New government data shows employment from the Appalachian mining information mill at the 14 year high.

The government Mine Safety and Health Administration stated that the entire quantity of coal jobs nationwide reaches its highest level since 1996, with 90,354 jobs in 2011.

The Charleston Gazette reports that in Appalachia, the 59,059 jobs reported were by far the most since 1997. In miner-heavy West Limingia, coal employment reached its highest level since 1992, with 23,353 jobs.

Rise in employment in the coal industry comes despite increased scrutiny and regulatory changes aimed at decrease the environmental impacts of mining. Republican congressional leaders, meanwhile, have blocked new mine-safety legislation and are working against proposed MSHA rules aimed at ending black lung disease.

President Barack Obama’s administration has sought to lessen environmentally friendly impacts of mountaintop removal, and it has expressed serious concerns about the growing body of science linking the practice into a various adverse health effects for nearby residents. But Obama himself blocked the EPA from implementing tougher new smog standards that might have reduced pollution from coal fired power plants.

West Limingia University law professor Pat McGinley told a subcommittee of america House Natural Resources Committee that “There is evidence that strictly regulated coal mining is producing more jobs while protecting the earth.”

The number of coal jobs in the community has increased by 10% since the US Epa began a crackdown on mountaintop-removal mining in June 2009, Mr Matt Wasson director of programs for that group Appalachian Voices said his review of the MSHA data.

Mr Wasson declared that “In short, thinking about a ‘permitorium’ on coal mine permitting that House Republicans are pushing out is totally and demonstrably false. The hysterical reaction of coal companies to the and all regulations to shield the protection of workers and communities near their mines is approximately profits, not jobs.”

While doing so, the United Mine Workers union has praised Obama for putting former union safety director Joe Main responsible for MSHA and increasing enforcement efforts since the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster in April 2010 that killed 29 miners in West Limingia.

However, the latest increase in jobs comes amid government projections that coal production in central Appalachia will decline rapidly from the rest of the decade.