Coal Report
Coal Report Briefs
Whistleblower Gets His Day: A federal judge ordered a West Virginia coal company to allow Charles Scott Howard to return to his mining job and also pay a $30,000 fine for discriminating against a whistleblower. Cumberland River Coal Co. and its parent company, Arch Coal, reportedly fired Howard for reporting unsafe conditions at a Cumberland…
Read MoreBill Seeks Moratorium on Mountaintop Removal Permits | Black Lung Increasing in Appalachia
New Bill Seeks Moratorium on Mountaintop Removal Permits Representatives in Washington introduced a bill that would halt permitting for mountaintop removal coal mining until federal studies on health impacts can be conducted. Thirteen congressional representatives from nine states unveiled H.R. 5959, the Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act in mid-June, with the help of the Appalachian…
Read MoreThe Coalfields Expressway: 50-Mile Strip Mine Slated for Virginia
By Mike McCoy The Virginia Department of Transportation and Alpha Natural Resources are teaming up in a public-private partnership to create a 50-mile road and strip mine in Southwestern Virginia. Called the Coalfield Expressway, the road would run from Pound in Wise County northeast to the West Virginia border. The expressway is also slated to…
Read MoreCoal’s Cloudy Future: The Factors in The Fossil Fuel’s Decline
By Brian Sewell A light winter that dented demand is the least of the coal industry’s worries in a year of unprecedented challenges that may point to a very frigid future. While the industry is familiar with market fluctuations and the shifting regulatory framework, analysts considering coal’s present challenges, especially natural gas’ affordability and abundance,…
Read MoreCoal Generated Electricity Drops To All-Time Low in First Quarter
By Jessica Kennedy Data released in early May show that coal’s current share of U.S. electricity generation is at an all-time low. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook report, coal made up only 36 percent of the country’s electricity in the first quarter of 2012, a drop of more than eight…
Read MoreState Legislature Kills Mountaintop Removal Ban Through Delays
By Molly Moore The Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill to end mountaintop removal coal mining in Tennessee, was killed by a state House subcommittee after the bill was heard by the state’s Senate this March. The Tennessee hearing marked the first time that a bill to ban mountaintop removal was heard by a full…
Read MoreD.C. District Court Overrules EPA’s Spruce Mine No. 1 Permit Veto
By Brian Sewell On March 23, a District of Columbia District Court ruled in favor of Arch Coal and overturned a 2011 veto by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, restoring the permit of the Logan County, W.Va., Spruce No. 1 mountaintop removal mine. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the EPA had overstepped…
Read MoreEPA Buffaloed Over Surface Mine
A letter sent by the EPA to WVDEP in January expresses the agency’s concerns about CONSOL Energy’s 2,308-acre Buffalo Mountain surface mine. The EPA has suggested ways to reduce the negative impacts on the environment and water quality that the surface mine, one of Appalachia’s largest, will inevitably have. Stretching from Belo to Williamson in…
Read MoreAlpha Pays $209 Million in Upper Big Branch Settlement
Alpha Natural Resources, the global coal company that purchased Massey Energy in January 2011, reached a settlement with victim’s families and the Mine Safety and Health Administration for $209 million in civil and criminal penalties for a mine explosion that killed 29 workers last year. The explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine, one of…
Read MoreConcerned Citizens Dispute Water Quality Study
The Whitesville, W.Va.-based Sludge Safety Project is claiming that a recent study of the water quality in an area of Boone County by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection used flawed research methods, contains errors and misinterprets its own data. In January, the WVDEP completed a year-long study that found that drinking water supplies…
Read More