BROOKWOOD, Ala. — Not even a week after President Donald J. Trump signed a law repealing an stringent Obama Administration coal mining rule, one Alabama company is looking to put more miners to work. Last Saturday, Warrior Met Coal held a job fair to recruit underground miners with and without prior experience, electricians, maintenance foremen, supervisors, a civil engineer, and an analyst programmer.
Warrior Met mines for coal at its site located near Brookwood, Ala. According to the company’s website, it’s products serve markets in in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Under the previous administration, the EPA and other federal agencies increased the number of environmental regulations relating to the mining and use of coal. The rule President Trump just repealed – the Office of Surface Mining’s Stream Protection Rule – limited what coal companies could do with waste.
Policy analysts Ned Mamula and Patrick J. Michaels of the Cato Institute called the SPR “a rule in search of a problem.” In their analysis, they claimed “the real impacts of the SPR, openly acknowledged by Office of Surface Mining, leave tens of billions of dollars’ worth of coal in the ground with no chance of future development—’stranded reserves,’ as OSM terms them in the rule.”
On Thursday, Trump referred to the former regulation as “another terrible job killing rule” and said the new law will save “many thousands American jobs, especially in the mines, which, I have been promising you — the mines are a big deal.”
The president emphasized his commitment to bringing Americans jobs and said this is the next step in that plan. “This is a major threat to your jobs and we’re going to get rid of this threat. We’re going to fight for you,” Trump said.
