Washington, D.C (WTAP) – With less than a month until miners' benefits disappear, senators from the Mid-Ohio Valley are urging their Congressional colleagues to support the Miners' Protection Act.

WTAP first told you about this lapse in benefits in the fall of 2016.

More than 20,000 miners are at risk of losing health-care and pension benefits.

Back in December 2016, Congress was able to preserve those benefits for another four months.

Now, time is running out again and Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito is asking Congress to find a permanent solution to protect those benefits.

Capito says,

"This is something that has been historically promised. It's a lifetime benefit that the coal miners worked for and have worked many of them 40 years to reach this threshold, and to have it pulled out from under them is exceedingly unfair."

Capito is working with Senators Joe Manchin, Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown to pass the bill, which is currently in the hands of the Senate Finance Committee.