The effort to keep Hampton Roads air from suffering from a major new source of air and water pollution for next sixty years is picking up and your help is needed. On Tuesday Norfolk is going to vote whether to join the Consortium for Infant and Child Health (CINCH), The American Lung Association, Isle of Wight County, Southampton County, the Town of Surry and many others in opposing what could be Virginia’s largest coal-fired power plant built upwind of Hampton Roads.
If you live in Norfolk you can help steer the City Council in the right direction by sending a brief note or letter their way. You can do this easily by clicking here: http://wiseenergyforvirginia.org/norfolk/
The Norfolk City Council was originally going to vote last week but an apparent misunderstanding has led to a delay that is now allowing Norfolk Southern, which would benefit financially from the coal plant, to weigh in and offer their comments on the draft resolution of opposition. Please consider coming to their next meeting on Tuesday, April 24th. Get there by 6:45 to sign up to speak against the coal plant. You can read more about this unfortunate delay here: http://appvoices.org/2012/04/12/strange-happenings-in-norfolk/?
There are also efforts in Virginia Beach and Hampton City to pass resolutions of opposition to this massive polluting coal plant. (more…)
Thursday, April 12th, 2012 - posted by Kate Finneran
This Spring I was honored to be asked to go to LA on the Appalachian Treasures Tour to speak on living with the effects of mountaintop removal coal mining.
Beverly Walkup joined us on tour from beautiful Southern West Virginia.
Upon arrival at LAX I was met at the airport by my speaking partner, Lenny Kohm, who drove me to my hotel. Near the hotel I was surprised to see the oil storage drums in the LA area. With this many oil wells why was gas $4.39 a gallon near the airport I wondered. Later that day we went to the 3 story Wal-Mart that was decked out in Art deco design. I had never seen a three story Wal-Mart before.
Sunday was the first day of our tour. We were to meet with the East Yard Communities, a local LA environmental group, at the Echo Country Outpost. To my surprise we were greeted with bluegrass music played by “Triple Chicken Foot.” One of the players in the group was originally from Wheeling, WV.He is now an animator working on the Homer Simpson show. He plays bluegrass on the weekend with his friends. I also met a woman named Ana Guzman and her husband. We became fast friends. She told me how to tell when an avocado is ripe, something I wanted to know for a long time. She has an avocado tree in her backyard that produces about 400 avocados a year.
On Monday our stop was at UU Fullerton were it again proved to be interesting. One of the interesting questions was “why doesn’t the health department do something about the pollution?” and that is a good question. There was a woman there who was originally from Charleston WV and she told the group that what we were saying was true and it has been this way for many years. For more information on the health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining on Appalachian communities, please check out:The Human Cost of Coal.
Tuesday was a day off to explore the area. We had a radio interview with Nancy Pearlman who dose an environmental radio and television show in the LA area. That day we also seen the sites of Malibu Beach where I finally got to put my feet in the Pacific ocean for the first time. We also went to Hollywood and Beverly Hills!
Beverly Walkup of WV officially hits the West Coast!
Our final day was Wednesday and we ended the tour with a message to the All Saints Church in Beverly Hills. Again meeting very nice people including Barry, the pastor who had a rock & roll past, he was sound man for the group AC/DC. We also talked to Alexis Jolly who is a writer for the Dr. Oz show. Just goes to show you, you never know who you are going to meet on one of these trips.
I really enjoyed my time on the Appalachian Treasures Tour. It is a lot of work– but also very rewarding. This month they are heading to Washington State! For info about upcoming tours please check out theAppalachian Treasures tour.
Norfolk could be on the verge of becoming the fourth Hampton Roads locality to officially oppose the largest coal fired power plant ever proposed in Virginia. It appears, however, that a few strange events occurred in the last couple weeks that kept it from coming to a vote and could potentially make the resolution of opposition language weak or not happen at all.
Members of the public, several Norfolk City Council members and I, were under the impression (based on discussion at the previous meeting) that the council was going to vote whether or not to adopt a resolution of opposition during their most recent, April 10th, council meeting.
For some reason, that isn’t what happened.
The resolution made it onto the agenda for discussion but through an apparent miscommunication or misunderstanding it didn’t make it onto the agenda for an actual vote. This was quite a disappointment to the council members and Norfolk citizens who had been hoping to see it voted on this week.
You can see the discussion and frustration over the delay yourself in the YouTube video below of Tuesday’s meeting. Watch as long as you like but I think you’ll get the point in the first five minutes, or by minute 47.
During the discussion it was also revealed that the chairman of Norfolk Southern called the city on Monday and asked to be able to review the resolution and to provide comments on it. (For clarity’s sake, I should point out that the agenda was printed on Friday.) Given the delay and Norfolk Southern’s sudden interest in the city council’s actions, there is now a chance that the support for a resolution of opposition could be eroded by corporate interests. It is no secret that the rail line that would service the coal plant should it ever get built, is owned by Norfolk Southern and that the corporation has a financial interest in seeing the project go forward.
I found it troubling to hear reports that the presentation on the coal plant from staff was watered down at this full council meeting as compared to the presentation from staff to the Health, Education and Family two weeks earlier. You can view the most recent presentation here if you’d like. While I completely understand that staff must remain impartial and that their job is to leave it up to council to make the decision, I don’t think that impartiality means leaving out relevant and pertinent facts. I was disappointed that the presenter skipped over the fact that the town of Surry (the seat of Surry County) passed a unanimous resolution against the plant yet she pointed out that the resolutions passed by Isle of Wight and Southampton County were not unanimous. She also failed to mention the one study that used EPA methodologies to look at potential health affects which concluded that pollution from the coal plant would adversely affect the health of downwind residents. I think the council would want to know that the damage every year would include an estimated 16 cases of chronic bronchitis, 23 asthma-related emergency room visits, 26 premature deaths, 40 heart attacks, 442 asthma attacks, 3,340 lost work days, and 19,903 days in which people will have to reduce their activities because they are sick. One third of these health problems would be in Virginia, with the rest spread across the mid-Atlantic region. The total cost to society of these illnesses and deaths would be about $208 million a year—or more than $6 billion over a generation (30 years). For more information on the coal plant click here.
Also curious was the fact that at the previous meeting in late March, only one resolution had been discussed -an outright resolution of opposition to be presented for an up or down vote at the early April meeting. Without the consent or knowledge of the full city council, staff was directed to write two resolutions, one an outright resolution of opposition to the coal plant and the other a weaker letter expressing only concern and stating that the city would monitor the situation.
While the reason for the delay and for the drafting of this second, weaker, resolution isn’t clear these events allow Norfolk Southern and the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) additional time to weigh in and encourage the council to pass a weaker resolution or no resolution at all. We need to make sure that no council member gets the interests of their “corporate citizens” and their actual citizens confused. After all, the operations of a large corporation like Norfolk Southern can survive worsening air quality while, on the other hand, the living and breathing citizens of Norfolk and Hampton Roads have real lung tissue that can get damaged on “Code-Red” air days and real asthmatics and sufferers of COPD that can actually experience shorter lives as a result of living downwind of a coal plant.
I think the majority of the council is on the right track, but to keep them there it is more important than ever that many more Norfolk residents let their City Council know that they fully support an official resolution of opposition.
The vote will occur a the April 24th Norfolk City Council Meeting starting at 7:00 PM. If you are a Norfolk resident and want to attend and speak (which I highly encourage you to do) you should get there by 6:45 to sign up with the clerk. In the mean time, you can click here to send a letter to all the council members, and mayor. Grassroots, citizen pressure is the best tool in overcoming the interests of powerful corporations like Norfolk Southern and utilities like ODEC. Letters from citizens are one of the most powerful tools in swaying council member’s votes.
We must make sure that the council feels the support of all Norfolk citizens in opposing this coal plant that would be so detrimental to the health of all Hampton Roads residents.
Here is a great blog post from “Activist and Mom” Betsy Shepard who has been fighting a proposal to build the largest coal plant in Virginia a few miles from her family’s home in Surry County. She points out the incredible hypocrisy of the coal industry’s rhetoric around greenhouse gas emissions in the face of the new EPA rule. Be sure to check out her blog here.
When I first heard about the coal plant, I was fairly indifferent. I didn’t know much about coal or electricity generation.
What I did know was that coal had cleaned up their act significantly.
How did I know that?
Easy. I watched ad after ad telling me so during the presidential debates and election news.
The ads were the work of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) – some sort of lobby/marketing group for the coal industry.
They were pretty convincing. All mom and apple pie and American ingenuity and welcoming and meeting any challenge.
Here’s Steve Miller, their president, talking about the launch of their 2008 campaign–the “I Believe” ads:
CO2 emissions? No problem! he says. “We’ll meet that challenge!” Boo-ya!
New EPA regulations that will cut carbon emissions that contribute to climate change and impact human health will become law later this year.
So we’re a little late to the punch on this one. Let’s take a moment to catch up. Last Tuesday, March 27, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the first-ever rules regulating carbon pollution from power plants. For those who didn’t already know this news, I should also mention this is not an April Fool’s joke, nor would it be a particularly funny one if it were.
The Tuesday announcement from the EPA represents the findings of a several year-process, beginning in 2007 with a U.S. Supreme Court decision. The ruling that got the ball rolling found that, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA could regulate greenhouse gas pollution that threatens Americans’ health and welfare by making us sick and contributing to global climate change and. But not only do they have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, they’re required to, unless they could prove a scientific basis for their refusal, the court ruled further. (more…)
Friday, March 23rd, 2012 - posted by Kate Finneran
The Appalachian Treasures Tour is out West right now! Our own Lenny Kohm is out on the road in Arizona currently and headed to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Fullerton, and then Northern California! Click here for upcoming tour dates.
In order to bring the country together to protect the region from the ravages of mountaintop removal, we created the Appalachian Treasures slideshow, with images and voices from the region. Along with directly impacted residents, we travel with this presentation to key Congressional districts across the country to build a national base to gain support for the Clean Water Protection Act and the Appalachia Restoration Act. Along the way, we have traveled to over 20 states and talked to over 7,000 people directly.
Beverly Walkup joins us on tour in LA this month, hailing from Southern West Virginia where her community has been affected by mountaintop removal.
Beverly Walkup joins us on tour this weekend in Southern California to speak about how mountaintop removal has affected her community and what folks in Southern California can do to end it.
"Expect Political Attacks" -- Narrowly successful votes on the Boiler MACT standards and Keystone XL pipeline may ramp up attacks on the EPA, again.
Get ready, because a hostile hive of lobbyists echoing industry cries that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is no more than big government, job-killing, mean, green machine may have just been shaken up again.
On Thurs., March 8, Congress narrowly defeated an amendment to a transportation funding bill authored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that would delay the EPA’s proposed Boiler MACT regulations, receiving 52 of the 60 votes it needed to pass. An amendment to the bill to push through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline was also considered but fell just four votes short.
The Boiler MACT, or “maximum achievable control technology,” rule, will set new standards for more than 200,000 industrial boilers and incinerators by requiring technology that reduces harmful air pollutants such as mercury, arsenic and lead. The EPA maintains that the standards will offer major public health benefits, preventing 8,100 premature deaths and 5,100 heart attacks a year starting in 2015 and estimates that Americans would receive $12 to $30 in health benefits for every dollar spent to meet the proposed standards. But as expected, opponents and industry groups are crying foul. What about the jobs!?(more…)
Big Coal’s audacity can be astounding. For years, the coal company Consol has been dumping toxic wastewater into mined-out underground mines in Buchanan County, Virginia, without the consent of the owners of the property where these old mines are located. In 2008, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that this is an illegal trespass against the landowners’ basic property rights. In other words, the Court affirmed what should have been obvious to Consol: landowners have a right to say “NO” to the dumping of waste on their property.
In one publicly disclosed 2010 settlement, Consol paid $75 million in damages resulting from this practice. Clearly, the Supreme Court’s recognition of landowners’ basic property rights was getting to be a major inconvenience for the company. And when following the law is inconvenient, the coal industry’s response is often to try to rewrite the law. Most well-known are the industry’s continuing attempts in Congress to gut the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws now that these laws are being better-enforced. But to change Virginia’s longstanding property rights law, Consol had to go to Richmond.
During the 2012 General Assembly session, the Virginia Coal Association and Consol worked hard to advance House Bill (HB) 710 – a bill that, in its original form, would have given coal companies a carte blanche right to do whatever they wanted with empty underground mines on other people’s property – without obtaining consent from the landowners. (more…)
On Monday March 5th the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative received local zoning approval for what would be the largest coal-fired power plant in the state if built. The Dendron Town Council voted to approve local zoning unanimously and without once discussing the proposal publicly.
Both locals and people from the downwind communities of Hampton Roads were overwhelmingly opposed at every major public hearing (six in total) leading up to this final vote. The council is ignoring their own vocal constituents as well as the desires of the region. To date the town of Surry, Isle of Wight County, and Southampton County have come out opposed to the proposed coal plant because of the expected negative health and economic effects that another coal-fired power plant would have on the region. The press leading up to and resulting from the most recent vote definitely caught on to the fact that democracy has been put aside by the Dendron Town Council. Below is a list of recent press:
Locals and people across Hampton Roads have been overwhelmingly opposed to ODEC’s proposed coal plant. Photo at hearing by Jackie Carroll 2/27/12
In December 2008, the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) proposed to build the largest coal plant in Virginia, across the river from Williamsburg in Surry County. It was to be 1,500 megawatts, in the small town of Dendron (pop. 272). With Surry County residents leading the way, and advocacy organizations like Appalachian Voices and our partners backing them up, we have so far kept this project from moving ahead.
The regional opposition to the plant comes with good reason. In addition to adding to the demand for mountaintop removal coal, it has been predicted (using EPA approved methodologies) that this coal plant would cause serious health problems for those downwind over the course of its 60-year lifespan. Among other problems, analysts estimate that pollution from the plant would cause over 1,300 asthma ER visits and contribute to over 2,400 heart attacks and 200,000 lost workdays.
The effort to keep Hampton Roads air from suffering from a major new source of air and water pollution for next sixty years is picking up and your help is needed. On Tuesday Norfolk is going to vote whether to join the Consortium for Infant and Child Health (CINCH), The American Lung Association, Isle of Wight County, Southampton County, the Town of Surry and many others in opposing what could be Virginia’s largest coal-fired power plant built upwind of Hampton Roads.
I think the council would want to know that the damage every year would include an estimated 16 cases of chronic bronchitis, 23 asthma-related emergency room visits, 26 premature deaths, 40 heart attacks, 442 asthma attacks, 3,340 lost work days, and 19,903 days in which people will have to reduce their activities because they are sick. One third of these health problems would be in Virginia, with the rest spread across the mid-Atlantic region. The total cost to society of these illnesses and deaths would be about $208 million a year—or more than $6 billion over a generation (30 years). For more information on the coal plant 
During the 2012 General Assembly session, the Virginia Coal Association and Consol worked hard to advance House Bill (HB) 710 – a bill that, in its original form, would have given coal companies a carte blanche right to do whatever they wanted with empty underground mines on other people’s property – without obtaining consent from the landowners.
Locals and people across Hampton Roads have been overwhelmingly opposed to ODEC’s proposed coal plant. Photo at hearing by Jackie Carroll 2/27/12