King Coal's Precarious Reign - Life in an American Coal Mine - Writing and Photography by Kayana Szymczak
It’s roughly 5:30am as the guys start filing into the garage, bleary-eyed and quiet, lulled by the dark sky of a cold January morning. The odors of coffee, cigarettes, and coal mingle to create a distinct morning-at-the-mine fragrance– earthy, utilitarian, and comforting.
For the men at the Tusky mine in Uhrichsville, Ohio, the early morning ritual consists of putting the finishing touches on their underground uniform and making sure they have the essentials for a ten-hour day ‘inside.’ They wind black electrical tape around the bottom of their Carhart pants, in order to close any gaps where the coal might find its way into their boots, and secure the heavy-duty knees pads that allow them to crawl on the rough earthen floor the entire day. “You only forget your knees pads once” is the humored consensus among the guys.
And of course, the hardhat is already on, always on– black for anyone who has made it over a year in the mine, and any other color designating the newcomers. Hardhats are taken seriously, decorated with stickers accumulated over years, and adorned with custom paint jobs. The lunch pail is as essential as the hardhat, and as individually customized. They know each other’s lunches, and will steal someone’s favorite dessert when irritated by a guy’s performance or attitude inside. At 6am, as the first bit of light emerges on the horizon, the last drag of smoke is hungrily inhaled, and the twelve men lay down, almost fully horizontal, on the electrically charged carts that transport them five hundred feet deep into the earth.
It isn’t merely darkness that engulfs each miner as he makes his way deeper into the man-made tunnel – it is the complete and total absence of light – blackness relieved only by the continuous light show of hardhat headlamps and machine bulbs. The destination for most of the crew is at the end of the tunnel, up on ‘section’ where they continue mining the coal from the room where the evening crew left off. They dig through forty feet of wall for each ‘cut’ and strive to reach the daily goal of unburdening the earth of four- thousand tons of coal.
The coal seam in this particular hilly area of Tuscarawas County happens to be forty-two inches high exactly, which determines the height of the ceiling in the coal mine, which in turn determines the posture of the men working underground. In this case, they toil on hands and knees. Arriving at the uncut coal seam, the crew starts operating the continuous miner, the machine that aggressively cuts the coal out from the wall, leaving a forty-two inch unsupported hole in its wake. At this point, the roof bolter, who is unanimously thought to have the most important job in the mine, quickly drives six-foot metal bolts into the ceiling to prevent it from falling.
“If a roof bolter is worth anything, he can describe to you exactly what he’s feeling while he bolts. He is able to ‘read the top’ and feel if he is drilling through limestone, sandstone, or shell; if the rock is laminated, or which direction the rock is laying,” explained PeeJay DeLuca, the crew foreman, “and based on those things, if the roof is going to fall or not.” At 32, DeLuca has already put in ten years underground.
Beyond the top layer sound of machines loudly whirring, there is a constant low-level vibration, a surround-sound humming periodically punctuated by a hissing, or a cracking, a restless moving. This otherworldly soundtrack is the earth shifting in response to the demands of machines taking such huge offerings day after day, and provides vital information that every miner must learn to recognize and read.
DeLuca continued, “Coal mining is about hearing and feeling the most. You can hear the distinct sound of a future cave-in. You can tell if the coal is soft or hard by the way it sounds. You can hear the roof vibrating. A constant humming sound is good coal. If you hear it sound too drummy, you know it’s going to fall in. We train the new guys on how to hear.”
And then there’s the singular smell of a coal mine – a top note of sulfur, with traces of the bitter, dry acidity of limestone, embedded in a foundation of musky sweetness from the deep, wet earth. It lingers on clothes, skin, and hair, providing an
olfactory reminder of being underground, and engaging in this visceral, demanding, epic work. “I was in construction for twelve years before I got laid off and came to Tusky,” explained Jerry Murphy, 33, who’s been at the mine for three years. “After working underground, I’m addicted to it. I love it. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
Even men like Greg Blainer, with more than thirty-seven years in the industry, had a difficult time explaining the attraction that every miner mentioned again and again. “It’s unimaginable,” said Blainer, the general superintendent of Rosebud Mining Company’s Ohio operations. “I don’t know that I can explain it. There’s something there– the smell, the feeling, the atmosphere. Once you are in a coal mine, there is nothing else like it. Once you do it, there is nothing else you can do.”
A Rosebud mine is a family-oriented outfit where all new men come in on equal footing, regardless of age, education, or experience. Inside the mine, the operation runs as a meritocracy, where each man is expected to pull his weight for the sake of the safety of the rest of his crew. The resulting camaraderie is as tangible as the coal dust and leaves an even longer impression in the minds of the miners. “It’s a brotherhood. You crawl around all day, everyday in the dirt and the mud with these guys. Everybody watches out for everybody else, inside and outside the mine,” explained Murphy.
Tuscarawas County, Ohio is in the eastern part of the state, close to where the borders of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia meet. It is covered with green rolling hills, acres and acres of farmland, and quaint towns with hundred-year-old general stores offering the best homemade ice cream in the state. The Tusky mine in Uhrichsville has done so well these last five years, that Rosebud has plans to build two mines in neighboring Harrison County by the end of the year.
Coal mining first came to eastern Ohio in 1800, and has had a long boom and bust history. Production soared during the 20th century, until 1970, when the Federal Clean Air Act placed stringent controls on the sulfur dioxide emissions created from burning coal. Ohio’s coal contains high levels of sulfur, which created the acid rain that motivated the creation of the Clean Air Act, and after the legislation passed, Ohio’s coal production steadily declined. Most large underground mines closed, coal companies reorganized or downsized into smaller operations, and major companies moved their operations from Ohio to other states. It looked like the demise of coal for Ohio. But the advent of so-called “clean coal” technology in the late 90’s provided mechanisms for removing sulfur dioxide from coal burning power plant emissions, and there began a massive resurgence of coal production in Ohio and the tri-state region. Rosebud Mining took advantage of this resurgence and began production in Tuscarawas County with the Tusky underground mine.
Coal mining first came to eastern Ohio in 1800, and has had a long boom and bust history. Production soared during the 20th century, until 1970, when the Federal Clean Air Act placed stringent controls on the sulfur dioxide emissions created from burning coal. Ohio’s coal contains high levels of sulfur, which created the acid rain that motivated the creation of the Clean Air Act, and after the legislation passed, Ohio’s coal production steadily declined. Most large underground mines closed, coal companies reorganized or downsized into smaller operations, and major companies moved their operations from Ohio to other states. It looked like the demise of coal for Ohio. But the advent of so-called “clean coal” technology in the late 90’s provided mechanisms for removing sulfur dioxide from coal burning power plant emissions, and there began a massive resurgence of coal production in Ohio and the tri-state region. Rosebud Mining took advantage of this resurgence and began production in Tuscarawas County with the Tusky underground mine.
The average age of the seventy guys who work at Tusky is thirty, and almost all have young families. The majority have only a few years of experience in the coal industry– their hardhats still shiny and new. Most of the new guys lost their previous jobs due to the recession, and came from once-stable fields like construction and manufacturing. One worked in the lawn-care business. Another worked in a gourmet chocolate factory.
“We get two to three resumés a day at Tusky,” explained Blainer. “These guys come from what seem to be pretty decent jobs, manufacturing jobs, equipment operators, lawyers, teachers.” All of them turned to coal mining because it’s the only job in the area that provides a good, stable living, in an industry that is not only un-scathed by economic fluctuatios, but has been growing measurably, year after year.
But behind this industry expansion and economic promise, looms a danger that has been growing for decades, a problem that scrubbers cannot clean up. Concern over climate change has reached epic proportions around the globe, and the United States coal industry finds itself at center stage. Behind China, the US is the largest coal user in the world today, and coal is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. These unique factors have inspired new ‘cap and trade’ legislation, which aims to limit the amount of greenhouse gas that any company can emit, employing a gradual, yet substantial reduction over time. If passed, it could devastate the coal industry in Ohio.
“Everybody is worried about cap and trade. In a room full of coal miners, as soon as you start talking about that, you see the scared look on their faces,” said Murphy.
Josh Willis, 32, has worked in the coal industry for ten years, and supports his farm through coal mining, since farming won’t pay the bills. “Coal has been my whole life so far, I don’t know what I would do if it shut down,” said Willis. “Manufacturing has gone downhill since the recession. So has construction. The big jobs have gone.”
Evidence of Willis’ worry can be seen throughout the mine– guys reading current editions of pro-coal newsletters between shifts, flyers announcing coal rallies posted on the bulletin board, DVDs about the false science of climate change peeking out of lockers. And although these men aren’t on the front lines in the war between climate change activists and Big Coal, they are an often un-considered population of people who will be affected by the outcome of the debate.
Can a coal miner who lost his job and his farm be considered a kind of climate refugee? Unless coal’s impact on the climate is actually proven to be false science, the industry’s days are numbered -likely far fewer than the estimated thirty years it would take to mine the coal beneath this eastern Ohio region. Caught in the middle of this global struggle are seventy hard-working men, raising their families on their hands and knees.
“I have everything I have always dreamed of. I couldn’t ask for a better life,” said Blainer, the Tusky mine superintendent, “and I owe it all to coal mining.”
