned stores), and recognition of the United Mine Workers (UMW).
The mining companies refused to meet the demands of the workers and instead hired Baldwin-Felts agents equipped with high-powered rifles to guard the mines and act as strikebreakers.[2][1] After the Agents arrived, the miners either moved out or were evicted from the houses they had been renting from the coal companies, and moved into coal camps that were being supported by the Union.[1] Approximately 35,000 people lived in these coal camps.
The burned a lot of coal at the Bethlehem Steam Station between 1955 and 1980, although because the plant lacked pollution controls, probably the bottom ash is less toxic then modern plants.
