Coal

Latest Posts in Coal

After coal: recreating a local economy

   For more than a century, the town of Centralia in southwestern Washington has largely depended on extractive industries for its economy. Logging and coal mining typically provided jobs that paid pretty well. But the forestry industry took a big hit back in 1981 when Mt. St. Helens erupted, and then the coal mine just outside of town closed in 2006.


A Black Eye for Big Coal

At a time when large corporations have had an unprecedented degree of power to impose themselves on the landscape in the name of jobs, a group of citizens, environmental activists, native tribes and businesses in the Pacific Northwest have dealt a series of stunning blows against development.

     Since the 1990s, a group of large mining companies, railroads and maritime terminal operators have sought to use the Northwest’s...