Energy Report Shorts

OSM Approves Expansion of Appalachia’s Largest Slurry Impoundment The Federal Office of Surface Mining recently approved an expansion of the Brushy Fork impoundment in West Virginia — one of the largest slurry disposal sites in the country — to hold two billion more gallons of the waste produced from washing coal. Unless the West Virginia…

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Proposed Coal Ash Regulations Weaker than Household Waste Laws

Nearly three years after the Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash disaster spilled over a billion gallons of toxic sludge into the Emory River in Harriman, Tenn., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is set to finalize guidelines regulating coal ash ponds. However, a bill in the Senate could put a permanent hold on the EPA’s ability…

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Congressional Hearing on Stream Buffer Zone Neglects Residents

By Jamie Goodman On Sept. 26, a Congressional hearing took place in Charleston, W.Va. to discuss proposed revisions to the controversial stream buffer zone rule designed to further protect waterways in Appalachia. Conducted by Representatives Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) from the Subcommitte on Energy and Mineral Resources in Charleston, W.Va., the…

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Breaking: New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases

by Jeff Biggers, cross posted from Alternet.org Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice. That is the damning conclusion in a breakthrough study, released last night in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community…

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