Former DEP Secretary Jack Caffrey passed away earlier this week in Welch, his adopted hometown for many, many years.  Jack was prominent in many activities in McDowell County and was a long-serving engineer for U.S. Steel when they had a major presence in the county and the town of Gary.  Jack’s obituary is below. 

John (Jack) E. Caffrey, a prominent Businessman and civic leader, passed away on Tuesday, April 14, 2015.

The Obama Administration is escalating its attempt to stifle the American economy, backing an aggressive EPA proposal that will force a number of states – including West Virginia – to make radical, extraordinarily expensive changes in the way they produce electricity.  West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is on the front lines of this battle, leading fellow Attorneys General from several other states in a lawsuit opposing EPA’s illegal plan, which is nothing short of an overreaching, federal bureaucratic takeover of state authority. 

No matter how you feel about coal industry emissions, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s fight of proposed new rules by the Environmental Protection Agency is a just cause.

That’s because the fight Morrisey is leading is as much about containing potentially unlawful regulatory creep as it is about protecting the coal industry.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — On-the-job drug use continues to persist in West Virginia’s coal industry, despite state laws taking a hard line against those who test positive.

The West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training reported 724 coal miners have been decertified since Jan. 1, 2013—a breakdown of 330 during 2013, another 316 in 2014 and 78 to date in 2015.

That trend is disappointing, agency director Eugene White said, considering officials hoped the numbers would diminish after the legislature enacted more stringent laws.

By Chris Hamilton, senior vice president

West Virginia Coal Association

I am writing in response to a recent editorial by the Gazette asserting that coal mining in our area is in decline regardless of who is in the White House. The writer points to declines in mining employment during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush terms as evidence and then proceeds to string together a series of assertions passing them off as facts.

Here are the real facts.

Yes, the number of coal mining jobs as measured by federal statistics has fallen since the 1950s, and even since the 1980s.