Another Round Of Layoffs At PBS Coals

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

December 13, 2012 | 11:39 AM

Another sign of a contracting market for coal: Pennsylvania-based PBS Coals is idling two mines and laying off 138 employees. The announcement comes five months after PBS laid off a quarter of its workforce.
The AP reports on the latest round of PBS layoffs:

A company official did not immediately return a call for comment on the announcement it is idling the Roytown and Hart mines about 60 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
But in a news release, the company again blamed softening demand for coal and tightening U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the layoffs.
Company President and CEO D. Lynn Shanks says “escalating costs and uncertainty generated by recently advanced EPA regulations and interpretations have created a challenging business climate for the entire coal industry.”