Mike Edwards was a year from retirement when the coal mine he worked at for 25 years was shut down suddenly last month, putting him and hundreds of his colleagues out of work.
“I felt the rug pulled out from underneath us,” said Edwards, who was making $70,000 as a bulldozer and heavy-truck operator at the [...]

Newly unemployed mine workers packed a union hall here Tuesday, looking for work, unemployment benefits and friendly faces after a Canadian company shut down its increasingly costly coal field.
“Those young men down there just kind of had like a glaze over their eyes, it was such a shock to them,” said Bob Guenther, president of [...]

A Canadian company has shut down its 35-year-old coal mine in Washington state, throwing 600 people out of work, but plans to keep a major generating plant running with coal from Wyoming.
TransAlta Corp. has signed long-term contracts with Rio Tinto Energy America and Peabody Energy for coal with less sulfur and mercury from the [...]

The huge tires that keep the global mining industry rolling are in short supply, causing operators of the Centralia coal mine to rethink the way they do business at the sprawling, 10,000-acre mine that hugs the Thurston-Lewis county line.
As the demand for raw materials such as coal and metals grows to feed the thirsty, growing [...]