There is pain across the nation’s coal fields, but in West Virginia, the disruption is particularly acute because mines are closing almost every month, The New York Times reported Friday. Sawmills that provide wooden support beams for the tunnels are laying off workers, and diners are putting up signs asking their customers to pray for the miners. The coal industry, long the heart that pumped the area’s economy, is in deep trouble, buffeted by power plants switching to cheap natural gas, crippling debt, mounting foreign competition and increasingly strict regulations to limit greenhouse gases and toxic emissions like mercury. Since January, six domestic coal producers have filed for bankruptcy, including Patriot Coal, which applied for chapter 11 for the second time. The decline has taken a heavy toll in Wayne County and the surrounding area in West Virginia and Kentucky, where roughly one in three of the nation’s 80,000 coal miners work. They are at the center of a layoff epidemic that has reduced their numbers by roughly 5,000 annually over the last four years in the two states alone. And the wave of layoffs is spreading, with Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal producers, recently announcing it would cut its work force in Ohio and Illinois, as well as West Virginia, by more than 1,800 miners.
