The West Virginia Coal Association and business leaders in the Bluefield region hosted the summit. They say tighter environmental regulations by the Obama Administration are hurting the region's coal industry.
Dan Pochick, CEO of Risch Machinery, says his company employs about 300 people in the two Virginias.
He says his company is already suffering from uncertainty in the industry.
“Our sales to the mining industry, the sales of heavy machinery, after the first quarter have virtually disappeared,” he said.
“We haven’t sold a piece of mining equipment in probably nearly 90 days.”
He says there are several reasons for the drastic drop in sales.
“It’s a combination offactors. It’s permits that they can’t get, it’s the demand, the global recession that’s occurring,” he said.
“It’s all the uncertainty that’s involved in the coal industry right now, whether they will even continue to be allowed to mine.”
To deal with the decline, Pochick says Risch Machinery was forced to layoff workers and cutback hours. He declined to say exactly how many.
If the trend continues, Pochick says the company may have to resort to contingency plans.
“We would be diminished significantly,” he said. “We would have to downsize. Our company would be less than half the size it is today, we would put a lot of people out of work. We would add to the unemployment roles.”
“Certainly I would expect at least 150 people would be impacted by that and it’s not just us,” he said
There’s not much coal production in Mercer County, West Virginia or Tazewell County, Virginia. But Marc Meachum, president of the Greater Bluefield Chamber of Commerce, says the region depends heavily on the coal industry.
Support industries are based in the counties -- for example, mine safety manufacturing, mining equipment, and railroad jobs.
A large part of the summit focused on what speakers called an attack on coal coming from environmentalists and the federal government.
“There is a lot of pressure on the mining industry,” Meachum said.
“Some of the topics this morning had to do with permitting and the difficulty that the industry is having obtaining permits to open either underground mines or certainly surface mines. It’s a big, big challenge.”
“The mission standards that the government is setting up could make coal very, very expensive to mine.”
Jason Bostic, Vice President of the West Virginia Coal Association, was the last speaker to take the podium. He says the permitting process is almost at standstill.
And it’s not just mountaintop removal mines that are having trouble getting a permit. He says any mine with a valley fill, including many underground mines, are being stopped too.