Coal layoffs leave Wyoming community grappling with good, bad of energy transition

KEMMERER—Linda Slovernick’s husband works at the Kemmerer coal mine that recently laid off 28 workers. Though he survived the cut, her husband is “the breadwinner of the household,” Slovernick told WyoFile, leaving her worried about the possibility of more layoffs.

After living in Kemmerer for decades, the couple’s home is almost paid off — a luxury in a skyrocketing housing market — and they don’t want to have to move. Kemmerer is their home. It’s where they plan to retire. If her husband does get laid off, it’s doubtful he will find another job that pays as well as the mine, said Slovernick, who manages the JCPenney store in downtown Kemmerer.

“You always worry about it,” she said on a sunny day as customers trickled in asking about special deals. “When there’s one round of layoffs, you worry there’s going to be another.

“This coal mine has been the life of this town for decades,” Slovernick continued, adding that it has helped sustain the local economy even when oil and gas go bust. “It would be a devastating blow. The power plant and coal mine provide steady work.”

Nobody knows the fate of the Kemmerer coal mine, which has shed 92 jobs since the fourth quarter of 2017, according to federal data, and nearly half its annual coal production. The company, Kemmerer Operations LLC, isn’t offering details, and local officials say management has kept them in the dark.

One thing is certain, however. The mine’s biggest customer — the nearby Naughton power plant, which accounts for about 42% of the mine’s coal production, according to federal documents — will stop burning coal by the end of the year as its owner, PacifiCorp, converts the plant to natural gas fuel. One Kemmerer coal miner who spoke with WyoFile indicated the mine might also lose a coal contract with a power plant in Utah. Unless the mine can secure sizable new contracts, and soon, the mine’s future may be in jeopardy. 

“Those layoffs are scary,” Kemmerer Mayor Robert Bowen said. “I don’t know how much [Kemmerer coal miners] make, but say they make $50,000 a year — that’s a $1.4 million loss to our local economy. That’s huge for a town this size.”

These are strange times for the 3,000 residents of Kemmerer and neighboring Diamondville — beyond the dread over recent layoffs and uncertainty around the mine.

Five years ago, after talk of closing the Naughton plant first emerged, many locals were resigned to the impending economic disaster without two major economic engines — the power plant and the mine that fuels it.

That all changed — sort of — when, in the fall of 2021, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates and the nuclear power company he co-founded, TerraPower, announced it would build the $4 billion Natrium nuclear power plant here. The company chose the community for the demonstration project because Naughton’s owner, PacifiCorp, tentatively planned to close the power plant. Natrium, a beacon of a new age of nuclear power generation, according to its promoters, will “plug into” Naughton’s existing electric utility infrastructure as well as the workforce at the power plant and coal mine.

“It’s given us all hope. A lot of hope,” Rosie’s Pizzeria and Sports Bar owner Phillip Viviano said. “You saw the community go from yellow lawns to green lawns, to people painting houses and putting new roofs on. It meant everything to us, because we love it here. We’re invested here.”

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil embarked on a $400 million “carbon capture” expansion at its Shute Creek natural gas plant 50 miles north near the tiny town of LaBarge. There’s talk of new commercial wind and solar energy projects, a major electric transmission construction project and, in recent years, two different companies have pitched coal-to-products proposals that would make up for the Kemmerer coal mine’s pending contract loss with PacifiCorp’s Naughton power plant.

Yet, for all the promises and a sense of economic jubilation, doubts linger alongside a thick veneer of skepticism that, perhaps, is part of a boom-and-bust town’s DNA. 

The coal-to-products projects, for example, do not appear to be on track to consume coal from the mine before PacifiCorp shuts down the two remaining coal-burning units at Naughton later this year.

Construction jobs related to Natrium and other industrial developments are temporary, many locals note, while others worry that coal miners’ earth-moving skills won’t qualify them to land a permanent job at the nuclear power plant, which is slated to begin operating in 2030.

“They’re going to bring their own people — I mean, it’s a nuclear plant,” said a Kemmerer coal miner while enjoying dinner at Rosie’s Pizzeria. “You don’t just go from running [earth-moving] machinery to running a nuclear plant.”

The miner, who survived the recent round of layoffs, asked WyoFile not to use his name to avoid jeopardizing what already feels like tenuous employment at the mine.

Now in his 50’s, he has worked at natural gas processing plants and says he’s no longer interested in that type of work. “It’s more of a young man’s game,” he said. 

Like others at the mine who see retirement within reach, he’s determined to ride it out at the mine where the pay and benefits promise a decent retirement — if only the mine’s owners can replace the Naughton contract.

To shutter coal-fired power plants — Naughton or otherwise — is a fool’s errand, he said, that will not only make electricity more expensive but snuff out good-paying coal mining jobs that have supported communities for decades. There’s no reason, the miner said, why electric power brokers shouldn’t maintain the coal-fired power plant, the Kemmerer coal mine and the Natrium nuclear plant.

“I don’t see why you can’t have more than one power source,” he said. “We’re living in a time when our government says we want to be energy independent. Well, how are you going to be energy independent if you’re going to start shutting down coal plants and coal mines?”

Tempered optimism

As the coal miner enjoyed his meal, a pair of other miners talked shop over beers, while other men jawed about guns and favorite hunting spots while a group of construction workers huddled around a table chatting in Spanish.

“On Friday and Saturday night, this place will be shoulder-to-shoulder because people come out,” said Viviano, Rosie’s owner. “As soon as this boom really starts, it will be every night.”

Originally from southern California, Viviano first made his way to western Wyoming working rigs on the Pinedale Anticline. He fell in love with the wide-open spaces and small, neighborly communities. A jack-of-all-trades, Viviano is a small business entrepreneur at heart who regards empty storefronts and vacant homes as opportunity.

When he first stepped into Rosie’s, he was immediately overcome with its charm. The union watering hole — long a “second home” to workers from the power plant and coal mine — was in disrepair. Locals lamented to him that it was only open for one hour a day. Somebody, perhaps Viviano, the previous owners suggested, should revive the place. 

Even while many in the community seemed to accept the fate of another bust — coal mine bankruptcies were ravaging rural communities across the nation during President Donald Trump’s first term — Viviano believed Kemmerer “couldn’t fail.” He spiffied up the place, decorated it with baseball memorabilia, installed pinball machines and classic arcade games, and built a kitchen.

“I brought it back online seven days a week to let people enjoy it,” Viviano said. “People come in here and they go, ‘This was always a union bar. We weren’t allowed in here.’ Now it’s open for everybody. ‘We’re still a union bar,’ I tell the boys out there. We support them boys.”

Viviano’s leap of faith on Rosie’s, and the community itself, has paid off — particularly since 2021 when TerraPower announced it had chosen Kemmerer as the location for its Natrium power plant. In fact, the Natrium project — which garnered national attention — has brought a sort of “heat” to the region, attracting businesses and entrepreneurs of all stripes and ambitions.

Beating the rush — in fact, arriving in town just one month before the Natrium announcement — was Seth Snyder, who grew up in the Bighorn Basin. Also an entrepreneur, Snyder, 27, owns a car wash/laundry mat, does freelance management for several businesses in town, and manages Airbnbs and flips homes.

“When I got here, it was a pretty big worry that we were going into a big bust,” Snyder told WyoFile. “This town had to make some changes or else we were going to see, you know, that ghost-town ideology start to come in.”

Even after the Natrium announcement — which comes with promises to offset job losses at the coal plant and coal mine while revitalizing the local economy — probably half the town remained skeptical, he said. Now that construction is underway, many wonder if the growing pains that come with an industrial construction boom will be worth it.

“If it does happen, it’s going to be a great economy-booster,” Snyder said. “But then we go, ‘What happens to the coal plant?'”

Boomtown pains

Growing pains in Kemmerer and Diamondville are already evident, even though Natrium’s estimated “peak” construction workforce of about 1,600 isn’t expected until 2028. Homes and storefronts have been snatched up by outside buyers sight-unseen, Snyder said, and housing prices have skyrocketed. 

“Even bringing 1,000 people in, we can’t handle that. Not in our current situation,” he said. “How do we deal with housing? Do we do temporary housing?”

Snyder says he has faith in local leadership, but an industrial boom brings challenges — a phenomenon that can overwhelm small communities.

“We know we’re going to see a large amount of people come in,” he said. “We have to hire more cops — you have to be able to patrol your streets. Then we’re going to plateau and people are going to leave once the [construction is] done. Now we have to fire cops. So it’s a really difficult situation to be in.”

Kemmerer Mayor Bowen confirmed Snyder’s suspicions. 

Local leaders are scouring for grant dollars to make long overdue road improvements — the pothole situation is so bad in parts of town that entire streets will have to be reconstructed. Though the freshwater system has plenty of capacity to serve a large influx of people, the sewer system is failing. The entire system needs to be replaced, according to Bowen, and the town still owes money on the failing system.

“We’re already at a point where we’re turning away industry, turning away business, because we don’t have the sewer capacity for them,” Bowen told WyoFile. “We don’t want to be turning businesses anyway. We want to invite everybody in. We want to grow. We need more permanent jobs.”

Making matters worse, according to Bowen, is the Wyoming Legislature’s recent 25% property tax cut. That saps desperately needed revenue for just about every public service in the community.

Back at Rosie’s, Viviano admits that for all of his optimism and hope for a new, flourishing economy, the boom presents a lot of hardships and challenges, especially for senior citizens and young families on limited incomes.

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“It’s amazing. It’s exciting. It’s good to see what’s happening,” Viviano said. “I feel like we’re on the front lines of getting America back on its feet.

“At the same time, I think we’re all a little fearful,” he continued. “The crime rate is going to trickle up. We’re going to have some guys here that are away from their families, their hearts are bleeding because they have to live on the road. They might come in here and get drunk one night and we might get a hole in the wall.”

Still, Viviano is an eternal optimist. For all the challenges facing the community, he sees opportunity.

“Kemmerer is a beautiful place. It’s got a river running through it. Does anybody know it’s got a river running through it!?” Viviano said. “When there’s a bike path down that river, you watch how the community will flourish — just like the flowers along the river banks. That’s what’s going to happen.”

After decades putting down roots in Kemmerer, Slovernick hopes her husband keeps his job in the coal mine long enough for her family to see that happen.