Miners can't find work, leave town
By Jennifer Crowe
Erin O'Brien is getting ready for the flood of families she expects to be at her door this winter needing help to buy food and pay the rent.
O'Brien is the social services director in White Pine County where Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd., quit digging at its Robinson Mine in June. Although laid-off workers still are receiving severance pay, many of those people will need her help at the year's end, when that money runs out.
The more than 400 displaced workers each received a minimum of two months' salary and an additional 60 days' paid leave from the mine. Some got more, depending on years of service, salary ranking and unused vacation.
"Most won't qualify for help until that money is gone, but we're getting a lot of calls from people who think they're going to need help soon," O'Brien said. "Our agency can only provide help once, so we'll be doing a lot more referrals to other agencies."
The ups and downs of a mining community are clearly reflected in the rise and fall of demand for food, housing and medical assistance. When the Robinson mine in Ruth reopened four years ago and created several hundred jobs, O'Brien, said her caseload dropped by half.
On the other side, when Battle Mountain Gold laid workers off in the beginning of 1998, Bonnie Miller was swamped with people needing help to buy food. Miller, coordinator of Lander County's Women Infants and Children nutritional program, said more layoffs scheduled for October and April likely will send her caseload up again. She averages between 150 and 180 clients at a time.
WIC provides families with money for food staples and educates people how to provide a nutritionally-balanced diet on limited resources.
"I'm keeping my head above water now, but for a while there it was really hectic," she said. "I added 30 new files in about two weeks."
Now that unemployment benefits have expired, many of the laid-off mine workers haven't been able to get new jobs and have left town. Miller said: "I'd say probably 20 clients have been terminated in the last couple of months."
A welfare winter "I think WIC is going to be more important for a lot of people this winter because of the bad economic situation here," Miller said.
Bruce Hunt, who had worked as an electrician at the BHP mine in Ruth, said many people aren't yet affected by the layoffs. Hunt has seen the fluctuations of Ely mining in the 30-plus years he's lived there, and although this time the company has done more to give laid off workers a helping hand, he said it's always tough when the town's major industry goes into a slump.
"I don't think the impact has hit the town yet," he said. "People are still getting paid so life has gone on like usual. Come back later this year and I bet all that will have changed."
Lisa Anderson, a single mom with three kids, said she's hoping she won't need public assistance to keep her family going this winter. Anderson has lived in Ely for more than a decade and doesn't want to move just because the mine closed and she lost her job.
"We're being pretty frugal right now to make sure we make it at least through the holidays," Anderson said. "After that, I'm just not sure."
Although some social service agencies in White Pine County are expecting increased demand, the mine closure has lowered the caseloads of others, at least temporarily. Karen Cameron, coordinator for Ely's WIC program, said 15 families dropped out of the program and left town when the mine closed. But like the other agencies, she expects to see a jump sometime this winter.
"It's hard to say what will happen now," Cameron said. "Until the severance pay runs out, we probably won't see an increase."
She has about 300 families in the program now and can accommodate as many as 500 before she would have to start a waiting list.
"I can handle another 100 to 150 families without a problem," Cameron said. "People have the misconception WIC is a welfare program and they won't qualify. A family of five can make up to $3,000 a month gross and still qualify for WIC. W e're doing a lot of outreach to let people know this is available to them."
Service workers hit, too:
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"They're no longer spending money in the community, and service industries have started cutting back on the hours they give employees," she said.
Wynan said she sees some of her earlier clients return, "maybe not for cash assistance but for food stamps because they're just not making the money they did."
Although new welfare restrictions have put limits on how long people can collect public assistance, Wynan said she doesn't expect people to be out on the street. She has only one case in her district where the family no longer will be eligible for aid after the first of the year because they've reached the limit, a situation that has nothing to do with a mine closure.
O'Brien said White Pine social service agencies began meeting when news of the mine closure first spread earlier this year. The different groups are trying to work together and figure out how to share a limited amount of money and other resources. White Pine County Social Services, Nevada Welfare, Job Opportunities in Nevada, Head Start, Tribal Social Services, Support Inc. - a local domestic violence shelter - and a number of local churches have met several times this summer. "
We're seeing a lot of cooperation among agencies and that's a first," O'Brien said.