The LuLac Edition #4,235, March 11th, 2020

WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

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This week the Scranton Times/Citizens’ Voice did an editorial on the Coal Region and how it relates to President Donald Trump. While the writers conceded that coal was no longer king, they did make the point that as a region maimed by coal, we should get some sort of attention. That is, if the President really means what he says about coal.

IT’S TIME TO HELP THE COAL REGION

In his town hall meeting last Thursday in Scranton, President Donald Trump did not renew the bizarre vow he made in the city as a candidate in 2016 to bring back coal mining to Northeast Pennsylvania.
There never was any chance of that even then, of course, because coal was in a precipitous, market-driven nose dive due to the ascendancy of natural gas as the primary fuel for electricity production. Four years later, that decline has accelerated to the point that even Trump doesn’t talk about coal these days.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the president can’t help coal towns that suffer not only the economic consequences of a dying dominant industry, but from the serious environmental consequences left by large-scale mining.
Several bills in Congress, with bipartisan support from lawmakers from across Appalachia and other coal-mining regions — including Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright of Lackawanna County — would help to mitigate the environmental and health consequences of the industry while helping coal-mining regions deal with economic change. The bills include:
• The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act Amendments of 2019, which would accelerate the repair dangerous and polluted abandoned mine lands.
• The RECLAIM Act, which is sponsored in the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, would spur local economic development in coal regions through early release of money in an industry-funded trust fund.
• The Black Lung Benefits Disability Trust Fund Solvency Act, cosponsored by Cartwright in the House and by Sen. Bob Casey of Scranton in the Senate, would guarantee funding for black lung victims and their families at steady levels for 10 years.
Trump has tried several gambits to shore up coal mining over the last three years, including forcing utilities to stockpile coal that they don’t need. In each case, the market has overwhelmed those proposals.
Now, Trump should join the legislators in recognizing the reality by dealing with coal’s aftermath and helping affected regions better prepare for the future.