An editorial from the Charleston Daily Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Coal and the Environmental Protection Agency dominate this year’s congressional and Senate races. For the record, all of the major candidates like coal, and all of them are willing to fight the EPA.
But no matter how many volumes of regulations the politicians shoot in their commercials, the Obama administration is squeezing the industry.
There were 184 active mines in 2012, industry officials told state legislators last week. Today there are 96.
“There are a whole lot of reasons for that, but predominantly it’s the uncertainty created by this administration,” West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney told Chris Lawrence of MetroNews.
“We dealt for several years with the fact you couldn’t get federal permits, now they’ve taken on the power plants and put out these rules on greenhouse gas which have no technology to control.”
Now they are not so sure…
