Word: coaling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...coal companies are certainly not exploiting their employees. Most offer wages of over $35,000 a year with bonuses; added benefits bring the package will over $50,000. The lucrative wages are useful to the coal companies too, by keeping almost all the miners in the county nonunion. In an area where a small but sound house can sell for as little as $6000 and where there are few opportunities to spend money on recreation, miners are able to spend a lot on flashy cars and extravagant homes. Robert M. Duncan, chief executive officer of Martin County's only bank...
...mines are all owned by Mapco, a Tulsa. Okia energy firm, which traditionally names all its mining operations after the Polynesian good-luck "Tiki" dolls. Martiki is the second largest mountain-top strip mine in the United States and therefore probably the world, shipping almost 3 million tons of coal each year. Martiki officials are clearly proud of their operation and sincere in their excitement at the prospect of resulting the landscape. Martiki's 18,000 acres cover two mountains on opposite sides of a steep valley. In about 25 years when the coal is gone and the strip-mined...
...uninitiated, full-scale coal-mining is an incredible sight. Two hundred feet below where the hillside was a few years ago, dump trucks bigger than houses haul 175-ton loads of rock. The Martiki mining operation is centered around the "Mountain Mover," a power shovel about the size of a small airplane hanger. The shovel's huge bucket--which can easily hold a pickup truck--takes 76-cubic-foot bites out of the mountain 24 hours...
...only mixable areas on its lease Martiki will not exploit is a small cemetery currently standing on 60-foot diameter column of rock in which the valuable coal seams are clearly visible. Martik; was able to get permission to move most of the graves scattered over their leased area in small family plots but was denied access to that one pinnacle close to the company offices. The only way to visit the grave site now is by helicopter or on belay, but when Martiki is through, there will be a "nice road leading up there to a small parking...
...coal companies have very good relations with the Martin County government and are well represented at the weekly Kiwanis club lunches. Companies have donated the money and equipment to build lights for the county's baseball field and coal executives and politicians alike make flowery speeches about "working together to make this county a better place to live." Because of this visible support and all the money they pay in wages the coal companies resent charges that they are not doing enough to help the county. Michael H. Vallez. Mapco's vice president in charge of all the Martin county...