Washblog

They closed the deal for the mine and power plant on May 5, 2000, and at that time looked forward to working with our new employees at the plant and the mine and taking an active role within the Centralia region.  Yeah, right.

The reason for shutting the mine down?  Rain.

No kidding.  The rains in the beginning of November caused a landslide that covered over two million tons of coal.  Given the numbers that they were looking at, they decided that it was cheaper to purchase coal from the Powder River Basin producers Rio Tinto Energy America, a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group based on London, and Peabody Energy's subsidiary COALSALES, LLC. then to continue mining.  They have some "residual inventory" of mined coal that they will mix with the PRB imports, but then they will start a reclamation project to "pretty up" the strip mine.  Reading the transcript of the conference call (PDF), they also cite 'regulatory changes'.

So, out of 675 jobs paying an average of $80,000 per year, 75 remain employed full time at the power plant.  Ladies and Gentlemen, that's $48,000,000 out of the Lewis County economy.  And the 8% of our electrical power that is being generated out of the power plant is coming from coal mined in Wyoming and Montana.

Why am I writing about this?  After all, I live in North Seattle.  My dad lives in Centralia, and he works hard in home remodeling in Lewis County.  With the loss of $48M from that economy, that hits everyone in the region really hard, and it affects everyone in the state.

So, what can we do?  Well, the first question that came to mind is why we even allow corporations from outside the country to own and operate major infrastructure like coal mines here in the United States.  That's a question for Congress, and I hope Brian Baird gets lots of questions about this from his constituents in Lewis County, especially the question of why this isn't already on the front page of his congressional website...  The next question is when we are going to take back ownership of things like this.

TransAlta: latest close at $22.74.

Rio Tinto: latest close at $214.65 through a London ADR

Peabody Energy: latest close at $46.99

All three of these are available through Sharebuilder, and all three pay a dividend that should be going towards progressive causes instead of the pockets of Cheney's minions.  Y'all know what to do.  Buy like our future depends on it.  Because it does.  Ownership is the key to our future, so we need to TAKE ownership.