Coal

Those in government who could make a difference have turned their backs on an industry that this nation cannot do without. The coal industry supplies the energy that keeps the lights on for half the nation, and it is an industry that does not need a government handout to survive. But while the Obama administration has promoted green energy nationwide, the EPA has been allowed to promulgate any kind of bone-headed regulation it wants so long as it goes against the coal mining industry.

The Homeschool Heart in Hand 4-H Club met recently at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Madonna. Club members were presented with 2013 4-H calendars sponsored by Walter G. Coale Inc. of Churchville. Walter G. Coale has been providing calendars to all Harford County 4-Hers and volunteers for 65 years. The Homeschool Heart in Hand 4-H Club met recently at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Madonna. Club members were presented with 2013 4-H calendars sponsored by Walter G. Coale Inc. of Churchville.

The handwriting is on the wall for this state's small but tenacious coal mining industry in far Western Maryland. Tougher air pollution rules make its high-sulfur coal undesirable for industrial boilers and power plants. Electric utilities are delaying expansion plans for new generators amid a slowing growth in consumer demand.Within a decade, the coal business in Maryland's Appalachia will be extinct, local officials warn. That's 3.5 million tons a year of surface and deep-mine coal and 350 jobs in a region that badly needs employment.

A CSX Transportation dockworker who says he suffered disabling injuries last August when a tanker collided with a Curtis Bay pier has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the shipping company. David Rienas of Abingdon was atop a coal-loading machine on the Bayside Coal Pier when the Wawasan Ruby struck, "causing it to be dragged down the pier with great force," according to the suit, filed Friday. Rienas, 42, is asking the court for $5.2 million as compensation for back, neck and rib injuries that have kept him from working and have, he says, caused him permanent injuries "including mental anguish, fright and emotional distress and disfigurement.

What hypocrites we be! We expound the virtues of shipping millions of tons of coal to stoke the fires of Asia — with a handsome profit to us while abetting Asia's environmental disaster ("Coal exports through port booming," June 12). Yet we revile coal as a means of addressing our energy needs here in the U.S. Seems like an international application of the familiar point of view, "not in my backyard. " Paul Butler, Street

Keyser, W.Va. -- The snow-flecked winter hills of Appalachia rise at Barbara Angle's doorstep and roll away in rounded ranks to a distant, fading infinity.This is the landscape of her memory. These are the comfortable hills of home.Ms. Angle grew up across the Potomac in Westernport, a Maryland river and railroad town that once sent thousands of tons of coal downriver on barges, a town long ago nicknamed "Hardscrabble." And she was injured for life in the soft coal heart of these hills.Now, in her new book, "Those That Matter," she has published a fine, bittersweet novel about a girl growing into a woman in a hardscrabble West Virginia coal town.

A story in yesterday's Money Today incorrectly reported tha two units of McCall Coal Co. Inc. filed for bankruptcy. McCall Coal, which owns 80 percent of Masteller Coal Co. and 100 percent of the defunct McCall Air Co., filed for Chapter 11 protection but those subsidiaries did not. The Evening Sun regrets the error.Jno. McCall Coal Co., one of the nation's biggest coal exporters and a top shipper through the Port of Baltimore, has filed for bankruptcy and is considering going out of business altogether.

We seem to be at a turning point in the future of energy and the response to global warming. The United Nations report on climate change has given momentum to critics of the status quo. Even conservatives (economists Greg Mankiw and Gary Becker, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan) suggest taxing traditional energy to discourage fuels that contribute to warming. The huge buyout offer for Texas energy giant TXU includes a promise to scrap eight planned electricity plants powered by coal, one of the worst sources of greenhouse gas. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty just signed a bill requiring state utilities to produce a fourth of their electricity from wind and other renewable energy by 2025.

Bethlehem Steel Corp. announced yesterday that it intends to sell most of the coal operations in Pennsylvania and West Virginia of it's BethEnergy Mills Inc. subsidiary and some coal reserve properties.The steelmaker said that it intends to sell all coal reserve properties of its Primeacre Land Corp. subsidiary, which holds coal properties in West Virginia, and of its Pennacre Land Division, which hold properties in Pennsylvania.A Bethlehem spokesman, William Gigmac, said that the sale is part of the program of divesting assets not directly related to the company's core business of steelmaking.

The main export coal terminal in the port of Baltimore is going through a boom and a bust simultaneously: Coal shipments are double last year's, but the terminal's machinery has broken down under the load, creating a backup of waiting coal ships and rail cars.In July and August, 38 ships loaded coal for export in Baltimore, more than double the number in the port during the same two months last year. But in August, the coal-dumping machine broke down at the coal terminal operated by Consolidation Coal Sales Co. The machinery was fixed a few days later but broke down again this week.

A trio of environmental groups warned Monday they would sue the operator of three coal-fired power plants in Maryland for allegedly discharging excessive amounts of nutrient pollution into Chesapeake Bay rivers and trying to mask their violations by transferring pollution "credits" among facilities. Food & Water Watch, the Patuxent Riverkeeper and the Potomac Riverkeeper contend that NRG Energy has been violating state-imposed pollution discharge limits for the past three years at its Chalk Point, Morgantown and Dickerson power plants.

Agnes Mullen Coale, a retired Baltimore County elementary school teacher and an assistant principal who also mentored young educators, died of kidney failure Jan. 9 at University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center. She was 90 and had lived in Mays Chapel Village. "Agnes was a bubbly, upbeat, vivacious person who had a positive outlook," said former Baltimore County school Superintendent Robert Y. Dubel, who lives in Glen Arm. "She related well to her fellow teachers and knew every child she ever taught by name.

The operator of three coal-fired power plants in Maryland has agreed to pay a total of $2.2 million in penalties and fix long-standing pollution problems at the landfills in Southern Maryland and Montgomery County where it disposes of the ash from those plants, according to court documents. In a proposed consent decree filed recently in U.S. District Court, subsidiaries of GenOn Energy, a Houston power company, agreed to settle lawsuits by Maryland and environmental groups alleging that the company's Brandywine, Faulkner and Westland coal-ash landfills have been polluting groundwater and nearby streams.

"Claudie Hukill," on stage at Venus Theatre on C Street through Dec. 23, is a play about a poor family, struggling to survive hard economic times and personal tragedies in a West Virginia mining town. Set in 1972, the play is filled with generational, environmental, social, moral and class conflicts, centered around the main character and the play's namesake, Claudie Hukill. Although Claudie, a coal miner and town hero, is never seen, his presence is felt throughout the play as the drama surrounding his disappearance unfolds and escalates to a powerful ending.

While Baltimore's air is healthier to breathe than it used to be, at least one environmental group thinks it could be cleaner still.  The Sierra Club released a report this week contending that two power plants in the area - C.P. Crane in Baltimore County, and H.A. Wager in Anne Arundel County - are releasing four times as much potentially harmful sulfur dioxide as the Environmental Protection Agency now deems safe.  The group,...

Earth Wood & Fire, a new restaurant in the Bare Hills section of Baltimore County, is testament to the wisdom of keeping things simple. The menu offers a handful of salads, a selection of small plates and a daily special or two. But the partnership at this new restaurant is serious about getting the basics down pat first. The square focus is on hamburgers and coal-fired pizzas. Earth Wood & Fire isn't trying to provide culinary adventures but to be a consistent and reliable everyday dining place.

GRANTSVILLE -- A group representing most of Western Maryland's coal companies is proposing that two power plants be built in Garrett County to generate electricity for other Marylanders.The plants would burn locally produced coal, possibly saving Maryland's traditional coal-mining industry. The plants' advocates portray the industry as jeopardized largely because of federal clean-air regulations.Together, the two plants would cost an estimated $650 million.In addition to creating electricity for more densely populated sections of the state, coal officials said the plants would create jobs and spur economic development, as well as assist an environmental cleanup along the Potomac River's north branch and the Casselman River.

Clyde K. Adams, whose Gold Street coal yard supplied a dwindling number of area homes heated by coal, was found dead May 24 in his Northwest Baltimore home. He was 80. Mr. Adams, who relatives said died of an apparent heart attack, made deliveries until he died, using a 1990 Chevrolet pickup truck that helpers filled with 80-pound nylon sacks of coal for delivery. Since 1946, when he established Adams Coal Co. on Gold Street near Pennsylvania Avenue with a World War II surplus half-ton Army truck, Mr. Adams continued to deliver Reading anthracite, bituminous and fireplace coal to the fewer and fewer area homes relying on coal for heat.

A CSX Corp. coal pier in Baltimore is out of service for the foreseeable future as the railroad assesses the "substantial" damage caused by a ship that hit the structure. The Bayside Coal Pier, on Benhill Avenue in Curtis Bay, was struck Saturday by a tanker headed for a dock up the channel — an unusual accident that could cause ripple effects for coal shipping. CSX said an employee was injured in the incident, hospitalized and later released. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based company estimates in a federal lawsuit that the Wawasan Ruby, owned by Panama-based Trio Happiness S.A., caused more than $5 million in damage, both to the property and in revenue loss.