Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 5, 1990 TAG: 9005050154
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Boucher, about to spend a weekend hiking and canoeing in New River Trail State Park on his fifth annual excursion with outdoor writers, held news conferences in Bristol and Bluefield, W.Va., on recent developments in coal and tobacco economies.
He said a clean air bill to be considered in the House of Representatives starting May 14 will mean more than 1,500 new coal mine jobs a year starting in 1996 because of its acid rain provisions. He called it "the best news that we've had in decades for the coal economy in this area."
The House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which Boucher is a member, approved the acid rain provisions last month. The Senate has already passed a companion bill, and President Bush has said he would sign the legislation when it reaches him.
The legislation will require power plants to cut their emissions of sulfur dioxide, one of the causes of acid rain, by half in the next 10 years. But it gives them a lot of flexibility in how they do it, Boucher said.
A number of utility companies have already announced they would meet the new standards by turning to low-sulfur coal, the kind produced in Southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia, Boucher said. That will mean at least 1,500 direct new coal mine jobs annually by 1996 and, if enough other companies decide to comply the same way, the number could jump to 2,300 a year by then.
Since it is projected that each new coal industry job creates 2.5 to three indirect jobs in material and support services, he said, the total job gain in the Southwest Virginia coal counties could be 4,500 to 9,200 a year starting in 1996. He said these are in addition to general projected increases in tonnage and employment through general growth.
Boucher said there will still be plenty of potential employees for the diversified industries being sought for Southwest Virginia through industrial parks and marketing organizations now in place because there are at least as many people whose unemployment benefits have run out as there are listed in the region's unemployment statistics. He estimated that actual unemployment is twice as high as the official figures in the coalfields.
Coal is Virginia's second-largest export item, amounting to $1.7 billion in 1989, he said. First place went to Virginia tobacco with exports totaling $1.8 billion.
American tobacco exports increased by nearly 70 percent in the past three years, which has more than made up for the general 2 percent annual decline in smoking in this country, he said. Since passage of the 1986 Federal Tobacco Improvements Act, he said, tobacco imports have virtually stopped and burley tobacco inventories dropped from 600 million to less than 100 million pounds.
All that has resulted in tobacco farmers getting larger government quotas of how much they will be allowed to grow. "If I have a single message for tobacco farmers, it is that they should plant the entire quota they are assigned by the Department of Agriculture," Boucher said.
Production has averaged only about 80 percent of the assigned quotas in recent years, he said, due to three years of drought conditions and too much rain last year. He has heard farmers express concern that growing too much tobacco next season would depress the price, but insisted it would not. "The market will be there for the quota," he said.
In fact, if the quotas are not all planted, he said, cigarette companies have indicated they will start looking to overseas tobacco markets again.
Boucher doubted that cigarette consumption would drop off anytime soon in the export market as it has here. "In the countries in the Orient, which is our principal market today . . . there is a smoking culture," he said. "It's the way the U.S. was in the '40s and '50s."
In Japan, for example, 70 percent to 80 percent of all adults smoke, he said. Taiwan and South Korea are other markets that have opened up to American tobacco in recent years, Thailand is the next target, and steps will soon be taken to introduce American-made cigarettes into the Turkish market, he said.
Boucher has consistently fought new proposals to restrict tobacco that come before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on which he serves. "Everybody has to make a choice," he said. "Tobacco production in my congressional district is a $40 million business . . . If we had $40 million taken out of our economy, you'd have a lot of starving people."
by CNB