At Lisa Maurer's Ford dealership in
Somerset County, Pennsylvania, trucks are her bread and butter. When a
young person lands his first well-paying job, one of the first things
they do is buy a pick-up. The trucks are useful for navigating the
rugged Allegheny Mountain terrain and the intense snowy winters.
"It's kind of part of the culture here," says Maurer.
So
it was clear to her how bad things had gotten two years ago, when young
coal miners she'd sold brand new trucks to just a day or two earlier
started bringing them back. At the time, it seemed like a new coal
company was declaring bankruptcy every week and the laid-off miners
weren't able to make the payments.
But now, for the first time in
roughly seven years, a brand new coal mine is opening in Somerset County
- the Acosta deep mine, just three miles from Maurer's dealership.
"We're hopeful - it means we're going to have things happening again," she says. "Everybody's excited."
Maurer
has deep roots in coal. Her great-great grandfather emigrated from
Slovakia to work in the mines, her grandfather and father opened their
own mines, and now her 29-year-old son operates machinery in a mine. In
2002, her brother-in-law was one of nine men who were trapped for three
days in a flooded mine shaft 240 feet under the ground. Miraculously,
they all survived - some even went back to work.
Mining in Somerset County goes back a century and a half. Some of the
tiny towns that dot the rolling, lush hillsides have identical houses,
built decades earlier by coal companies for their workers. Though the
towns are spread out with expanses of farmland separating them, it's a
tight-knit community where everyone can feel when times are good for
their neighbours or when they are very, very bad.
"Small things
impact the economy here … it all swims around," says Tina Buckham, owner
of the Flyin' Lion Pub & Eatery in Jennerstown, about five miles
from the mine. "Everybody has family that works in coal, honey."
Thanks
to a combination of factors, particularly fracking and the low price of
natural gas, the coal industry hit a 30-year production low in 2015.
Some believe that in addition, the Obama-era climate regulations caused a
crisis of confidence in investors. Coal companies started going
bankrupt. Mines shut their doors. And the effects rippled through the
community - trucking companies laid off their drivers. Two restaurants -
local institutions - shuttered. The Maurer dealership changed its
inventory from new to more used vehicles.
"It was like a switch was flipped," says Maurer. "The last few years
have been really tough and sad. There's a little glimmer of hope now."
The
brand new Acosta Coal Mine is a 120-foot-deep rectangle gouged out of a
south-facing hillside looking down on the valley below. Near the base
is a stripe of jet black coal that the mine's parent company, Corsa
Coal, will sell for metallurgical purposes - producing steel - rather
than for energy production.
"We're putting a lot of people to
work here," says Ben Gardner, the mine engineer, who says at its peak
the mine could employ as many as 150 people. "That's 150 families all
with a very good job to support them - myself included … It definitely
helps for places that were hit by the hard times."
Two days before
it's set to open, federal and state inspectors in hard hats take a
final look at the operations at the bottom of the pit. A centipede-like
piece of equipment called the continuous miner sits silent and still
beside them, ready to chew through the coal seam that runs from the
mouth of the mine and underground for nearly eight miles. When it's
fully operational, Corsa projects the mine will produce 400,000 tonnes
of coal a year.
At the lip of the mine is a wooden platform that
looks down into the pit, built especially for a cookout and a
ribbon-cutting ceremony set to take place on 8 June. There's an American
flag nailed to the front, and tucked away underneath, a handwritten
poster that reads, "TRUMP TOWER" - someone's idea of a joke, Gardner
says.
On 1 June, in an address to the nation from the Rose Garden,
President Donald Trump formally announced the US withdrawal from the
Paris Climate Accord. Sandwiched between his criticisms of the deal and
other member countries for supposedly cheering the US' "economic
disadvantage", Trump made an off-hand comment about Acosta.
"The
mines are starting to open up. We're having a big opening in two
weeks," he said. "For many, many years, that hasn't happened. They asked
me if I'd go. I'm going to try."
Although it's unlikely that the president will make an appearance on
that wooden platform, Maurer was surprised and elated when she heard his
remark.
"That was huge, everyone was caught off-guard," she says.
"We feel like we've been thrown away. Our children don't matter, our
grandchildren don't matter. And when Trump mentioned us, that was
awesome."
Although the mine has been in the works for years -
Corsa Coal obtained its permits in 2013 - the company says investors
feel more comfortable putting their money into coal because of new
administration.
The mine is projected to hire between 70 to 150
workers - sceptics say that's just a drop in the bucket when you
consider the hundreds of lay-offs which took place over the last several
years. However, it's also the first bit of good news in the industry
that Somerset County residents have received in a long time.
Doug
Miller, a controller at James F Barron Trucking which primarily
transports coal, says for the first time in years, they're hiring
instead of laying drivers off.
"We know we're going to have a future here," he says.
Electrical
contractors, cement layers, excavators and lumberyards have already
been put to work thanks to the new mine. Proponents are fond of saying
that a single mining job creates four others throughout the community -
waitresses and gas station attendants, housekeeping staff at the hotels
in Somerset and ski instructors at the area's three ski resorts.
But
mixed in amongst the optimism are people who've been battered and
bruised by layoffs and industry uncertainty, who don't want to rely on
the mercurial global markets, or the whims of a presidential
administration to dictate whether or not they'll have food on the table.
One
coal miner who asked to BBC to omit his name says he was laid off after
more than 20 years in the industry and that he would not take a job at
the new mine even if they offered it to him.
"I'll move away from here and go do something, I'm not afraid," he says.
He worries for a friend he knows who got one of the new jobs at Acosta.
"I'm
really glad he has a job there, he has three, four kids," he says. "But
you know, you look him in the eye and he knows he's two pay checks away
from everything being gone."
People like restaurant owner Tina
Buckham are also sceptical of the idea that there is a great resurgence
of the coal industry on the horizon, and nervous about her own
razor-thin margins. Although she would love to see all the old mines
open up their doors, she's more concerned about the lack of
infrastructure in the area - the sole internet provider and the
sometimes spotty mobile service.
We have great, hardworking guys and women - they just want good jobs.
So we need to have the infrastructure in place to attract the jobs,"
she says. "I don't think that the whole community is thinking this is
the only thing that we can do here. We can do a lot of stuff because we
have a lot of really great people."
And unlike some of the younger
people and out-of-work miners who've decided to pick up their roots and
seek a better life elsewhere, Somerset County is Buckham's home. She's
lived in the area her whole life. Her neighbours as a kid are still her
neighbours today.
"I'm here on purpose, in this little town. I like it," she says. "I'm hoping I survive it, but I like it."
Back at the car lot, Maurer is hoping Acosta means good things for her bottom line.
"There's
a feeling that things are going to get moving again there are signs
that the interest is coming back," she says. She feels "cautiously
optimistic" but hasn't made any plans to bring in new inventory or hire
more staff.
"To get to where we feel comfortable, we've got to get more than one mine opening," she says.
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