Owners of the Colorado coal mine that produced the most last year, the West Elk, said Thursday they will cut 80 workers, about a quarter of the workforce — blaming declining U.S. and world demand for coal.
The 300-plus West Elk miners in western Colorado’s North Fork Valley produced 5.1 million tons of coal, more than at six other operating mines in the state.
West Elk manager Jim Miller broke the news, thanking miners for faithful service.
“We regret the need for this difficult action and the resulting impacts on our employees, their families and the North Fork community,” Miller said in a prepared statement.
Arch Coal corporate owners, who filed for bankruptcy in January, said the Mountain Coal Company that runs West Elk until now had managed a downturn by cutting costs and improving efficiency. But “lack of incremental coal demand has forced us to take further action to better align production and staffing levels with customer needs and to ensure West Elk remains competitive long-term,” Arch spokeswoman Logan Bonacorsi said.
Arch officials notified Delta County leaders Thursday morning “that they were going to initiate the process of partial layoffs,” county administrator Robbie LeValley said.
This worsens the impact of a collapse of the coal industry on communities now scrambling to diversify after a more than a century of relying on mining.
In the West Elk recently, Miller acknowledged challenges with statewide coal production plummeting by 50 percent since 2004.
Beyond the West Elk, Oxbow Mining’s Elk Creek Mine at Somerset has closed. And Bowie Resources recently laid off 30 miners amid dismantling of a third mine in the valley.
Northwestern Colorado also is bracing after Peabody Energy, which runs a mine near Craig, declared bankruptcy.
Coal-fired power plants still generate 60 percent of electricity that people in Colorado use. But competition from cheap natural gas, driven by the domestic oil and gas drilling boom, has added to pressures on the coal industry. A national Clean Power Plan is designed to cut carbon emissions from coal-burning that scientists blame for global warming. Colorado lawmakers also have pushed for conversion of coal-fired power plants. And the U.S. Forest Service and courts have blocked coal mine expansion that requires drilling new vents so that miners can work safely under roadless Colorado forests.
Colorado Mining Association president Stuart Sanderson on Thursday blamed government rules “designed to drive coal out of the energy mix,” arguing that shifting from coal to renewable sources won’t improve global temperatures.
“Colorado Coal miners earn average wages and benefits approaching $135,000 annually and Colorado coal is a high-quality, clean resource that should remain a part of the energy mix,” Sanderson said. “Rural Colorado needs those jobs.”
