Quote Originally Posted by waterdog101 View Post
I've been in every county and place you named, I worked the first 23 years of my life in the coal fields of eastern KY, and most of my family have worked in coal as well. and most of my family still do. my wife's uncle was a coal operator, owned a loadout tipple and a couple mines. and I know first hand how coal company's operate. they don't play by the rules. this is the truth, a big coal company I worked for back in the early 80's would have safety meetings, and some of the guys would complain about the dust being so bad, and this was the company's spokesman's reply, { don't worry about the dust you can see, it won't hurt you. it's the fine particles you can't see that will get you.} wouldn't you think the more dust you can see, would mean there are that much more fine mixed in you can't see. and for years the company safety guy, would come around and pin a dust collecting sample device on everyones jacket, and they would wear it for 8 hours. guess what happen? the company got sued fore Falsifying dust samples. I still stand by my statement the coal company's are as much to do with the bad market as Obama and the EPA. greed for an extra 2 or three dollars a ton every time they negotiate a contract with a power plant. when you work for a company, the talk of how they squeezed the power plants for the extra money, leaks down to the ears of the workers. and without the EPA or a President that will force them to play by the rules, people may have more jobs in coal, but the water and Air that your kids and grandkids drink and breath will not be very healthy for them.
I don't dispute at all that there are probably some unethical and crooked folks running coal companies...it's the same way with any industry. I think it's a shame that people operate that way, but I don't think it's a huge contributor to the decimation of the coal business.

I do believe there should be some common sense government regulation that protects the environment and the worker from unethical corporate influence. If I want to save money by dumping toxic waste into the river, there should be laws against that. I shouldn't be able to cut corners on safety that seriously endangers the lives of my employees. The problem is that, typical of the government, they have taken all of it waaaaaay too far.