Photo by Climate Ground Zero

Representatives from Climate Ground Zero met with West Virignia Governor Manchin today to discuss the harassment of two tree sitters who have halted blasting on Coal River Mountain since last Wednesday.

Eric Blevins, 28, and Amber Nitchman, 19, have occupied trees in the Bee Tree strip mine for the past eight days. The two protestors have been constantly bombarded with air horns, bright lights, and threats from Massey Energy security officials.

A third tree sitter descended and was arrested on day five of the protest.

The meeting follows a statement by Manchin that called for a cease to violence in the coalfields on both sides of the coal debate.

According to CGZ website, the meeting resulted in a temporary moratorium on the use of air horns and flood lights, but the sitters are concerned about other, possibly more dangerous, forms of harassment.

Read the full Climate Ground Zero press release.

On Thursday, I was greeted with this headline by Pam Kasey of the WV State Journal in my inbox:

“North-Central W.Va. is Ground Zero for Surface Mine Coal Ash”

The topic of the story in a nutshell is this:

“Mine operators are spreading serious amounts of coal combustion waste in W.Va. before the EPA declares it to be a hazardous material.”

Thanks to investigative research and testing following the TVA coal ash disaster in Harriman, TN., a year ago, it is now common knowledge that coal fly ash (also known as coal combustion waste, or CCW) contains numerous toxic metals such as selenium, mercury and lead, and according to the National Academy of Sciences, “can potentially be harmful to human health or the environment.”

Following a Senate investigation last summer into the properties of coal ash, committee chairperson Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) forced Homeland Security to release a list of the most toxic coal ash ponds in the country and is calling for stronger regulations on coal fly ash.

According to Kasey’s article, in the absence of federal regulation states handle the disposal of coal ash differently.

West Virginia, for instance, allows coal ash to be dumped directly into landfills or recycled into building materials such as concrete or drywall.

The state also has “by far the highest concentration of CCW mine placement in the country,” with “80 or 90 mine dumps” in just three counties.

Also according to Kasey, “A hazardous designation from the EPA would trigger the development of a federal disposal standard,” which means the mine operators and coal fired power plants could not simply dispose of coal ash in the traditional ways, but would have to handle the material as a hazardous waste.

Coal industry leaders complain that this would increase company costs, thereby increasing the price of electricity for consumers in West Virginia. At least one environmental advocate, Jeff Stant from the Environmental Integrity Project, believes that increased regulations on CCW will only mean a decrease in the use of that method of coal processing.

Read the full article at the WV State Journal.

By_Bill_Kovarik

An often pointed but unfailingly polite debate Thursday demonstrated a wide gulf between environmental and coal industry positions on Appalachia’s environmental woes.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, challenged coal baron Don Blankenship to be honest about the coal industry’s environmental record, especially mountaintop removal mining.

“This is the worst environmental crime that has ever happened in our history,” Kennedy said, advocating an end to MTR and a gradual shift to renewable energy sources. “We all have a moral obligation to stop this from happening.”

Blankenship, chairman of Massey Energy Company, said the issue was one of industry competitiveness in the face of “environmental extremism.”

Blankenship also challenged Kennedy on the cost of renewable energy, asking why more was not being developed. “If windmills are the thing to do, it will happen naturally.”

Wind is cheaper than coal power, Kennedy responded. “I’m stunned that Mr Blankenship doesn’t know that this is going on.”

The debate, a Forum on the Future of Energy, was sponsored by the University of Charleston in Charleston, WV on Thursday evening, Jan. 21.

Although the debate developed little common ground, its civil tone contrasted with the rancor of hearings and other public events in recent years.

“Its sadly rare in our society to have a serious conversation between people with opposing opinions on a sensitive issue,” said debate moderator Edwin Welch, President of the University of Charleston WV.

At one point, Blankenship was asked if there were points of agreement between himself and Kennedy.

Blankenship: “We have some agreement on the fact that the world has to be part of the solution, not just the United States, and that we have to have a competitive industry if we are going to compete in a free world… Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Gore and all these other people who espouse this environmental stuff are basically mistaken as opposed to evil, because the bottom line is that if we don’t agree that homeland security, good use of our energy, low cost electricity for our houses, low cost gas for our industry, jobs, good households, high quality of life are the objective … If we don’t agree on that, then we are fundamentally on different pages.”

Kennedy said there were a few points of agreement. “I agree with a lot of Don’s rhetoric,” Kennedy said, “but I think there is a big gap between his rhetoric and what I see happening on the ground in these communities.” Kennedy also that they agreed on opposition to free trade and that “geological carbon sequestration is a joke.”

“That’s true,” Blankenship said, referring to carbon sequestration as a joke.

Kennedy and Blankenship sharply disputed topics such as: :

• Economic impacts and benefits of coal mining for Appalachia;

Kennedy: You look at the way people are living in this state. The Hendryx study shows that the closer you live to a coal mine, the sicker you are.”

Blankenship: This industry is what made this country great. If we forget that we’re going to have to learn to speak Chinese.

• Enforcement of environmental laws;

Kennedy: In a true free market system, the price of a product would reflect all of its costs. A producer like Mr Blankenship would have to pay all of the costs of his product before he gets it to market, instead of forcing you and I and my children to pay through bad health by externalizing those costs.

Blankenship: Unfortunately the laws are so difficult and the lawsuits so common and the cost of doing business is so high … To force the coal business out of West Virginia or surface mining would be a huge mistake for household budgets, for industry and for homeland security.

• Massey Energy company’s environmental record;

Kennedy: Just this last year, Massey had 12,900 (water quality) violations — A greater concentration than even before the $20 million fine (of 2008).

Blankenship: There is no country that mines coal more safely or more envirionmentally consciously than this country, and no company that does better at that than Massey.

• The cost and benefits of renewable energy;

Kennedy: The mining industry makes a few people rich by making everyone else poor, whereas the wind industry distributes wealth and the benefits of that industry more evenly.

Blankenship: Solar energy, it works well in the daytime, but it gets cold at night. Solar… and windmill parts will be made overseas…

Kennedy and Blankenship avoided a pitched debate over climate change, with Blankenship noting that he thought it was a “hoax” and Kennedy saying that the “science is settled.” However, Blankenship said there was a practical reason for his position on climate change. “If you look at 6.5 billion tons of coal in the world to raise their quality of life its not going to be possible to change the temperature of the earth by limiting the industry in this country and taking people’s jobs away.”

Kennedy also described the biodiversity being lost through Mountaintop Removal Mining:

Kennedy: During the Pleistocene ice age, 20,000 years ago, when there were 2 and a half miles of ice above the place where I live in NY, the rest of the country became a tundra, and all the trees disappeared except for one tiny refuge in the mountains of Kentucky and West Virginia. After the ice withdrew 12,000 years ago, all of North America was reseeded from those seed stocks. And that’s why the mountains of Appalachia are so important. They are the most biologically abundant temperate forests on the planet. A typical forest, all over the world, has three dominant species of trees. Appalachia has 80.

There were also moments of levity in the debate. At one point, Blankenship said he was glad Kennedy didn’t blame him for the ice age 20,000 years ago. And moderator Edwin Welch noted at the end of the debate that he didn’t think there would be a need for any “altar calls” for the converted.

In his summary statement, Kennedy said:

Kennedy: Don says we have to choose between environmental protection on the one hand and economic prosperity on the other. I say that’s a false choice… Good environmental policy is identical to good economic policy. We want to measure or economy … based upon on how it produces jobs, and the dignity of our jobs, over the generations, over the long term, and how it preserves the value of the assets of our community. If on the other hand we want to do what Don himself and his company have been urging us to do, which is to treat the planet as if it were a business in liquidation, convert all of our natural resources to cash as quickly as possible, have a few years of pollution based prosperity, we can generate an instantaneous cash flow and the illusion of a prosperous economy, but our children are going to pay for our joy ride, and they are going to pay for it with denuded landscapes and poor health and huge cleanup costs that are going to amplify over time.

Environmental injury, particularly of the kind that is happening today in West Virginia, is deficit spending. It’s a way of loading the costs of our generation’s prosperity onto the backs of our children…. An investment in our environment is (not) a diminishment of our nation’s wealth. Its an investment in infrastructure, like telecommunications or highways.

What I would say to the coal industry is go underground, employ lots of people, and do this safely as West Virginia makes a transition to a new energy future and to the prosperity that that’s going to bring this state.

Photos by Jamie Goodman, Appalachian Voice

Thanks to Joseph E. Lowery of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we are reminded today, on this day celebrating the life and mission of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that he would have fought against ALL injustices toward minorities, including the construction of coal-fired power plants in the poor minority communities across the south.

Lowery writes: “We are all grimly aware that inequality and discrimination remain potent in all walks of life, from job pay to matters of common decency. But too many are unaware of the injustice placed on low-income communities and people of color in rural areas.”

Here are other excerpts from Lowery’s full article:

“‘When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered,’ King preached in a 1967 sermon in Atlanta.”

“Georgia doesn’t need to be the last irresponsible place on earth choosing coal. As Genesis reminds us, we must all rise to the challenge of thoughtful stewardship of what has been entrusted to us, to care for ‘the fish of the sea … the birds of the air … the cattle, and all creatures upon earth.'”

The characters are different but the plot is all too familiar:

In the movie Avatar, Parker Selfridge of the RDA mining corporation, has the bulldozers take down the Na’vi history tree. It’s standing between them and a valuable black energy rock called “unobtainium.”

In Appalachia, Randall Reid Smith, WV Commissioner of Culture and History, asks the National Park Service to remove National Historic Register designation from Blair Mountain, site of a major 1921 confrontation between the coal miners unions and the coal industry. On Jan. 8, 2010, Carol Schull, Chief of the National Register for the Park Service, announces an unprecedented de-listing of a national historical site, effective immediately.

Appalachia’s history is standing in the way of another valuable black rock.
 
“If they can Stalinize our history like this, it shows that big coal still owns our state government,” said Wess Harris, editor of “When Miners March,” a book documenting the union’s side of the battle of Blair Mountain. “This action does not stand alone but is part of a deliberate effort to erase Appalachian history.”
 
The site of the 1921 armed conflict between over ten thousand coal miners and company guards involved at least 80 deaths. The site has enormous significance for historians and for the American labor movement.
 
Letters of support for the original historic places listing—approved just last March of 2009—came from the Presidents of the United Mine Workers of America, the Society for Historical Archeology, the Society of American Archeology, and many other historians and scholars.
 
“The Blair Mountain Battlefield is a unique historic and cultural treasure that deserves all the recognition and protection we can muster,” said archeology professor Harvard Ayers of Appalachian State University. “The coal industry…conducted a scare campaign to con property owners within the nomination boundary into signing formal objections to the listing. “

The decision to de-list Blair Mountain (first reported in a blog post by Jeff Biggers) is questionable on a number of levels, not the least of which is that two of the property owners who supposedly object to the Historical listing are deceased.

In the movie Avatar, the Na’vi of Pandora have intricate language, customs and connections to the natural world that supports them. They are under assault from corporate greed, and one of the first places attacked is their historical memory contained in the Tree of Voices.
 
Appalachian people have similarly intricate connections to the natural world of Appalachia—connections that they are losing as explosives and giant bulldozers destroy the mountains for coal.
 
Their history is also under assault.
 
Its one thing to watch a movie, but it’s another to understand the point that a movie like Avatar is trying to make.
 
Outside the popcorn palaces, the harsh reality of the struggle over valuable black rock is evident not in distant lands or remote worlds, but very close to home.

Appalachian Voices joined with more than 100 environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, Earth Justice, Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Resource Defense Council to post a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday, December 22 calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enact regulations for coal ash waste disposal. The ad ran on the one-year anniversary of the Kinston, TN coal ash disaster, in which 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash tragically spilled into the Clinch and Emory rivers at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired power plant.

View the ad

Send a letter to the EPA asking for coal ash regulations

On Tuesday, Duke Energy and the North Carolina Utility Commission reached a preliminary settlement on Duke’s request for a substantial rate increase on residential and commercial utilities.

The proposed agreement would cut Duke’s original request of a 13% residential rate increase to around 7%, a hike which would phase in over a two year period, starting with a 4.3% increase in January, 2010. The proposed agreement would reduce Duke’s expected profit increase from $496 million to $315 million.

Commercial and industrial groups have sought out similar reductions.

The Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing in Raleigh on Wednesday about the proposed rate request. According to an article by Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer, “it is not known how the nine other formal parties to the rate case will regard the…compromise” and that the state Attorney General’s office has asked for a delay in Wednesday’s hearing to “analyze the agreement.”

Duke Energy’s official press release

Just the day before, the Utilities Commission held the last in a string of public hearings in which Duke Energy customers were able to make public comments concerning the hike. According to Commission Chairman Edward Finley, Jr., thousands of emails, phone calls and letters had also poured in opposing the increase.

During yesterday’s hearing, over a dozen residents spoke out against the rate hike, citing health concerns, economy, and the lack of need for the Cliffside coal-fired power plant expansion

Read Appalachian Voices’ official submitted commenton the Duke Energy rate hike.

Several speakers chastised Duke Energy for its failure to move towards more renewable energy. Elizabeth Goyer, a UNC Asheville environmental studies student, noted that while the utility claims to be pushing for more renewable sources, only about 3% of Duke’s electricity comes from alternates to coal. “I am waiting for Duke to make a real commitment to renewable energy,” she said.

Zell McGee, a North Carolina native and a medical expert who taught for years in Utah, testified about known health effects of coal-fired power plants. “Healthcare costs are translated to the customers,” he said, further increasing their financial burden beyond the rate increase. He compared rate payers to prey and Duke Energy to predators, and said that the Commission needed to work harder to “encourage harmony between utility companies and their customers.”

A representative of the North Carolina Conservation Network delivered a petition signed by over 1500 citizens asking that the rate hike request be rejected, and an attorney with the North Carolina Justice Center, testified on behalf of the disadvantaged residents of the state, noting that of the 1.3 million poor people currently living in North Carolina, none of them could afford to pay for the increase, either monetarily or physically.

“One thing that has not been mentioned today,” Ripley said, “is the extensive research that has been done to show correlations between energy costs and the health of our children and of our poor elderly people in this state.” Ripley elaborated by explaining that increased external costs means less money to spend on food, which leads to malnutrition and poor health.

Ruby Best, a disabled 61-year-old from Durham, N.C., testified that her electricity rates have steadily increased since she bought her home in 2005, in spite of changes in energy use habits, and that she currently struggling to pay her bills. “If this [increase] is granted, how am I going to be able to manage this?” she asked.

And Casey Baker, whose family owns a vineyard and farm near the Cliffside plant, mentioned that the rate increase would seriously effect farmers who rely on electricity to pump water and power farm equipment. “If the rate increase comes in, our profit margins are going to be seriously cut,” he said, and noted that some of the farmers have begun researching off-the-grid alternatives such as solar.

Representatives from Duke Energy and several environmental groups were present, but only residents were allowed to testify. No residents at the hearing on Monday spoke out in favor of the rate hikes.

Safety of Dozens of Citizens Threatened at “Public Hearing”
Pro-coal groups and mountaintop removal coal mining opponents verbally clashed at a hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers’ NW21 permits Wednesday night in Charleston, W.Va. According to eyewitnesses, hundreds of coal industry supporters rallied to outnumber mountaintop removal opponents, and heckled and yelling threats to individuals who came to present their case against mountaintop removal coal mining; some reports included elbowing, pushing and other physical forms of intimidation (view a video and read testimonials from citizens present at the event), and most were prevented from speaking at the hearing. Both the Charleston Daily Mail and the Charleston Gazette covered the event. According to a blog post by Ken Ward, the Corps claims that the hearing was “conducted in an orderly fashion.”

Jackson Claims Coal “Can Be Mined Safely and Cleanly”
In other Obama Administration news, according to an article also by Ken Ward in the Charleston Gazette, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson defended her agency’s scrutiny of mountaintop removal while claiming to have no desire to end coal mining, amid growing pressure from coalfield political leaders and the mining industry. During a Congressional committee meeting, Jackson stated: “Neither EPA nor I personally have any desire to end coal mining, have any hidden agenda, any agenda whatsoever that has to do with coal mining as an industry….I believe coal can be mined safely and cleanly. I believe it can be done in a way that minimizes impacts to water quality.”

ACCCE Back In The News
As reported today by Kate Shepard in her Mother Jones blog post, the hearing scheduled to investigate the role of Bonner & Associates and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity in the forged anti-climate bill letters sent to Congress was postponed until next week. Read Shepard’s full report.

Shepard’s post also mentioned a new report out by Politico outlining the ACCCE budget on astoturfing and lobbying efforts for the past 18 months – a cool $10 million.

Light on the Horizon for Marsh Fork School
To end on a positive note, Jeff Biggers reports on Huffington Post that yesterday evening in Coal River, W.Va., the Raleigh County School Board met with local citizens and announced its intention to ask the state for funds to construct a new school for March Fork Elementary. Marsh Fork School—which sits immediately below a 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment and a mountaintop removal mining site and adjacent to a dusty coal silo—has been at the center of a series of rallies and campaigns from local residents and mountaintop removal coal mining opponents, who have worked for over five years to obtain a new school for the children.

And that’s all in just two turns of the clock.

After a 14-day initial review period, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional offices followed the lead of EPA headquarters, recommending that all 79 pending mountaintop removal mining valley fill permits be remanded into a full 60-day extended review process. The extended review will closely examine potential environmental and health impacts of the valley fills on headwater streams and watersheds, and is part of the EPA’s promise of a more stringent review process for overseeing mountaintop removal coal mining. During the previous presidential administration, a change to the “fill rule” in the Clean Water Act allowed permits for mountaintop removal valley fills to be rubberstamped without conducting any environmental or health impact assessments.

Read Appalachian Voices’ statement on the decision.

The struggles of folks in West Virginia is not only getting national air time, it is finally front and center – the lead story of last Sunday’s New York Times, to be exact. The article details the Massey family from Prenter, W.Va., and their life with toxic tap water contaminated with heavy metals from nearby coal slurry impoundments and injections of the slurry into old underground mines. Accompanying the article was a heart-wrenching photo slide show with an audio interview featuring Jennifer Hall-Massey.

Read the full article at the New York Times, and also check out Jeff Biggers’ commentary and interview with a young activist from the Prenter Water Fund, a group striving to defend the citizens of Prenter and their right to clean drinking water.

Two activists from Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice engaged in a tree sit have halted blasting for a second day at a Massey Energy mine site in West Virginia. The two sitters established themselves on platforms over 80 feet above the ground near the Edwight mountaintop removal mine above Pettry Bottom, within 300 feet of a planned blasting zone.

Two individuals on the ground were arrested and cited for trespassing, but later released because they are the primary line of communication to the tree sitters, who claim they will not climb down until numerous conditions are met by Massey.

This is the thirteenth non-violent direct action and protest in the Coal River Valley this summer. Others include the June 23 protest at Marsh Fork School where NASA scientist James Hansen and activist/actress Daryl Hannah were arrested, and a June 18 civil disobedience action where four individuals scaled a 150-foot dragline on a Massey Energy mine site and unfurled a banner that said, “Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining.”

Visit Climate Ground Zero for the full story and latest updates.

According to a Grist blog posted today titled “A Farce to be Reckoned With,” a Pennsylvania coal-industry group calling itself Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy (FORCE) isn’t actually comprised of families after all. Instead, membership criteria is limited to “any Pennsylvania company doing business with the coal industry” and “coal and coal company-related sponsorship.”

The group is responsible for billboards along Penn state highways promoting “clean coal,” which you think would lead the public to believe this group has a lot of “families” supporting “clean coal.”

Read Jonathan Hiskes’ punchy account of his attempts to gather more information from the group.

And be sure to check out his other blog post on the Families Organized to Represent Coal coloring book for kids, appropriately titled “Eyes for Frosty.” As Hiskes says, “At least it picks a relevant topic in snowmen—they won’t be around for long if the coal industry succeeds in stomping all over climate change legislation.”