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Coal’s legacy bait and switch

I’m the granddaughter of immigrant coal miners. Mining was work no one else wanted to do in northeast Pennsylvania; both my grandfathers died of black lung disease.

Fortunately, they weren’t working in 1959 when the Susquehanna River broke through into illegal tunnels beneath the river, destroying the economy in an instant. Easy-to-reach coal had been mined; an unscrupulous company ignored state laws to wring every ounce of profit from the aging mine. Fast forward to 2010 when 29 miners died at the Upper Big Branch Mine. MSHA investigation found Massey Energy “promoted and enforced a workplace culture that valued production over safety, including practices calculated to allow it to conduct mining operations in violation of the law.” Here too in WV, the easy coal is long gone. Companies play shell games, nesting subsidiaries within companies within holding companies that go bankrupt conveniently to avoid paying pensions and benefits. Lawyers game the systems that are supposed to protect both public and workers.

This is the legacy of coal Pleasants County Chamber director Jody Murphy asked us to celebrate in last Sunday’s op-ed supporting sale of the Pleasants Power Station. First Energy wants the WV Public Service Commission to approve the sale of Pleasants from Ohio subsidiary AEP to WV subsidiary MonPower. Murphy finds it “incomprehensible” the PSC could “halt” the transfer.

What’s incomprehensible is forcing WV customers to subsidize an unprofitable plant for decades. If AEP can sell to MonPower, in WV’s regulated energy market our PSC must grant them rate increases until they become profitable. To disguise this end game, First Energy is claiming the sale would “save customers money.”

To bait the hook, they are offering a pathetic $1.00/mo. rate decrease. Once the hook is set it won’t be long before the “switch” is made in the form of an application for a rate increase to the PSC. Then it will be too late. We’ll be looking at continual rate increases for the next 20 years.

The economy is changing and we owe coal miners like my grandfathers a great debt. Wouldn’t the money First Energy would take from MonPower be better spent helping their descendents prepare for the future by improving efficiency, diversifying power sources, and modernizing our electrical grid? Murphy said he’d voluntarily pay the estimated $69/year in rate hikes to keep 240 jobs in his county. Good for him. Do the 522,500 other customers have a choice or should they be forced to subsidize Pleasants County?

Jean Ambrose

Walker

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