Idling an institution
A view of Emerald Mine at dusk Thursday. Alpha Energy closed the mine earlier this month after it was in operation for nearly 40 years.
The Emerald Mine from High Street on west town hill.
WAYNESBURG – For more than 38 years, the Emerald Mine has had a strong presence in Waynesburg and served as a daily reminder of the importance of the coal industry in Greene County.
Its multistory concrete coal silos, conveyors and green metal-sided buildings are what motorists see while driving west on High Street a block outside the town’s main business district.
At night, the complex resembles an amusement park with its lighted conveyors running from silo to silo, up one side of the valley to the south and west to coal storage areas.
At night, too, the sounds of locomotives, belt lines, ventilation fans and dozer back-up alarms, barely audible during the day, echo throughout Waynesburg.
“It’s been a landmark here,” said Charles Berryhill, president of Waynesburg Borough Council, who from his front porch on Park Avenue has a direct view of the sprawling mine complex.
The mine, which has been in operation since 1977, is now closing.
“I won’t miss the lights and the noise,” Berryhill said, “but I am very sorry to see the jobs go.”
Last year, Alpha Natural Resources announced the mine would close at the end of this year after it finished mining coal left in its reserves that were still deemed profitable to mine. At the time, the mine employed about 500 people. Some have retired, some transferred to a sister mine, Alpha’s Cumberland Mine, and others found new employment.
A week-and-a-half ago, 214 of the remaining miners completed their final day of work there, leaving 18 union miners to finish up remaining tasks.
Coal mining has been Greene County’s sole primary industry for numerous years. It was coal that earlier brought people to Greene County, said Berryhill, a retired English teacher.
“Coal has been the foundation of Greene County for generations,” he said. “It put many families into the middle class and enabled them to send their kids to college.
“I don’t like the location of the mine, but I like the idea of mining,” he said.
Many of the miners losing their jobs attended a meeting last week at the fairgrounds held by the state Department of Labor and Industry and the county’s state CareerLink office to hear about benefits and possible re-training options.
“A lot of the younger guys who don’t have many years in the mine are going back to school,” said Dave Boggs, president of United Mine Workers Local 2258. “Others filled out the panel (forms) hoping to get a job over at Cumberland.”
Under the union contract, laid off miners at Emerald have “panel rights,” which require the company to offer them jobs at Cumberland when they become available, based on job qualifications and seniority. In announcing the closing, the company said many of Emerald workers probably would be transferred to Cumberland, which has been expanding coal production.
About 130 Emerald miners had been transferred as of last week. But Boggs said the miners were not too happy about the way the company went about it, hiring off the street and picking who they wanted.
Boggs, who is 51 and who has worked 15 years at Emerald, said he wasn’t sure what he was going to do next. He said he was thinking of either going back to school or maybe selling his house and moving south.
“Our two mines were the most productive of all (Alpha mines). “We made money for them,” Boggs said. “They didn’t care. To them, we were just a number.”
While the mine has a strong physical presence in the community, it also has had a strong economic presence.
The mine, as well as many of its employees, spent money in the community, Greene County Commissioner Blair Zimmerman said. He should know since he worked for 36 years at Cumberland Mine.
“The workers would go to Mickey’s (Men’s Store) to buy their clothes and boots; the company would go to Wayne Lumber, it was close, to get tools and to get materials,” he said. “Wayne Lumber, Mickey’s, the grocery stores, Giant Eagle, I could go on and on.”
As an example of the company’s local spending, Zimmerman said, each year around the holidays it used to give a gift card or buy a turkey for each employee at Giant Eagle.
“That was $20 or $25 each for a thousand people. In one pop, they were spending $20,000 to $25,000 for the two mines,” he said.
The mine and its employees also have contributed a bundle of money in taxes to the local municipalities, the county and school districts.
The mine paid more than $1.3 million in property tax revenue this year to the Central Greene School District, according to Superintendent Brian Uplinger. The district’s annual budget is about $34 million.
The district is well aware there will be an impact from the mine closing.
“We don’t know yet what the impact will be,” Uplinger said last week. “We know we’re not going to feel the effects this fiscal year.”
Uplinger said the district will simply have to continue to be prudent in regard to financial matters.
“We’re just taking it day-by-day,” he said.
The district can expect to see a reduction in coal values from Emerald next year. Each year, the value of coal mined during the year is removed from the tax rolls. Any coal left that is not expected to be mined is reduced in value.
The value of the mine’s surface property and improvements will not change until the company files an appeal. The values won’t be reduced just because the mine is idle, county Chief Assessor Mary Ann Lewis said.
Emerald workers also pay earned income taxes, but those taxes are distributed to the local governments and school districts in which the workers reside. Alpha’s two mines, Emerald and Cumberland, together employed 1,275 people at the end of 2014 and were paid $241 million in wages and benefits, the company said. The two mines spent $119 million with suppliers and paid $11.9 million in federal, state and local taxes, it said.
The mine and Alpha Natural Resources have been a big sponsor of local programs, from little league teams to events sponsored by schools and the local Chamber of Commerce.
Emerald Mine employees had been very generous in their donations to the Greene County United Way, for instance. Prior to the announcement of the closing, Emerald workers contributed about $38,000 to the United Way campaign, said Barb Wise, who is the organization’s executive director.
“It was huge for us,” she said. “We’re working on a budget now, and it’s very disheartening.”
The mine was the second highest contributor behind Cumberland Mine. That ended with the United Way’s last campaign, after the closing was announced.
The same is in store this year. Though the United Way has lower its annual goal from goal $250,000 to $200,000, it still may face problems, Wise said.
The company also has been a big sponsor of many events in the community.
“They’ve supported the community quite well, with their sponsorships and contributions,” said Melody Longstreth, executive director of the Waynesburg Area Chamber of Commerce. “They have always been involved with the majority of our events at one level or another.”
For several years, the company was the main sponsor of the chamber’s annual banquet.
While many Greene County coal mines have close during the last 20 to 30 years – Shannopin, Warwick, Gateway and Dilworth, to name a few – the closing of Emerald comes in a different era. Though Emerald closed because of accessibility of minable coal, other coal mines are suffering because of low natural gas prices and new federal regulations restricting the burning of coal at power plants.
“It’s not a good situation,” Zimmerman said, adding things are not the same as in the past when other mines closed. “Then, you had other mines that were open and those miners who lost their jobs were going to be absorbed by the Bailey complex, the Emerald Mine, Cumberland Mine. Those mines were always looking for experienced miners, but that’s not the case now.”
Zimmerman said he expects the market for coal to eventually stabilize, though it may never be at the level it was before.
It’s also inevitable that all the coal in the county could eventually be mined.
“I always say that this should have been looked at 50 years ago, you can’t replace coal,” he said. “Once it’s out of the ground, it’s out of the ground.”