DUNGANNON — Residents are waiting for the next step in a proposed logging project in the Jefferson National Forest. The proposed timber sale, located on Dry Creek near Dungannon, was first announced last year. But the logging and burning of about 370 acres of wood in the Jefferson National Forest has been postponed while District Ranger Ron Bush of the Clinch Ranger District revises an environmental assessment, according to The Clinch Coalition, a group opposed to the project.

In August, Bush sent a letter to residents living near the site stating that he was withdrawing the project and revising the environmental assessment of the project. “The Forest Service has told members of the public that it intends to proceed with the project but would provide an additional 30-day period during which the public could raise objections before the agency makes a new decision,” according to The Clinch Coalition.

“Area residents and conservationists call for Ranger Bush to use this time to step back, to significantly reduce the scope of the project, and to fully address all of the serious concerns raised by the public, including concerns about logging on steep slopes, landslides, flooding, scarring the landscape from the intensive, heavily concentrated logging and burning operations, and the need for protecting the area for recreation, fishing and hunting, and for protecting rare species downstream,” said Diana Withen, president of The Clinch Coalition.

In July, the coalition and residents of Dungannon filed an appeal of the proposed logging plan. Residents said the many steep slopes, if scarred by logging and burning, could result in landslides and flooding. Bush could not be reached for comment.

Kingsport Times/News September 18, 2007
By CLIFFORD JEFFERY cjeffery@timesnews.net

This will be worth at least 2 cups of coffee for me this mornin:

Burning the Future:

See our website for more information about the proposed Cliffside Powerplant or air pollution in general.

What: Join us for a CITIZEN’S hearing in Charlotte to speak out against expansion of the Cliffside Power Plant!

When: Tuesday October 16, 2007, 7pm

Why: To ask DAQ to deny Duke Energy’s Air Permit

Where: Myers Park Baptist Church, 1931 Selwyn Avenue – Charlotte, NC 28207

If you missed the NC Department of Air Quality hearing on Sept 18th in Forest City, NC, you still have a change to voice your opposition to the power plant expansion. Join us on October 16th, 2007 at a CITIZEN’S hearing against a new coal fired power. We’ll record everyone’s comments and send them to DAQ for inclusion in the official permit application.

As in September, Appalachian Voices will be organizing vans to take YOU to the public hearing from Boone, Asheville, and Charlotte. If you are interested in carpooling with us, please contact us at (828) 262-1500 or email {encode=”caitlen@appvoices.org” title=”caitlen@appvoices.org”} no later than Noon, Monday, October 15th. If you breathe air, we highly encourage you to attend.

We need your help on October 16th! Recently, the North Carolina Utilities Commission announced plans to allow Duke Energy to build a new 800-megawatt coal-fired power plant at its Cliffside facility in Rutherfordton, NC. If completed, this power plant will emit 312 million tons of carbon dioxide, the primary pollutant responsible for global warming, over its fifty year lifespan.

That’s equal to putting an additional one million cars on the roads for the next 50 years!

The state Department of Air Quality (DAQ) is now reviewing Duke’s air pollution permit application—the last significant hurdle for Duke before they start building the new coal plant.

Please join Appalachian Voices and other community members in taking this opportunity to tell DAQ to deny Duke’s air pollution permit. It is critical that we have a strong showing at this hearing, to let DAQ know that more coal power will take North Carolina in the wrong direction.

If you are unable to attend the citizens’ hearing but still want your VOICE heard please send all written comments to the following address by by October 31, 2007:

Donald Van der Vaart
ATTN: Air Permits Section
NC DAQ
1641 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1641

OR

donald.vandervaart@ncmail.net

By letting our voice be heard, we can do our part to stop global warming and create a clean, safe energy future for North Carolina, the nation and the world.

- – - – -

See our website for more information about the proposed Cliffside Powerplant or air pollution in general.

Our dear friend Jeff Biggers points us in the direction of this powerful New Yorker ad.

This gist of which is:

THERE IS A ‘SILVER BULLET’ FOR SOLVING GLOBAL WARMING…

——————————————————————————–

NO MORE COAL

Check it out.

I just dug this out of a “pile” of files on my desktop and thought it might be of interest. In June 2007, a group of organizations wrote a letter to the US Senate opposing any subsidies for coal-to-liquid industry expansion.

Appalachian Voices, Earthjustice, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, US Public Interest Research Group, Western Organization of Resource Councils

June 19, 2007

Dear Senator,

On behalf of our millions of members and supporters, we are writing to express our continued opposition to any mandates or incentives that would promote a coal-to-liquids industry, including loan guarantees, price collars, tax incentives, long term purchasing contracts, or other similar measures. With many options available to address global warming and dependence on oil, we cannot support subsidies for a technology that increases global warming pollution, costs billions in taxpayer dollars, increases coal mining, and uses massive amounts of freshwater.

Global warming is one of the greatest challenges facing the planet today. At a time when leading scientists are calling for significant reductions in global warming pollution, liquid coal produces double the global warming emissions of conventional petroleum fuels. Studies show that even with carbon capture and storage the global warming emissions of liquid coal range from 4% to 25% above our current fuel.

The harmful upstream impacts of creating a liquid coal industry would be significant. Large-scale deployment of coal-to-liquids would exacerbate the devastating effects of coal mining felt in many communities and ecosystems, including polluted air and water and devastated landscapes. Replacing 10% of our petroleum use with liquid coal would require a 43% increase in coal mining. Already the most environmentally destructive mining practice, mountaintop removal mining, has permanently buried more than 1,200 miles of streams and flattened over 500,000 acres in the Appalachian Mountains.

Furthermore, a study released earlier this year by MIT showed that to replace just 10% of our nation’s liquid transportation fuels with liquid coal would require a $70 billion investment. Our nation’s experiment with liquid coal synfuels in the 1980s was a major economic failure that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Now is the time to provide true vision in our nation’s energy policy, not relive the mistakes of the past.

Scientists have warned that we need to reduce global warming pollution 80% by 2050, a doable 2% decrease per year. Reaching this goal will require us to develop and use transportation fuels that have a substantially lower carbon emissions footprint than today’s petroleum-based fuels, not increase our use of dirtier fuels. Every public or private dollar invested in coal-to-liquids is a dollar unavailable for investment in efficient vehicles, improved transportation systems, smart growth and sustainably-made renewable fuels.

For these reasons, we urge you to oppose any liquid coal provisions that would provide mandates, loan guarantees, tax incentives, long term contracts, or any other incentives to jumpstart the industry.

Sincerely,

Mary Anne Hitt
Executive Director
Appalachian Voices

Marty Hayden
Legislative Director
Earthjustice

Erich Pica
Director, Domestic Campaigns
Friends of the Earth

Edward W. Stowe III
Senior Legislative Secretary
Friends Committee on National Legislation

John Coequyt
Energy Policy Specialist
Greenpeace USA

Michele Boyd
Legislative Director, Energy Program
Public Citizen

Debbie Sease
National Campaigns Director
Sierra Club

Alden Meyer
Director of Strategy and Policy
Union of Concerned Scientists

Anna Aurilio
Director, Washington, DC Office
US Public Interest Research Group

Patrick Sweeney
Regional Director
Western Organization of Resource Councils

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is using the same powers his predecessor Eliot Spitzer used to investigate corruption on Wall Street. But instead of financial markets, Cuomo has his eyes set on five power companies: AES Corporation, Dominion, Dynegy, Peabody Energy and Xcel Energy. New York will investigate whether these companies are failing to disclose hidden costs for new coal-fired power plants to their investors.

In letters accompanying the subpoenas, the attorney general’s office asked whether investors received adequate information about the potential financial liabilities of carbon dioxide emissions that exacerbate climate change.

“Any one of the several new or likely regulatory initiatives for CO2 emissions from power plants — including state carbon controls, E.P.A.’s regulations under the Clean Air Act, or the enactment of federal global warming legislation — would add a significant cost to carbon-intensive coal generation,” the letters said.

Its refreshing to see these creative strategies used in a system that is stacked completely in favor of large coal-companies (on both the extraction-side and the emissions-side of using coal.)

The coal-companies are pathetically funny in their attempts to play victim while destroying Appalachia and emitting lethal levels of carbon:

[A Peadbody spokesman] called the New York action “outrageous,” adding, “The legal system was designed to protect — not harass — those such as Peabody who are providing clean energy solutions for America.”

…Peabody, by the way, is the worlds largest coal company and is already doing business in Beijing, where people outnumber environmental regulations 1 billion-to-one. Not to mention that they are behind new power plants in Illinois, Kentucky, and New Mexico.

I could cry, but since they are getting their butts dragged in front of an unsympathetic court (for once), I think I’ll just laugh…maybe throw in a Snoopy dance.

APPALACHIA – A major new national poll finds that a strong majority of Americans oppose a new Bush Administration rule change easing environmental protections and expanding mountaintop removal coal mining. The survey, by the Civil Society Institute, was released in conjunction with the launch of 700mountains.org, a new website where the public can submit comments opposing the rule change.

The change to the buffer zone rule was announced by the Bush Administration in late August, and would dramatically weaken a provision of the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act that currently prohibits mining activity within 100 feet of a stream. Coal field advocates say the change will remove one of the primary legal obstacles to the unchecked expansion of mountaintop removal.

Some key results of the poll included:

- 2 out of 3 Americans (65%) stated they opposed the efforts of the Bush Administration to weaken the buffer zone rule, which prohibits mining activity within 100 feet of a stream. When respondents learned more about the level of destruction that would be caused by this rule change, half of those who were initially supportive of the rule change changed their position.
- 9 out of 10 people (88%) agreed with this statement: “Before the United States puts in place new regulations to permit more coal mining, it should first make sure that coal mines and coal mining practices are safe for miners, nearby communities and the environment.”
- 77% of Americans feel it would be better for the Bush Administration to concentrate first on energy conservation before resorting to more mountaintop removal.
- Almost half of Americans, 45%, said that they had heard of mountaintop removal unprompted.
- 71% of people said they would be opposed to mountaintop removal on a mountain within 50 miles of their home, and 50% of those surveyed said they would strongly oppose such mining.
- Women were less likely than men to support expanded mountaintop removal.
- Opposition to mountaintop removal was bipartisan among Republicans and Democrats.

The poll was conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation for the Civil Society Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

See our website for more information about the proposed Cliffside Powerplant or air pollution in general.

What: Public Hearing about Duke Energy Cliffside Power Plant Air Permit

When: Tuesday, September 18th, 6pm

Why: To ask DAQ to deny Duke Energy’s Air Permit

Where: Chase High School, 1603 Chase High School Rd, Forest City, NC (45 minutes east of Hendersonville)

Appalachian Voices will be organizing vans to take YOU to the public hearing from Boone, Asheville, and Charlotte. If you are interested in carpooling with us, please contact us at (828) 262-1500 or email {encode=”caitlen@appvoices.org” title=”caitlen@appvoices.org”} no later than Noon, Monday, September 17. If you breathe air, we highly encourage you to attend.

We need your help on September 18! Recently, the North Carolina Utilities Commission announced plans to allow Duke Energy to build a new 800-megawatt coal-fired power plant at its Cliffside facility in Rutherfordton, NC. If completed, this power plant will emit 312 million tons of carbon dioxide, the primary pollutant responsible for global warming, over its fifty year lifespan.

That’s equal to putting an additional one million cars on the roads for the next 50 years!

The state Department of Air Quality (DAQ) is now reviewing Duke’s air pollution permit application—the last significant hurdle for Duke before they start building the new coal plant.

Please join Appalachian Voices and other community members in taking this opportunity to tell DAQ to deny Duke’s air pollution permit. It is critical that we have a strong showing at this hearing, to let DAQ know that more coal power will take North Carolina in the wrong direction.

If you are unable to attend the hearing but still want your VOICE heard please send all written comments to the following address by by October 31, 2007:

Donald Van der Vaart
ATTN: Air Permits Section
NC DAQ
1641 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1641

OR

donald.vandervaart@ncmail.net

By letting our voice be heard, we can do our part to stop global warming and create a clean, safe energy future for North Carolina, the nation and the world.

- – - – -

See our website for more information about the proposed Cliffside Powerplant or air pollution in general.

The VA General Assembly meets for 30-90 days a year to discuss an vote on THOUSANDS of bills that affect the future of the Commonwealth of Virginia! This past February, Appalachian Voices staff and volunteers paid the oldest legislative body in the country a visit. We presented THIS REPORT and asked reps to reconsider plans to re-regulate the energy market in the state.

Read the full lobby piece to find out why….

The cost of constructing a new coal-fired power plant has increased by 50% in the last year alone.

Appalachian coal production is declining, coal prices are rising, and we’re importing coal from Indonesia.

Now Dominion is promoting a plan to re-regulate electricity markets that would put all the risks onto Virginia’s rate payers.

Are We Heading Into a “Perfect Storm?”

A lot of news to be catching up on after a short break for much of our staff.

I wanted to share this great piece by our friend Jeff Biggers over at Salon.com, its called “In Coal Blood,” and chronicles the hardship of the miners in Utah, Sago, and elsewhere, along with a little family history from Mr. Biggers, who is one of the best writers on coal issues that we’ve got.

Check it out