Doofus said:
Which would be zero, since thanks to the Greens they hardly mine any coal anymore.
This was from 2/14/06 article from USA today.
Recruits hungry for good jobs head off to coal mines
By Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY
CORE, W.Va. — Every night, just before his coal-miner class begins, Ryan Boyd marks the date in his notebook.
Coal miners exit the elevator at a site near Berry, Ala.
By Rob Carr, AP
Next to that, he writes "Levi Hunter," the name he and his wife, Miranda, chose for their newborn boy.
"That reminds me why I'm here," says Boyd, 22.
His training started Jan. 3, one day after the explosion at the Sago Mine. The blast trapped 13 miners, and all but one died as the nation was riveted by the rescue effort. Yet Boyd and others are eager to take the same kind of jobs.
Coal, once derided as a dirty fuel, is hot. Demand for coal to fuel power plants is growing as oil and natural gas prices soar. So is demand for miners. After more than 20 years of dwindling opportunity, miners' prospects are picking up.
The average age of miners in West Virginia is 55, and many are considering retirement. Most of those miners began their careers in the 1970s; the industry employed nearly 63,000 West Virginians in 1978. By 2003, that figure dipped below 15,000.
The 17 students in this class at West Virginia University's Academy of Mine Training and Energy Technology are aware of coal mining's hazards. They talk about the disasters that have killed 16 coal miners in the state since their class began. But the promise of family-sustaining wages — maybe $12 an hour to start, but rising quickly to an average of $64,000 a year — is enough to draw a new generation of West Virginians underground.
"Mining is the job that pays the most here," Boyd says. "It puts food on the table and roofs over heads."
He says he's weighed the dangers of working hundreds of feet below a mountain with the threat of fires and cave-ins, but he considers the risks minimal. Accidents killed just three West Virginia miners in 2005, and 12 in 2004.
"You're just as likely to get killed on the highway," he says.
The nation needs 50,000 new coal miners across the USA to meet increasing demand and to replace retiring miners over the next 10 years, according to Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association.
Mines produced about a billion tons of coal every year for the past decade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And despite the push for alternative sources of energy, an idea President Bush promoted in his State of the Union speech, the agency forecasts that coal will generate 57% of the USA's electricity in 2030, up from 50% in 2004.
Popovich predicts that records for production and consumption will be set this year. Coal use is forecast to continue growing for the next generation, according to the energy agency. Higher oil and natural gas prices are expected to lead to an increase in coal consumption, the agency says.
Cleaning up coal's reputation
In the 1970s and '80s, the coal industry had a dirty reputation. Burning coal emits mercury, which can damage the nervous system. Another coal-burning byproduct is sulfur.
When combined with oxygen, it forms sulfur dioxide, which can fall to the Earth as acid rain. When burned, coal also gives off carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas that many scientists say is responsible for global warming.
Technology has mitigated some of those problems: Smokestack scrubbers remove some sulfur and mercury from coal emissions. The country's growing appetite for energy has made coal more attractive. Unlike oil, coal is so readily available that the United States isn't dependent on foreign sources. The USA sits on the world's largest coal reserves, enough to last more than 200 years at the current level of use, according to the energy information agency.
Coal suddenly has cachet. But there aren't enough miners to dig it up.
Most coal miners in West Virginia were hired during coal's heyday after the Arab oil embargo in 1973, says Jim Dean, director of WVU's Mining Extension Service.
The decline of coal in the late 1970s and '80s meant that few new miners were hired for almost two decades. "We lost an entire generation of coal miners," Dean says.
"The miners hired during the last hiring boom are coming to the end of their careers," says Tom Hall, one of Boyd's instructors. "And we don't have anyone to take their place. If you started in the mines at 20, 25 years old, and you spent 30, 35 years in mining, you're ready to retire now."
Two new training centers, sponsored by the state and the coal industry, held their first classes last month to help fill West Virginia's thinning ranks of miners. The state will need as many as 7,000 new miners in the next 10 years, Dean says. He estimates that the placement rate for graduates will be better than 90%.
Enter Boyd
He lives in Morgantown, about 10 miles east of here, works as a cook and also does a little construction to help support his new family. His wife, Miranda, 24, is a job coach. He's been to Fairmont State University and is most of the way to a civil engineering degree. He plans to finish, but the opportunity to boost his family's income quickly as a miner was too good to pass up.
Working underground, even for eight or 10 hours a day, won't bother him, he says. And the idea of using big, powerful equipment appeals to him as an engineer, and, frankly, as a guy.
"Breaking up rock is kind of cool and interesting to me," he says.
But above all, a job in a coal mine means he can raise his family in the state he loves.
"I want to stay in West Virginia," Boyd says. "I was born and raised here. I love West Virginia. My family all grew up here. I love the outdoors. Love to fish and hunt. Trout, deer, turkey. If it can be hunted, you can find it here."
Handsome country
Many of his classmates feel that way. West Virginia is handsome, rugged country. Rivulets trickle off steep, snow-slick slopes into fast-running streams like the Buckhannon and Cheat rivers.
Joe Fluharty, whose father, grandfather, uncles and cousins all have mined coal, has visited other states. Tennessee's pretty, he says, but the smog gave him a headache.
"I like the Mountain State — the hunting, fishing, skiing," says Fluharty, 34. "A lot of good people here. There's clean air. I love this state."
A mechanic who repairs electric motors, he says he'll earn about the same money working as a miner. But he figures the benefits will be better, and several coal mines are close to his home in Mannington.
When Fluharty graduated from high school, he would have followed his father into the mines, but there were no jobs to be had then.
"The mining industry slump meant I didn't have a choice," Fluharty says. "Now there is opportunity."
He calls his $200 tuition for the mining class the "best money I've ever spent."
Instructor Hall says a beginning miner, one whose red hard hat signifies his apprentice status, can expect to start out at $12 or $13 an hour. A miner with a black hard hat, one with six months and 108 shifts under his belt, may jump to $16 an hour. Foremen, electricians and other specialists earn more.
The average West Virginia miner made about $64,000 last year, according to Workforce West Virginia, part of the state's commerce department. That's more than twice the $31,000 average income for all industries in the state. Hall knows of one bulldozer operator at a coal mine who made, after bonuses and overtime, $118,000 last year.
"It's almost sky's the limit," Hall says.
Now Boyd and Fluharty and the others are learning about equipment and safety. Class meets five nights a week for four hours. When they complete the course, they'll be certified as apprentice miners. The state requires miners to have 80 hours of training before they can enter an underground coal mine as an apprentice. The federal requirement is 40 hours, or 24 hours for surface mining. Boyd and Fluharty will have 160 hours of training and be certified for both types of mining.
Tonight, Hall talks to them about mine fires. It's a sensitive topic. As he lectures, rescue crews are searching for two men trapped by a coal mine fire in southern West Virginia. They will eventually be found dead. The explosion that killed 12 men at the Sago mine was just two weeks earlier.
The 17 men in class, most in their 20s and 30s, are sipping Mountain Dew, coffee or Dr Pepper. They follow Hall as he teaches them about fires and how to put them out.
"In a coal mine, gentlemen, it's a life-or-death situation, isn't it?"
Hall quizzes the class. How fast does an underground fire double in size?
"Five minutes," the men murmur.
'Faith is a big thing' here
Hall doesn't dwell on it. The recent deaths are on people's minds, but safety has improved greatly in recent years, he says.
"Most of the men are from this area," Hall says. "They understand that people get killed or injured in the mines. We'll discuss it with them to a certain degree."
Boyd considers the point. He says there are going to be more accidents "like Sago." But it doesn't gnaw at him.
"Faith is a big thing for people here," he says. "If it's my time to go, it's my time to go. The bottom of a coal mine might not be the place I choose to die, but if it happens, so be it. I'm not afraid to work."
His wife told him not to turn on TV news the day of the Sago Mine explosion — one day before his classes began. He told her not to worry.
"If I lived my life running from fear," he told her, "I wouldn't to anything but sit in a padded room and drink from a straw."
Fluharty says his 9-year-old daughter, Haley, told him, "Dad, I don't know if I want you to go into the mines."
"I said, 'Honey, hopefully they'll teach me to be safe.' "
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2006-02-14-miners-cover-usat_x.htm
