Coal used to be West Virginia’s ‘gold’ but the industry has been in decline of late and the Obama administration’s ‘Clean Power Plan’, which aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions by a third by 2030, has caused coal exports from the state to collapse. From a high point in 1940, when 140,000 people were employed in the coal industry in West Virginia, numbers have consistently decreased to around 15,000 today.

Old mining towns like Beckley and Mullens, lacking any other forms of industry or manufacturing, have succumbed to the usual scourges of economic decline: drugs, alcohol and violence. West Virginia has the highest rate of drug overdoses in the US. There is little work for the young, many of whom are packing their bags and leaving.

For the few lucky enough to still have a job in mining, the daily grind is tough. Miners spend around eight hours a day on their knees in low shafts measuring no higher than three feet. These men have one of the toughest blue collar jobs in America. “If you don’t like this job, you’re never gonna make it. It’s a lifestyle. It’s hard and requires a lot from you. I think no man can bear to work in these mines if you don’t like this kind of work. They’ll quit after a year or two” says Kenny Calloway, the 64 year old boss and owner of Chief Mining Inc., a small mine in Mullens which employes 32 people.

The coal from this part of the world is among the best and most plentiful. Yet with the increased focus on the the role of coal in causing climate change, prices of coal have been falling and the industry is in decline worldwide, except for China and India, two countries where consumption is still rising. In the 19th and 20th century, coal powered the steel industry which in turn fed automobile and other forms of manufacturing. Only a few decades ago, the coal industry employed close to a million Americans. Today there are only around 77,000 coal miners left in the US

Chief Mining’s Kenny Calloway worries about the multiple challenges to his small scale venture. “This week can be the last one. We never know”, he says. He would like to see government agencies working with the coal industry to make it cleaner instead of ‘smothering’ one of the few remaining employers in West Virginia with new regulation. Calloway refuses to make people in his mine redundant. “I could do as others have done and lay off my employees, shut the operation for a few weeks and then restart with 20 percent lower wages but I won’t. These are my friends…we are a family.”