How to Help Coal Communities Recover from the Pandemic

This is the second part in atwo-part series.

As I argued in mylast post, the workers and communities that depend on coal for their economic livelihoods needdeliberate, sustained, and comprehensive actionto ensure that they recover from the economic devastation left behind by the pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has touched all Americans in some form or another, but it has laid bare the reality that the most vulnerable among us—communities of color and working class folks—are hurting the most and dying more often. That is simply unacceptable.

As UCS does its part tolift up the voicesof our most vulnerable communities, toprotect working people, to push for including climate resilience,clean energy,manufacturing, andenergy efficiencyin economic recovery, to highlight the importance of protectingclean energy jobs in communities of color, and to fight toprotect our democracy, here are some policies that Congress should adopt right away to help coal communities.

Immediate needs to protect workers

Below are somespecific and targeted policiesfor coal workers that Congress should include as part of legislation designed to address the immediate crisis:

• Enact the COVID-19 Every Worker Protection Act(H.R.6559), which wouldrequire the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an emergency temporary standard to protect workers from exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace.
• Because coal miners would not be covered under that proposal since their workplace protections are governed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Congress must similarlyrequire MSHA to issue a temporary emergency standard to protect coal miners from contracting and spreading COVID-19.
• Ensure that black lung clinics have adequate fundingto meet the needs of coal miners suffering from black lung—people who are at much higher risk of complications or death from COVID-19.

Put workers first, not companies

Congress must continue to rejecttheegregious requestof the National Mining Association to absolve its member companies of their collective responsibilities to workers and the environment. On the contrary, Congress should ensure stability of these programs through:

• Extending the excise tax on coal production for ten years to support the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund(R.3876).
• Reauthorizing the reclamation fee for 15 years that supports the Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) Fund by passingthe Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act Amendments of 2019(R.4248). The government estimates that there is more than $10 billion in remaining cleanup needs for pre-1977 abandoned mines.

Furthermore, Congress should leverage the AML for driving economic development in coal communities through cleaning up abandoned mines:

• Release existing money from the Abandoned Mine Land Fund to clean up abandoned mines and spur economic development on reclaimed landby including the RECLAIM Act (R.2156), which has already passed the House Natural Resources Committee with bipartisan support. The bill would distribute$1 billion in existing funds for coal communitiesfrom the AML Fund andcreate about 4,600 jobs over 5 years.

准备workforce for new opportunities

As I described in mylast post, coal communities need attention in economic recovery efforts. The Great Recession provides an example; establishment of new businesses since the Great Recession wasconcentratedin urban centers and suburbs, and employment growth wasmuch slowerin rural areas compared to urban areas.

So as these communities rebuild their economies from multiple crises—both the pandemic and the structural decline of coal—they will need联邦戈夫强劲和持续的支持rnment to help drive community-led solutions. Federal programs across multiple agencies support worker retraining efforts and economic development in communities, programs that will be crucial to the hardest hit rural communities in recovering from the economic downturn. Here are some initial steps Congress should take in designing economic recovery packages:

• Authorize the Office of Economic Impact, Diversity, and Employmentwithin the Department of Energy (DOE), as proposed in Title VIII, Subtitle C of the 2020CLEAN Future Act, to ensure that dislocated and unemployed energy workers and underrepresented groups have access to training and apprenticeship programs in the energy and manufacturing sectors.
• Ensure robust workforce development and training programs in the states by increasing funding for the Employment and Training Administrationwhich administers the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and by increasing community participation.
• 增加对工人培训项目和资金community economic development programsacross the federal government. Federal efforts to respond to the economic crisis should incentivize community workforce agreements, apprenticeship programs, and project labor agreements that focus on creating job opportunities for historically disadvantaged and underrepresented workers.
• Increase funding for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Worker Education and Training Program and the Department of Labor’s Susan Harwood Training Grants program.

Investing in community and economic development

Federal programs across multiple agencies support worker retraining efforts and economic development in communities, particularly those reeling from the decline of coal, and these programs will be crucial to largely rural communities in recovering from the economic downturn. Congress must double-down on these programs to ensure that communities have access to critical resources. Two big priorities are:

• Increase funding to at least $400 million per year for thePartnerships for Opportunity and Workforce Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiativewithin the Appalachian Regional Commission. The POWER Initiative was funded at $50 million per year from FY16 through FY19, and requested funds were more than six times this level in FY18.
• Increase funding to at least $100 million per year for theAssistance to Coal Communities (ACC)program at the Economic Development Administrationwithin the Department of Commerce. ACC was funded at $30 million in FY17 through FY19, up from $10 million in FY15 and $15 million in FY16. EDA will need additional appropriations to build capacity to distribute these grants.

Prioritize coal communities in infrastructure development and environmental cleanup

Coal communities, particularly in rural regions in Appalachia and the West, as well as tribal communities have been left behind in the development and maintenance of modern infrastructure systems. I offered some personal stories that exemplify these problems in my lastpost. House leaders had initially proposed a$760 billion infrastructure packageat the beginning of the year, and there is talk of including infrastructure spending in future recovery packages. As policymakers debate the scale and extent of infrastructure investments, they must

• Prioritize the infrastructure needs of rural communitiesthrough investments in health care (especially tele-health), broadband, distance learning, and water delivery and wastewater treatment systems.

Environmental cleanup remains a barrier to long-term economic development in many coal-dependent communities. The EPA Brownfields program provides grants and technical assistance to communities, states, tribes and others to assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse contaminated properties. This program is extremely important for community revitalization and economic development, and it also helps create jobs in communities.

• Increase annual funding for EPA’s Brownfields redevelopment program to $2 billionto support economic development and sustainable approaches to local land use. Brownfield redevelopment must incorporate community-driven planning and protect against community displacement.

But even more must be done. For example, coal ash is aby-product of burning coal, and leads tocontaminated groundwater and polluted waterways. Cleaning up all that pollutioncould create jobs—especially for the folks that will begin to lose their jobs as more coal-fired power plants close.

Finally, UCS has been advocating forclean energy prioritiesas part of the economic recovery effort, and some of these could help coal communities if designed well. These include:

• Reauthorizing the DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program (EECBG)to support energy efficiency and conservation projects in local communities across the country, spurring job growth and saving consumers money.
• Establish a “National Green Bank”to provide low-cost financing for clean energy and climate resilient infrastructure projects and include dedicated investments that directly benefit low-income communities, communities of color and coal communities.

First steps

These policies represent anecessary first stepin helping rural America, especially coal-dependent communities, recover from the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis. But it is only a first step, and policymakers must remember that true recovery will requiresustained funding and consistent policy that empowers local communities. And keep in mind that the extent of the economic suffering has not yet been realized. Analysts were abuzz as oil prices brieflywent negativelast week, but what will the crisis in the oil and gas sector mean forworkers on the ground?

Creating a new, clean, sustainable economy out of the ashes of the old one will require visionary action. More to come.