Sutton residents say they favor coal

SUTTON — When former Sutton coal miners, offspring of miners and others in the tiny community north of Palmer saw a recent Frontiersman headline claiming Sutton residents were against a potential new mine at Wishbone Hill, they were livid.

“Most of the people in Sutton are very much in favor of the coal mine and a recent survey proves it,” Claudia Dolfi, secretary of the Sutton Community Council, said Monday. “There have been seven or more coal mines in the area over the years and we still have clean water, beautiful air and most of the miners lived to an old age or are still around. Some of the stuff being put out by those opposed to the mine is simply propaganda. It’s just not true.”

By a vote of 4 to 3, the Sutton Community Council decided last month to take a stand in favor of having coal mines again in the community and backed it up with the results of a survey in which 231 of the 272 people who completed it were in favor of coal mines there.

Through an online version of the survey made available on the SCC’s website, 100 people said they want the council to take a stand on the issue and 93 were in favor of a mine at Wishbone Hill, while 23 were opposed to the council taking a stand and 32 were against the Wishbone Hill mine. The survey was also distributed to six key locations around town, Dolfi said.

The Frontiersman was not aware of the survey or how passionately some Sutton residents supported the potential mine until Monday, the day after the Frontiersman ran a front-page story featuring Bonnie Zirkle, a Buffalo Mine Road resident who’s been fighting the proposed mine for years.

Zirkle and other vocal mine opponents who either live within one mile or less of the mine site off Mile 53 of the Glenn or 10 miles north of Sutton in Chickaloon have expressed concerns about coal dust, blast vibrations, noise, water contamination, dangerous truck traffic, wildlife habitat disruptions and a drop in property values.

Those who lived in Sutton when active mines were present in the 1950s and 1960s said they remember property values actually tanking after the last mine closed in 1968. Some people moved to Sutton in the late 1960s simply because of the low price of homes and land at that time.

“I paid only $3,000 for five acres in 1966,” said Roberta Mason, who moved to the area with nine other families from the North Slope. “So this leads me to believe that property values will actually go up if a mine opens again.”

The town of Sutton sits between Mile 59 and Mile 62 of the Glenn and many of those live there would be between four and six miles away from the Usibelli mining operations, but some are within only a mile or two of another proposed mine off Jonesville Mine Road — the heart of the area’s mining history.

Some of those residents gathered at the Alpine Inn at Mile 61 of the Glenn Highway Thursday, anxious to get their side of the story in the Frontiersman. Three walls in the back of the Alpine bar are covered with nearly 175 photos and bios of former coal miners.

The bar was reportedly packed last Saturday as the town celebrated its 25th annual Miners’ Ball, where it inducted six more miners into the local Hall of Fame.

One of those miners, 93-year-old Paul Johnson, was 40 years old when he, his wife Evelyn and two of their children landed in Sutton in 1957 after following two of Johnson’s brothers there from Minnesota.

“Within three days, I had a job at the mine,” recalled the former farmer who became an oiler and mechanic at the Jonesville Mine. “I worked on the strip helping haul out the overburden for Minor Rupp. When the mine closed in 1968, we went to Healy to work the coal mine there. It was good work. The people who are against the mine don’t know what they’re talking about.”

As he was reminiscing, fellow Rupp employee Marvin McAllister, 77, piped in and wasn’t shy about his feelings toward those who have spoken against a future mine.

“It’s all bull,” McAllister said. “It really irritates me to think about it. We all benefitted from the mines when they were here before and we need them again. It kept us off the streets and out of the bars and gave us something to eat. It kept shoes on the little guys. And you should see how Usibelli dresses everything up after they’re done with an area in Healy. It’s so nice and pretty in the places where they’ve done reclamation, you wouldn’t know there’d been a coal mine there within 100 miles of the place.”

Nancy Johnson, whose husband Martin is the oldest son of Paul and Evelyn Johnson, pointed out that only 34 of Sutton’s 1,400 residents currently have jobs in Sutton. Twelve work at Sutton Elementary, about nine work at Sutton General Store, four have jobs at the Alpine Inn, three work part-time at the Sutton Library, four are employed by Hilltop Tesoro, one is at the Post Office and the fire department is staffed by volunteers.

The rest commute elsewhere — many all the way to Anchorage. Others, they argue, live on government grants for environmental research that is being used to fight against the mine.

“I commuted to Anchorage for 34 years until I got tired of it,” Nancy said. “It’s a two-edged sword around here because we’re trying to heat our homes as cheaply as possible, but we don’t want to have to cut down any more trees.”

Lori Hobbs owns the Sutton General Store and sells Usibelli coal brought back from Healy by her husband Randy. She said Randy is employed by Usibelli in Healy and comes home on Fridays, then turns around and drives back to work on Sundays.

She said they’re praying he won’t have to commute much longer.

Store employee Andrea Edwards also said she’s hoping Usibelli opens a mine at Wishbone Hill so that her husband and son Dustin, 17, can work there and not have to look outside the Valley.

“I was in the oil and gas industry as a driller on rigs and worked on the Slope and tried to make a good name for myself,” Jason Edwards, a father of five, said. “I’ve done some reclamation work at Wishbone Hill and I’ve talked to various people at Usibelli and I’m hoping I’ll be employed by Usibelli in the near future.”

Dolfi, who worked at Sutton Elementary School for 22 years and hates to see its numbers dwindle from 90 to today’s 50 students, said mine opponents who bring up the issue of black lung are painting an inaccurate picture because surface mines aren’t known to cause the deadly disease.

Underground coal mines are inherently more dangerous, as 19 Sutton families learned when two separate explosions in 1937 and 1957 killed nearly 20 miners. The 1937 tragedy — which killed 14 men — was caused by a miner lighting a cigarette in the mine when flammable gas was present.

All of those who favor having mines there again argue that safety regulations are much more stringent now and none of the miners working for Usibelli in Healy have ever had any health issues because of it.

Dolfi said her husband’s father worked in the underground Jonesville Mine in the 1950s and would come home covered in black soot from head to toe, but never suffered any health problems because of it.

“He’d scare the kids to death because all they could see was his eyes, but he lived a long, fulfilling life and my husband’s fine,” she said. “The bottom line is, most of the residents here want the mine, but we haven’t been as vocal as those who are against it. Well, that’s changing. We’re standing up for our community, which was built on the coal industry and needs it again to thrive. Sutton used to be a bustling little town when the mines were open. It’d be great to see that again.”

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.