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The Jobs Project: Unemployed Coal Miners Install Solar Panels In West Virginia http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1297001073
A group devoted to creating alternative energy jobs in Central Appalachia is building a first for West Virginia's southern coalfields region this week - a set of rooftop solar panels, assembled by unemployed and underemployed coal miners and contractors.
The 40- by 15-foot solar array going up on a doctor's office in Williamson is significant not for its size but for its location: It signals to an area long reliant on mining that there can be life beyond coal....
The Jobs Project teamed up about a year ago with a solar energy company from the Eastern Panhandle, Mountain View Solar & Wind of Berkeley Springs, to develop a privately funded job-training program. The 12 trainees are earning $45 an hour for three days of work, while some local laborers are earning $10 an hour helping out.
Mountain View owner Mike McKechnie is also buying all his electrical supplies from a local business.
"We are not funded by any state organization. We're doing this as a business because we want to grow the solar infrastructure and industry," McKechnie says. "We're West Virginians, and we think it's important. There's a need here that's not being met."
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[Read more stories about:
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'Doc Jim says:
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"there can be life beyond coal" has a bell-like tone, doesn't it?
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