Widely varied research all points to the fact that surface mining has negative health effects – of all shapes and sizes – despite the industry’s best efforts to say otherwise.

Nathaniel Hitt, Ph.D., of Viriginia Tech and Michael Hendryx, Ph.D. of West Virginia University recently published a study entitled Ecological Integrity of Streams Related to Human Cancer Mortality Rates, which correlates the ecological health of streams in West Virginia to the public health of those who live nearby.

The study concluded that there were “significant associations” between the lack of ecological integrity in the streams and human mortality rates from certain types of cancer.

“Our research shows the importance of streams for people,” Dr. Hitt said. “We learned that some of the smallest organisms living in streams can provide a warning system for one of the largest human health problems, cancer.”

As coal power production is heavily associated with the disintegrity of the streams, it is therefore associated with higher cancer rates observed in these regions.

Before this study, Dr. Hendryx published a series of other studies examining negative health effects and premature deaths of citizens in close proximity to Appalachian coalmines. The studies also made cost-benefit analyses to determine whether the power provided by the mines was indeed worth it when compared with the loss of life in economic terms.

Obviously, the mining industry responded unfavorably to the associations made in the Hendryx study, and hired its own professor, Dr. Jonathan Borak of Yale University, to “debunk” the findings of the Hendryx study.

While Borak’s report illuminated several methodological concerns with the Hendryx study, it by no means disproved any of its findings. Yet a PR branch of the National Mining Association touted the report as “debunking” Dr. Hendryx’s study as “bogus”.

It seems that the truth about the health effects of surface mining will out one way or another.

Other research from a much different organization suggests that water is not the only barometer of public health – and cancer is not the only disease. The American Heart Association (AHA) recently released a study that found links between air pollution, similarly caused by fossil fuel byproduct, and heart risks such as heart attacks and strokes.

This, too, is a concern of West Virginia and the entire Appalachian region, which is dominated by the production of coal power.

Environmentalists and coal supporters met to debate the largest mountaintop removal mining permit to date—the Spruce No. 1 surface mine in Logan County, W.Va.—at a public hearing on May 18 in Charleston, W.Va.

EPA officials accepted comments from the public regarding the permit at what was a subdued and small gathering compared to the large, heated Army Corps of Engineer hearings held last fall.

In March, The EPA announced that it planned to significantly restrict or prohibit mountaintop removal mining at Spruce No. 1.

“Coal, and coal mining, is part of our nation’s energy future, and for that reason EPA has made repeated efforts to foster dialogue and find a responsible path forward. But we must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution — and the damage from this project would be irreversible,” said EPA Regional Administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, Shawn Garvin. “This recommendation is consistent with our broader Clean Water Act efforts in Central Appalachia. EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

If permitted, Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 mine operation would bury more than seven miles of headwater streams and impact 2,278 acres of forestland.

In a statement showing support for the EPA’s actions on mountaintop removal, Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia said: “EPA Administrator Jackson reiterated to me that more wide-ranging guidance
is forthcoming in the near future, providing clarity relating to water quality issues and mining permits. I encouraged her to move forward as soon as possible so those seeking approval of permits can fully
understand the parameters for acceptable activity under the Clean Water Act.”

The EPA comment period on Spruce No. 1 was scheduled to end on June 4.

When I first started as a volunteer at Appalachian Voices ago I quickly learned that this was no ordinary organization. The members of the staff and the volunteers function as a family, working feverishly together to right some of the greatest environmental wrongs in our country.

It is this tight knit familial environment that makes the loss of Sarah Percival, a former intern and all-star volunteer at Appalachian Voices so difficult.

Sarah Percival joined Appalachian Voices as an intern from Appalachian State University, where she completed her degree in Environmental Science with a focus in Sustainable Development. I was a new hire at Appalachian Voices and Sarah was to be my first official intern.

During Sarah’s internship she assisted in the management of a multi-state legislative campaign focused on the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act. These bills introduced across the southeast, were to outlaw the use of mountaintop removal coal for the generation of electricity. Having visited a mountaintop removal mine in West Virginia, Sarah was intimately familiar with the devastation associated with this type of surface mining and was highly motivated to work to make it illegal.

Sarah had no previous organizing or legislative experience, was completely new to the non-profit world, and at times said I spoke in a separate language full of indiscernible acronyms. Sarah was certainly green and it would take time to hone her skills, but she had a set of rock solid traits that are absolutely impossible to teach – she was intelligent, committed and fiercely passionate. Sarah had decided that she was going to make a real difference in the world and was willing to leave her comfort zone to do so.

Her transition from green intern to highly functioning activist was amazing, and I came to depend on her as a valuable member of our team who assisted and participated in all facets of the campaign. In a week she could be asked to travel to Raleigh to directly lobby state decision makers, schedule presentations, edit press releases, print and design materials and manage my insane schedule (which is no easy task). She was dependable, forever positive and contributed a great deal to our work during her internship.

Sarah’s dedication to her cause was palpable and even in passing she continues to help protect of the Appalachian Mountains. We have been deeply moved by recent donations given to our organization in Sarah’s honor.

At Appalachian Voices we feel blessed to have known and worked with such a beautiful, passionate individual. I will never forget Sarah, and she will always serve as an inspiration to my work.

Please join Us May 21st 2010 in Boone, NC for a Celebration of Sarah’s Life. For more information please contact Dana Proctor, phone: 423-987-3262

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New rules to regulate coal ash would close or require changes to many of the nation’s coal ash disposal sites, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced today.

“This is a major step forward, at the national level, in reducing risk of improper coal ash disposal,” she said.

Regulations were originally to have been proposed in 2004, and the six-year delay reflects a heated debate between industry and public health advocates. The December 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash disaster amplified longstanding concerns.

“There are people who feel very strongly,” Jackson said. “There are equities on both sides, and what we believe would be the next best step would be to open a transparent public process.”

The regulations proposed today could take one of two approaches:

• Federal regulation of coal ash disposal, in some cases through the states (known as option “C”); or

• Weaker enforcement under federal guidelines, which EPA officials projected would lead to half as much compliance with the regulations (known as option “D”). This option would be “self-implementing” by the utilities and would not require federal permits, but would probably involve more enforcement through citizen lawsuits, EPA officials said.

In neither case would coal ash be legally considered “hazardous;” instead, it would be regulated under a special category.

However, in both cases, some of the so-called “beneficial” uses of coal ash would be curtailed, Jackson and other administration officials said. For example, use of coal ash as fill material on construction sites would be considered the same as disposal in a landfill and would require ground liners and monitoring.

Other “beneficial” uses of coal ash, for example as a fill in concrete, would still be permitted. Left open for future regulatory action was the question of coal ash disposal in mines.

Additional inspection and monitoring of 900 coal ash impoundments nationwide will also take place under both options.

Coal ash is the second largest waste product in the United States, and 120 million tons are formed from the residue of over one billion tons of coal burned each year for electricity. Numerous studies, including one in 2007 by the National Science Foundation and others by environmental organizations such as the Waterkeepers, Environmental Justice and Appalachian Voices, have shown serious contamination problems with coal ash dumping.

The utility industry and the Tennessee Valley Authority has maintained, in the face of the evidence, that coal ash is harmless. The American Coal Ash Association dismisses concerns about arsenic and other toxins–which are abundant in coal–as “fear tactics.”

Even before the TVA disaster, there were reported incidents of old fly ash deposits breaking loose, contaminating neighborhoods, threatening health and reducing property values.

The proposed regulations will be open for comment for the next three months, and avenues for public participation will be announced on the EPA web site.

More information about the proposed regulation.

View the chart comparing the Option C and Option D approaches.

View results of the impoundment assessments.

Desks and playground equipment, covered with a thin film of chemical-laden coal dust, sit just 225 feet from a coal silo. Overhead looms the Massey Energy Shumate impoundment, an embankment holding back 2.8 billion gallons of toxic liquid coal waste. Welcome to Marsh Fork Elementary School.

Ed Wiley’s granddaughter, Kayla, attended this school nestled in the Coal River Valley near Sundial, W.Va. Kayla inspired Wiley’s campaign, Pennies of Promise, to raise the $8.6 million needed to build the children a new school in a safe location.

Today, that mission is a success. Gov. Joe Manchin held a press conference on Friday to announce that Massey Energy and the Raleigh County School Board would supply the final $1.5 million needed to complete the necessary funding for a new school, matching a $2.5 million grant by the Annenberg Foundation announced on Thursday. Add this to the $10,400 raised by Pennies of Promise, $1 million from the Raleigh School Board, the $1 million promised by Massey energy, and the $2.6 million granted by the School Building Authority.

“The whole movement made this happen, the communities, all the kids collecting pennies across the country,” said local resident Judy Bonds. “This is a victory for everyone.”

Nearly five years ago, Kayla’s school called Wiley to come pick her up because she was ill. The trend continued for three successive days. On the third day, Wiley flipped through the school’s sign-out registry and noticed that several children were sent home each day. As they drove home that day, Kayla turned to Ed, tears in her eyes, and said, “Gramps, these coal mines are making us kids sick.” That moment changed everything for Wiley.

In 2006, Dr. Scott Simonton, the vice chair of West Virginia’s Environmental Quality Board, conducted an independent study at the school, sampling dust and particulate matter from various classrooms. Analysis of the data confirmed that the school’s environment was potentially unhealthy.

“My concern about the school is that dust levels not only appear to exceed human health reference levels, but that the dust is largely made up of coal,” said Dr. Simonton. “Coal dust contains silica, trace metals, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), many of which are known human carcinogens. Inhalation of coal dust is known to cause adverse health effects in humans, however, studies of coal dust toxicity are understandably mostly of adult populations. Children are particularly at risk from dust exposure in general, so it is reasonable to assume that coal dust creates an even greater risk for children than it does adult.”

The 380-foot-high dam that looms over the school, holding back an 8-acre lake of coal slurry, has been another long-standing concern. According to a report by the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation, if the Shumate impoundment were to fail, a wall of sludge more than 20 feet high would tear down the valley below. The sludge would reach the community of Edwight a half-mile downstream within five minutes. Marsh Fork Elementary—located several hundred feet away from the base of the dam—would have far less.

The Shumate impoundment is listed by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) as a Class C dam. According to the agency, these classes of impoundments “are those dams located where failure may cause a loss of human life or serious damage to homes, industrial and commercial buildings, important public utilities, primary highways or main haul roads.” Mine Safety and Health Administration officials have cited the dam for safety violations on multiple occasions.

For years, Wiley and other community members pleaded with local and state officials to build the Marsh Fork children a new, and safer, school. He founded the Pennies of Promise organization. According to Pennies of Promise, “In the absence of help from our elected officials, we have looked to each other for support as we are raising the funds necessary to build a new school in the community ourselves.”

Frustrated with the lack of support, in 2006, Wiley hoisted the Pennies of Promise flag and walked the 455 miles from Charleston, W.Va., to Washington D.C., to urge Sen. Robert C. Byrd to help. Senator Byrd met with Wiley and even issued a press statement, commending Wiley saying, “I admire the determination and dedication that Ed and Debbie Wiley have shown, the Bible teaches that if we have faith of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. I believe that the Wileys have that faith.” But ulitmately, Sen Byrd did not take action.

Wiley and and the community pressed on in their efforts to raise funding for the new school, reaching out to other schools and continuing to push the issue with their local, state and federal government officials. Wiley even reached out to other schools, such as the Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School (WHEELS) in New York, who joined the fight and started their own penny jar for Marsh Fork Elementary.

And in 2010, their determination has finally made all the difference.

“There are a lot of people to thank,” Wiley said. “Nobody gave up. But the battle is not over, there a still a few schools just down the road here that are in jeopardy. We need to get a bill passed so you cannot have this kind of activity.”

According to a recent survey of Western North Carolina Counties, 84% of citizens want to receive more electricity from wind power. This research follows almost a year of regulatory indecision regarding wind energy in Western North Carolina (WNC). The indecision stems from a legislative attempt to create a statewide permitting process for the development of wind farms in NC. Senate Bill 1068 was introduced into the 2009 Session the of the North Carolina General Assembly. In it ‘s original form Senate Bill 1068 would have created a statewide permitting process for the construction of wind farms in North Carolina.

Largely accepted as a comprehensive and robust piece of legislation, this bill underwent significant changes in committee on its way to the Senate floor. After much debate, and intense political pressure from WNC Democratic LINK Senators Martin Nesbit, John Snow and Joe Sam Queen the augmented bill passed through the Senate in the final days of the 2009 session. As currently written the bill functions as a de facto ban on commercial and community scale wind turbines on windy North Carolina ridges. The bill accomplishes this by clarifying the Mountain Ridge Protection Act placing a restrictive height requirement on turbines that can be placed on North Carolina mountain ridges.

Recent results of a public opinion research that show that such restrictions in the wind-permitting bill do not represent the voting base. In a telephone survey conducted by Public Policy Polling, 85% of respondents from a random sample of the 24 counties of western North Carolina expressed a desire to see more wind energy in NC. This response was even higher than solar and hydro-power, and is higher than the responses for coal, natural gas, and nuclear combined.

When asked specifically about constructing large wind turbines on mountain ridge land, 70% of respondents felt that the practice should either be encouraged or allowed in appropriate circumstances. The original framework of Senate Bill 1068 necessitates a multitude of studies to allow a proposed wind turbine or turbines to receive a permit for construction, meaning that only appropriate sites would be selected. When told about the fact that the bill would limit the development of large wind turbines, 61% of respondents felt that the legislation was either too restrictive or outright inappropriate.

In a second survey for Watauga County, the location of the only large wind turbine and the location of the first megawatt-scale wind turbine in NC, responses were equally positive. 87% of residents have either a strongly positive or positive view of wind turbines, and 87% of respondents support the current large wind turbine in Boone. Only 3% of respondents did not support the construction of the Northwind 100 (a 135 ft. tall community scale turbine). The residents of Watauga County, 99% of which responded that they live within 15 miles of Boone, were given the chance to respond to an open-ended question on wind energy. When asked the most important issues they see regarding the technology, the majority of respondents answered that they wanted to see more wind turbines constructed like the Northwind 100 in Boone, citing reasons such as green job creation, improving the local tax base, decreasing air pollution, and utilizing local resources for power production.

Overall, the people of WNC support wind energy and want to see more development of the wind industry in their mountains, so long as the turbines are appropriately sited. The House of Representatives, which will begin work on the wind permitting bill as early as mid-May, should pay close attention to the voices of the people of western North Carolina. These polls show that citizens are in support of wind power and realize that the great potential contained on the windy ridge land of the southern Appalachians cannot be lost to a bad permitting bill.

Fresh on the heels of a successful fundraiser for Mountain keeper Larry Gibson, an Appalachian hero and leader in the movement to end mountaintop removal coal mining, I feel compelled to address a recent “protest” against Appalachian Voices and our position supporting responsibly sited wind energy development in Western North Carolina and across Appalachia.

I was blessed to grow up on 2000 acres of beautiful mountain land in Western North Carolina. I had unrestricted access to a Southern Appalachian paradise, a place filled with hardwoods, headwater streams, bears, ginseng, turkeys and warblers. My childhood ramblings in those hills set the stage for a life dedicated to protecting these mountains. I cannot and will never be able to describe my love for this ancient mountain chain.

Those lucky enough to call western North Carolina home, generally cannot imagine that just a short distance from our state line, entire mountains are blasted apart for thin seams of coal. I vividly remember the first time I traveled Larry Gibson’s home on Kayford Mountain in southern West Virginia. Larry and his humble cabin are surrounded by 10,000 acres of mountaintop removal mines. Larry was catapulted into activism 25 years ago when the destruction of his ancestral homeland began. Since that time he has invited thousands of visitors, members of the media and filmmakers to witness firsthand the destruction of his mountain for “cheap” coal. As I stared out upon thousands of acres of desecrated mountains, I became entirely committed to ending mountaintop removal.

My home state of North Carolina is the number one consumer of mountaintop removal mined coal. Our “cheap” electricity comes at the enormous cost of destroyed mountains, poisoned water and permanently impoverished Appalachian communities. As a North Carolina based organization we feel we have a moral imperative and duty to rapidly transition away from mountaintop removal coal mining and responsibly develop our own clean and sustainable energy sources. But before we take a position on any sort of energy development, we embark on a painstaking process of vetting scientific information and examining potential community and ecological impacts.

Appalachian Voices got involved in wind policy in North Carolina because we are facing the most extreme anti- wind energy legislation in the country. If passed by the General Assembly, this bill will serve as a ban on commercial and community scale wind energy development in the mountainous region of the state. I, for one, am not prepared to turn a blind eye to our neighboring states that are losing mountains, clean water and healthy communities for my electricity. Appalachian Voices is proud of our position supporting responsibly developed wind energy and is committed to working with a diverse group of interests to ensure a ban does not pass.

The claims made by the protesters – that Appalachian Voices supports blowing up mountains for wind turbines – is ridiculous and offensive. To imply that wind farms cause the same environmental toll as mountaintop removal is illogical. Wind energy is a proven technology that works, and has a relatively light environmental impact. A study conducted by Appalachian State University HERE showed that wind energy development on a small percentage of North Carolina ridges could produce enough clean energy for 195,000 homes, create 350 green jobs, and have a net economic impact of over one billion dollars.

It is unfortunate that individuals would protest our position with such a misguided and untruthful message. Appalachian Voices will choose to stand with Larry Gibson and continue to work towards a just and sustainable energy future. I would urge the members of the recent protest to heed their own advice – GET THE FACTS…

As the issue of mountaintop removal receives more attention, the focus has increasingly grown to include the people and communities affected by this mining practice. Time Magazine recently did a piece about a mining town that was bought out by Massey Energy, and now for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. This a story that is not all that uncommon in the coalfields, as coal companies find it easier to turning Appalachian towns into ghost towns than to make these communities livable.

Sophie Yan writes, “In Lindytown, most area residents are long gone. They tell TIME they were muscled out of their homes by Massey, whose representatives pursued them aggressively, phoning and visiting often. By acquiring property in the area, the company has expanded operations — literally into remaining residents’ backyards,” “Appalachia Journal: When Miners Move in, Residents Move On.”

Sometimes, instead of pushing people out of communities, Big Coal just ignores the pending dangers that come with their operations. Marsh Fork Elementary School in Raleigh County, West Virginia is located downhill from one of Massey Energy’s slurry impoundments and approximately 300 feet from a coal silo. If the impoundment were to burst, the 240 children that go to the school would have only a few minutes to evacuate. For years, the citizens of Marsh Fork have been petitioning to have the school moved to a safer location.

After significant pressure, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship agreed to pledge $1 million to help fund the $8 million project to construct a new Marsh Fork Elementary School.

“And I would dare to say that the Coal River area has produced more millions, maybe billions of dollars in coal severance tax than anywhere in this state,” school board president Richard Snuffer, the school board president, said. “So it’s time they probably got a little bit back.”

West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who has been more critical of the coal industry as of late, applauded Massey’s decision. “This is a welcome and good start by officials at Massey Energy in announcing their pledge of $1 million for the construction of a new $8.6 million Marsh Fork Elementary School,” said Byrd. “….These children are our future and it is my hope that all the necessary funds will be made available to construct a relocated Marsh Fork Elementary School soon.”

UNC Chapel Hill is under a lens of scrutiny for their use of mountaintop removal coal. While UNC may be claiming they are avoiding purchasing mountaintop removal coal, public records indicate that their purchasing practices suggest otherwise.

According to “Fact-checking UNC’s Coal Claims,” by Joe Schwartz of The Independent Weekly, “The Red River Mine sold UNC more than 106,000 tons of coal at a cost of $8.4 million from 2007 to 2009, according to university documents. Last year, Red River Mine was the largest supplier to UNC. It is owned by the Red River Coal Company, which has several mines and uses mountaintop removal at some of them…”

Some students are calling for UNC to be clean up their act. In article for The Herald Sun, Stewart Boss, student coordinator for the Coal-Free UNC Campaign said, “UNC is a leading public university that has set a higher standard for environmental stewardship and concern for public welfare than this. Now that the light has been shed on UNC’s link to destructive mining practices, Carolina has a responsibility to disassociate itself from these dirty coal companies.”

By Marsha Johnston, A citizen participant in the Alliance for Appalachia’s annual Week in Washington

By all accounts, the 5th annual Week in Washington last week was highly successful. Dozens of conversations with legislators and federal agencies showed that the two most critical pieces of legislation, the Clean Water Protection Act (H.R.1310) and the Appalachia Restoration Act (S. 696), are moving.

But the strength of the legislation that emerges will depend on constituent pressure, notes Matt Wasson, Appalachian Voices’ director of programs.

Three new U.S. Congressional representatives signed on as cosponsors to the Clean Water Protection Act—Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-MA), Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL) and Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL).

Illinois
Parson Brown and Kat Wallace, of The Topless America Project, Lan and Pam Richart of the Eco-Justice Collaborative, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth Fellow Teri Blanton, had an appointment with Rep. Quigley’s aide, but ran into the congressman at the door.

“There was nothing in his record to indicate that he would not support us, so we thought maybe we just hadn’t gotten to him,” said Brown. Sure enough, when he learned of their mission, Quigley said, “We’ve talked about how there is no such thing as clean coal and about mountaintop removal on the floor of the House. If there is anything I can do to help you people, just say the word.”

So Blanton said, “Just cosponsor 1310.”

Quigley excused himself for a minute and came back to say he was on board. The group spent the next 25 minutes talking to his aide, who said, “You have an ally in this office. He is against carbon sequestration and mountaintop removal. We just need you to give us ammunition.” They invited Rep. Quigley to the reception, but he demurred, saying he had to “battle lobbyists in a hockey game,” but he was so thrilled with his “I Love Mountains” button, he wore it to the game.

California
The California participants, including Maureen Robinson, a laid-off teacher who reached into her savings to travel to Washington D.C., Dennis McHale, a long-time eco-activist in Orange County, and I, got great response from Rep. Loretta Sanchez when they ran into at her office. Legislative assistant Jessica Fernandez suggested that Sanchez, who has cosponsored the Clean Water Protection Act, could write a letter to the entire California delegation of 54 representatives, urging them to cosponsor the bill, which already boasts half of the delegation. For her part, Rep. Sanchez put on an “I Love Mountains” button as she set off to a meeting at the White House. All of the California participants repeatedly exhorted the California lawmakers to take a lead on mountaintop removal, given the state’s frequent lead on environmental issues and their fewer obligations to the coal industry.

Montana

Week in Washington citizen lobbyists got some promising feedback from a number of senators, even if their legislators did not sign on to cosponsor.

After last year’s Appalachian Treasures Tour of Montana and other states, dogged persistence by Sarah Perry, a stay-at-home Montana mother, got Week in Washington a meeting with Senator Max Baucus. And this was not just a little meeting. For an hour-and-a-quarter, Sen. Baucus and his senior staff listened to a Week in Washington group plead with him to do something to ensure that children in Appalachia have clean drinking water. Perry had also brought Sen. Baucus and his counterpart Sen. Jon Tester custom t-shirts that declared Montanans’ support for clean water and intact mountains.

At the Montana constituent breakfast the next day with Senator Jon Tester, Sen. Baucus made a point of wading through the crowd to take the Alliance for Appalachia group aside and say, “Something has to be done.”

New York

Outside U.S. Senate Hart Building hearing room 216, Keesee, from Moorehead, Ky., recognized that Senator Joe Lieberman (D-NY) was important but couldn’t place his name. Nonetheless, Keesee asked if he could walk with him, and if Sen. Lieberman had heard of mountaintop removal mining.

“He told me he had heard only a minute amount about it and, as I was telling him about Senate Bill 696, he was very receptive, the most courteous person I’ve talked to here. He said he will definitely look into it, and mentioned that he was very environmental. He introduced himself as he left,” Keesee said.

On his first trip to Washington, Keesee had a lot to tell the senator. When he was growing up in the Kentucky coalfields, they could never use the water without boiling it, which was always rust-colored. “On good days, it was somewhat transparent, but mostly opaque and smelled bad, kinda like rotten eggs,” he said, adding that he didn’t make the connection between his family’s bad water and mountaintop removal mining until he moved further away from the coalfields.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

Tom Fox, senior counsel for the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, where the Appalachia Restoration Act resides, reported that the EPW committee is “trying to find the sweet spot” of new language that would target only mountaintop removal and not all surface mining without resorting to the narrow mountaintop removal definition used in the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

Fox said the committee called in all of the scientists who authored Science magazine’s blistering condemnation of mountaintop removal to brief committee members, and that one of them, Dr. Hendryx, is compiling more detail on mortality in mountaintop removal counties. As for potential Senate supporters, Fox noted that Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) intentionally read his recent statement exhorting the coal industry to “embrace change” on the radio so that “the people at home would know it wasn’t just for his staff.” He expressed little hope, however, that Sen. Byrd’s counterpart, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, would abandon his opposition, given his recent remarks about West Virginia having “only 4 percent flatland”, an apparent reference to the idea that leveling mountaintops is beneficial to the state.

Diana Withen, from Wise County, Va., reminded Fox that the coal companies are not just destroying mountains, “they are blowing up whole communities.” A fellow Virginian, Dorothy Taulbee, she said, had seen her 100-year-old oak home, which she purchased for approximately $100,000, literally shook apart by three surrounding mountaintop removal sites until it was worth no more than $12,000, which is what the coal companies paid her for it. Although she doesn’t personally live in the coalfields, she said that, standing in town, she can feel the vibrations of the explosions several times a day.

Changing the language in the Appalachia Restoration Act to exclude surface mining piqued the interest of Jonathan McCracken, legislative assistant to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH). Although Sen. Brown was involved in the original drafting of the House bill when he was a congressman, he has yet to endorse Appalachia Restoration Act. At his weekly “constituent coffee”, Bill Price, Ohio resident and Sierra Club environmental justice organizer, Mandeep Gil, a recent Ohio resident, and I, informed McCracken about the changes being worked on to address Sen. Brown’s concerns about its potential impact on surface mining in Ohio. He said he had a good working relationship with bill co-author Sen. Benjamin Cardin’s (D-MD) legislative aide, and that he would work with her. Price gave him the name of Alexander’s aide as well. The group then gave the same information to Senator Brown, who took the pamphlet and said he would look into it.

After a green energy panel at the Senate Democrats’ Progressive Media Summit on Wednesday. Bob Kincaid, host of The Horn, America’s Liberal Voice, asked Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Benjamin Cardin (D-MD), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) why they had not ALL signed onto Sen. Cardin’s Appalachia Restoration Act. The West Virginia native told them that mountaintop removal is intolerable to people all across this country. He corrected Sen. Shaheen’s mistaken impression that the bill would end all coal mining. In response, they said they expect to report the bill out of committee this year.

A coalition comprised of 28 Christian groups sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency demanding that the organization take action to end mountaintop removal through the restoration of the Clean Water Act’s protections.

“As part of our call to be stewards of creation, we have a duty to use the land responsibly, to manage it so that it serves the good of all, and to protect it for future generations and for all life. Establishing the Clean Water Act rule is one step in doing that.”

-Jordan Blevins, Land and Water Program Manager for the National Council of Churches

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