PRICE — Sanpete and Carbon county officials are expressing "shock" and "deep concern" about Canyon Fuel Co.'s announcement Tuesday that it plans to idle Skyline Mine and lay off most of the 215 workers there.
They are hanging onto a glimmer of hope that Canyon Fuel might be able to renew some coal contracts between now and the 2004 second quarter, when production is scheduled to stop. But a corporate spokeswoman suggests such hopes are dim.
The mine is located at the intersection of the Carbon, Sanpete and Emery county lines. A handful of miners live in Emery and Utah counties, but the bulk of the work force is equally split between Carbon and Sanpete counties.
"It's kind of a shock and obviously scary," said Sanpete County Commissioner Greg Dettinger. "It'll be devastating to our entire county."
Miners at the non-union mine are some of the highest-paid workers in Sanpete County and among the few with benefits. "Our county has one of the highest percentages in the state of people without health insurance, and this will add to that," Dettinger said.
"It's a deep concern," said Bruce Blackham, Sanpete County Commission chairman. Blackham said that when the Skyline Mine superintendent informed him about closure plans, "I asked if there was anything we could do. He said, 'No. It's a financial decision.'
"I've been in the county 25 years. We've been through some hard times but never a massive layoff like this. I think it will hurt some families and some areas extremely hard."
Family income is significantly lower in rural Utah counties than along the Wasatch Front. According to federal government data, in 2000, the average per capita income in Carbon County was $21,763 and in Sanpete County $14,858, compared to $27,330 in Salt Lake County.
"You can hope and pray they find some contracts for the coal," said Carbon County Commission Chairman Mike Milovitch. "The coal is some of the best in the country," so there should be a market for it, he said.
Milovitch described two conversations in the past week with local mine officials. "They remain fairly optimistic that they're going to land some contracts between now and second quarter (2004), so we might be talking about something that doesn't happen."
But Kim Link, spokeswoman for Arch Coal, the St. Louis-based parent company of Canyon Fuel, said of plans to idle the mine, "This is a final decision for now."
Idling won't just affect miners, Milovitch said. At least a dozen Carbon County companies supply products and services to the mine, including Joy Mining Machinery, which has installations in Price and Wellington, and Fairmont Supply of Price, which provides hand tools, power tools and mining maintenance products.
In August 2001, when miners moved into a new area of the huge Skyline Mine site, a massive flood poured into the mine. Since then, Canyon Fuel has spent millions drilling wells and pumping water out of the mine.
The mysterious hydrological problems got more complicated when Utah Power announced that water was vanishing out of Electric Lake, a reservoir located about 700 feet up the mountain from the mine. The power company is convinced that water is dropping through fissures in the reservoir bottom and finding its way down through rock fractures into the mine.
But Link downplayed the water problems as a factor in the idling decision. Skyline's main customers are Utah Power parent company PacifiCorp, the Intermountain Power Project, Nevada Power and Sierra Pacific, she said. Like other utilities, those companies have been cutting costs by reducing fuel stockpiles. That has led some of them to decide not to renew coal purchase contracts.
Link said Canyon Fuel would continue to maintain Skyline Mine, including pumping out water, so the mine would be in shape to reopen. She said future mining there would be in the northern part of the mine, and it appears that as miners moved north, they would move away from the troublesome underground water.
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