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Dont live in Wv anymore but does 18 years working in a deep mine count? the mine was owned by a power company so we were captive and had a constant market for our coal, or so I thought. the coal we mined was cleaned and traveled over a mile on an overland belt to the power plant silos. It was a good job and relatively safe working conditions for being underground and i intended to retire from that mine (we had 2 developed mines on the property with 30 years of coal reserves each and 3 additional mine sites which were not even started with at least 20 year production in them.) But our sulfur content was too high for emission standards even though the sulfur was not as high as the coal imported from japan which the power plant was allowed to burn. After a legal battle a decision was made that a power plant owning a coal mine was a monopoly and the mine was closed. During the duration of the mine m y friends and i made a decent living. When it closed I moved to the flat lands but many of my friends (mining co-workers) are still in the mountains scratching out a living as best they can working seasonal, minimum wage jobs in the tourist industry. And what really gets me fired up is now they are putting up windmills to generate electricity in that area, some of the locals got decent jobs installing and maintaining these windmills but beaurocrats are complaining they are an eyesore to the tourists who visit the area.
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