Chances are, if you live in the coal producing counties of East Kentucky and Southwest Virginia, you’ve heard of TECO Coal. Most folks around here pronounce it Teek-Oh.
TECO stands for Tampa Electric Company, a major utility/electrical supplier to the Tampa Bay area and central Florida. TECO operated in the region since the the 1970s with several mining operations and coal prep plants. I say this in past tense because TECO sold all of their mining assets to a different mining group in 2014.
So why am I telling you all this?
I saw someone wearing a TECO hat the other day in Whitesburg and it stirred up something mighty irksome in me the more I thought about it. Now that the blog is back up, I figured, why not share?
When folks around here think about coal, there is a feeling of pride. Even though Union miners knew they were getting the worst end of the deal risking and sacrificing their lives to produce coal for coal companies, they still got the warm and fuzzies thinking about the people it was helping. Coal was an important fuel for pot belly stoves that kept families from freezing to death in the winter. It fueled boilers and electrical stations that supplied steam and electric heat to millions of working class households, hospitals, etc.
Coal fueled the steel furnaces and supplied the carbon to build steel sky scrapers and massive bridges, including the Golden Gate built using Bethlehem Steel. Steel made from Appalachian coal built ships that grew our nation’s trade and defense capabilities and it was steel made from our coal that drove the nation’s insatiable desire for vehicles and the freedom of the open road. So even when coal miners were getting black lung and, in my opinion, the worst pay in the nation for a job that risked their lives everyday, they still had some pride that they were helping other people.
But coal mined by a corporation to fuel their power plant in Tampa feels, well, different. Tampa doesn’t get cold. It’s a hot, humid place. You don’t risk freezing to death, but you do have to deal with some serious swamp ass.
For four decades, the people of Eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia were working in TECO’s coal mines, getting black lung, wearing out their bodies, and gutting our mountains in ways that will eventually lead to subsidence and acid mine drainage. They also “processed” or cleaned the coal in prep plants and left the toxic coal slurry in massive impoundments in our mountain communities. They did this all so people in Florida could enjoy skyscrapers and condominiums with oversized air conditioners. Another way of putting it would be that Appalachians risked their lives and gave up their health so people in Florida could enjoy lifestyles many of us would never be privy to.
TECO intentionally sought out Appalachian coal because they could get it cheaper than other fuels. Cheap, abundant, low labor cost fuel in areas with lax environmental regulations meant they could generate cheaper electricity and make even more profit from Tampa area residents and businesses.
Many people have called Appalachia a “Sacrifice Zone.” We suffered the dangerous jobs, pollution, and cancer rates from coal mining, while everyone else enjoyed the benefits of cheap electricity and steel. For me, TECO was a direct, glaring example of that. Sure they sponsored local events including local little league games. They also had pretty decent safety standards from what I’ve been told, and probably didn’t pay bad compared to other mines in the area. But that doesn’t mean they, and the Floridians they served, were paying Appalachians what they were due in externalized costs (costs such as long term health impacts, damage to the mountains and water sources, etc).
What if more folks thought about it that way around here? There are a lot of graves filled with coal miners robbed of their lives and health, all so people elsewhere could enjoy living in places they’d never have lived without cheap electricity. Is that a sacrifice worth making? Is that a sacrifice anyone should ask of someone else?
People actually did think about it at one time. Just listen to this powerful speech by John L. Lewis, former president of the United Mine Workers of America following the Centralia No.5 disaster in 1947 :
TECO is just a tiny example of the sacrifices people make to supply others with their modern conveniences. Even now we are reaping the benefits of people’s misery in other places. Who is picking your tomatoes, lettuce, and celery? Who is sewing your clothes together? Where is your oil and gas coming from? Who is living beside the chemical factories that make all of our cleaners, paints, lubricants, solvents, furniture polishes, and the like?
We live in a society that takes for granted everything occurring out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It all comes with price tags worth a lot more than any marked up profiteering corporation is willing to pay, or any of us consumers, for that matter.
Until we learn that less is more and get back to our roots, we’re going to continue forcing other people to make sacrifices that never benefit them. The money that is made goes to the richest while the rest of us are left to survive off the crumbs. We’ve already poisoned the majority of surface water in our country (and world if you think about the mercury content in fish from burning so much coal over the last century). Maybe it’s time folks stopped taking everything for granted, researched where all of their comforts and conveniences are really coming from, and make efforts to stop the injustices and inequalities it’s causing.
The next question is, can we teach people to stop being so selfish and to accept occasional discomfort as a way of helping others?