Mining above ground suits strip mining men

An Ohio coal miner says he would never mine coal the way his brothers do in West Virginia.
By MAYSOON ABDELRASUL
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
A northeastern Ohio man who earns his living from pulling coal from the ground said he has great empathy and respect for his West Virginia Coal mining brothers but would never again mine coal the way they do.
"You could never stick me in that hole in the ground," Rick Peppel, superintendent of mine operations at Buckeye Industrial in Stark County.
Peppel said working as a surface miner is less dangerous than working as an underground coal miner. He worked as a deep miner before and said he would never do it again.
"It's dark and wet in there. There is always a fear of the roof caving in and lack of oxygen. As a surface miner, I can see what's happening," he said.
Peppel said the two different types of mines are two different worlds.
The deep miners love their job because they get paid almost double what a surface miner gets paid. But he said he loves his job too. "It is just what people are accustomed to," Peppel said.
There are benefits to both types of mining, he said.
Surface miners won't go more than 100 feet underground. "It is economically not feasible," he said.
Surface miners strip the land and then reshape it to its original contour making more land available for housing and business, he said.
"Environmentalists hate us [surface miners]," he said, because the land is being used for its natural resources.
The world benefits from the mines.
"Everybody counts on us for electricity," he said. "Everyone turns on the light switch in the morning," he said.
The tour
Peppel recently took a reporter on a tour of the Berlin surface mine in Stark County. Entering the coal mine , a large orange sign that reads "Warning Explosives" faces him but doesn't phase him. "That doesn't scare me at all," he said.
Most of the day, he drives up and down muddy hills, around curvy narrow paths of this mini Grand Canyon.
Communicating with other miners through radios and cell phones, Peppel has his work cut out for him.
The men talk in deep voices and shout on their radios to send messages.
The messages do not resemble business calls. "I told him to stay away from the gas line because they are tearin' up the ground," he said. "Get a load of number ones." The loads of coal have different names depending on the size of the rock, he said.
With so many conversations, Peppel said he has learned to listen to only what he has to hear. "I zone the people out that I don't want to hear," he said.
His truck is filled with paperwork and maps and his car has become his office. One particular map shows where the ponds, oil wells, trails and paths are. He uses the map to guide his workers where to dig for coal.
His real office is a small white trailer that he rarely uses.
Driving around the coal mine on the muddy trails, Peppel said there is no point in trying to keep his truck clean.
This particular job was started in the 1950s. Back then, they didn't have the equipment they use today, so they did not do as much digging.
"They took the easy stuff. Now, we are doing the hard stuff," he said.