Fifteen years ago, many citizens of Jefferson County rallied together against a proposal to construct a high-tension electric line through the county.

The Potomac Appalachian Transmission Highline (PATH) was advocated for by power companies, who said it would be needed for the nation’s future electric power needs. But it actually wasn’t, and so, thankfully, citizen power prevailed. After three years of intense debate, the project was abandoned.

Now, a successor project is again being proposed. This time it’s supposed to help nearby northern Virginia attract “data centers.” But (fortunately for us) not everybody in northern Virginia wants a lot of data centers, as they are noisy and take up a lot of space.

Some folks in other parts of West Virginia support the new PATH (I haven’t come across the new name yet, so I’m using the old one), because it will help prop up the coal industry. I think the last thing our state needs is a propped up coal industry. That industry will soon die at the hands of the market, and we will need a replacement.

I refer you to Harry Caudill’s book, “Night comes to the Cumberlands” (1962). Caudill was a small-town lawyer in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, who served three terms in Kentucky’s House of Representatives.

In the book’s introduction, Caudill says, “Coal has always cursed the land in which it lies. When men begin to wrest it from the earth it leaves a legacy of foul streams, hideous slag heaps and polluted air. It peoples this transformed land with blind and crippled men and with widows and orphans. It is an extractive industry which takes all away and restores nothing. It mars but never beautifies. It corrupts but never purifies.”

For decades, our state has had the lowest education levels, the worst health statistics and the lowest (or close to it) per-capita income in the nation. We have some of the most polluted streams in the good old United States of America.

When Bob Wise was governor, about 20 years ago, he said, “We’ve got about 30 years worth of coal.” He knew we needed a better-educated population, to attract the kinds of jobs that were to be created in the future. That’s why he proposed the PROMISE scholarship program, which guaranteed every high school student with approximately a “B” average full tuition at a West Virginia college or university. Now, that scholarship doesn’t provide anywhere near the full cost of tuition at a public university like Shepherd.

Wise was prophetic. West Virginia, which had over 100,000 active coal miners in 1950, now has about 10,000. The coal seams that remain are small, and most won’t exist a few years from now. Cases of Black Lung disease are on the rise.

The folks who still work in that industry need and deserve our help in finding replacement jobs of roughly equal pay. Those jobs can be found, if our state’s leaders are willing to look for them.

But I believe it would be the height of folly to think that the coal industry can be revived. It cannot.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.