The Eighth Circle of Hell

October 6, 2009
by Matthew Burns

I have been to the Eighth Circle of Hell and have returned to tell the tale. Just as Dante’s “Inferno” detailed the conscious fraud and treachery in the Eighth Circle of Hell, those same vices could be used to describe the Eighth Circle of Hell that I visited this past weekend. In case any of you are wondering, the Eighth Circle of Hell is not a place of mythology; rather, it is located just outside of the modern-day community of Sarah Ann, West Virginia.

But one can clearly recognize the community of Sarah Ann was not always this way. It is readily apparent that it was once a nice little community full of people who cared about each other and the land. It is also a historical location, as it was home of the Hatfield Family of Hatfield-McCoy Feud fame. The patriarch of the Hatfield family, Devil Anse Hatfield, is buried in the family cemetery nearby. But decades of fraud and treachery by a roughshod coal industry has laid Sarah Ann low. Sarah Ann is a prime example of the lost potential of a people and community that must forever remain a black eye upon the coal industry as a reminder of its inherent deceptiveness!

As my wife and I were driving down Route 44 through Logan County on our way to Iaeger in McDowell County, I witnessed poverty like I had never before seen. Everywhere there were remnants of a once thriving economy that had long since vanished. Crumbing homes with broken windows, horrible roads crisscrossed by abandoned rail lines, and countless boarded up stores and businesses. I couldn’t help but notice the irony. Around every bend in the road there was another coal facility, just bulging with the wealth of the mountains. How could this be? How could there be so much obvious wealth in one place with so very little of that wealth benefitting the very location from which it was being exploited? Then, I looked up on the ridgelines and mountaintops that surrounded the roadway, and I saw the problem…mountaintop removal.

While the mines that pervade the area are producing as much coal as ever, these mines no longer require manpower to extract the coal. Though the current stock prices of coal companies indicate that the industry is booming (despite what we hear on the news), it is in fact, a jobless coal boom. Only the coal companies are making any money off of the coal these days, and the people of the coalfields are once again left out in the cold. The people of the southern coalfields are not the types to just sit around and wait for a hand-out, and on our trip you could tell that the people we encountered were hardworking people who have simply fell on hard times. But with only ONE option for employment, where do these people go when that option is no longer available?

The “lucky” few who do manage to find a job on these large equipment intensive mine sites are still faced with the no-win situation of destroying their communities in order to work there. Just as was the case 100 years ago, when the UMW was trying to organize coalfield workers, coal was not then, nor is it now, a friend to southern WV! Whenever I see a bumper sticker that reads, “Friends of Coal,” I want to ask the person driving the vehicle, “Do you by any chance remember Cabin Creek? Paint Creek? Matewan? Blair Mountain?” Now, I don’t know about you, but I tend to reserve my friendship for people who deserve it, and I typically don’t befriend inanimate minerals. I can’t help but wonder if the whole Friends of Coal campaign is merely a means of mass communication among the ignorant? Obviously the people who carry this message are ignorant of their history, their heritage and their future!

However, like many who are opposed to MTR, I am not diametrically opposed to coal mining. In fact, I realize that it is a fact of life in the monoeconomies of the central Appalachian coalfields and that, in fact, it would be immoral to stop all coal mining in central Appalachia. Still, I will say it just makes good sense to obtain the coal from underground and not by mountaintop removal methods. There is a readily available workforce just waiting to again be employed by the coal industry. If Coal really is good for West Virginia, as the industry and the bought-politicans readily tout, then the mining of coal should be conducted in such a way as to maximize the employment of West Virginians. Only in this manner will coal revenue truly increase the tax base and improve the standard of living for the average West Virginian.

You might ask, “But what can be done?” “Is it fair to judge the situation at face value?” Is it fair to say, “If you don’t like it, then leave” as so many coal industry advocates spout? I ask you this, why should someone have to leave their ancestral home simply so that someone else can draw a paycheck from its destruction? Only in central Appalachia can the victim be made out to be the villain! Why should corporate interests be given superiority over the value of human life and individual property rights? I recently heard someone say, “We don’t live where you mine coal, you mine coal where we live. We were here first.” That statement is so very true. A real mountaineer will recognize the problem and fight to make it better instead of cutting and running, like the perpetrators of MTR do.

The majority of problems currently asscoiated with mountaintop removal are clearly human rights issues, as it is chock full of violations on that front. So why do so many see mountaintop removal only as an environmental problem? Is it because it is hard to paint human rights violations when they primarily involve poor, white families, or is it simply because it is easier to villainize “environmental extremists”? If it is the former, that white people are not poor, or cannot be discriminated against, then I invite you to visit the southern West Virginia communities that I visited this weekend. You see, the social justice issues in the coalfields are not racially motivated, but rather, they are based on simple economics. We’re poor, so we don’t matter. Yes, class warfare is alive and well in the central Appalachian coalfields.

But all is not hopeless, I did see a few glimmers of hope on my trip through the coalfields. For example, in Gilbert, West Virginia, I saw a few brave citizens trying their best to break the stranglehold of the monoeconomy perpetrated by the coal industry by taking up the banner of tourism. These people were trying their best to cater to the influx of visitors to the Hatfield/McCoy Trail. In spite of all the efforts there, I see one big catch-22, a community cannot have a tourism industry when mountaintop removal is destroying the very thing these people are coming to visit…the mountains. Now I know the claims, that the Hatfield/McCoy trail is partially built on old strip mines and without the coal industry leaving this abandoned mine land to the state, the trail system would not be possible. That is a faulty argument and is the equivalent of saying that Coca-Cola wouldn’t exist without obese people to drink it! There is already more than enough abandoned strip mines in southern West Virginia to have 100 Hatfield/McCoy trails.

After my visit to the coalfields, the bottom line of the matter is the residents of these communities desperately need roads, and they need them yesterday. I know we’ve all heard the line from, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” where George Clooney comments that the little town he was in was a geographical oddity because it was 2 weeks from anywhere. Well, many of these little communities share that geographical oddity because they are 2 hours from anywhere. A successful community has a solid infrastructure. Good roads are the cornerstone of this infrastructure. For businesses to excel, there must be a good tranpsortation system. While these tourism entrepreneurs in Gilbert are laying the foundations and hedging their bets that a new day is dawning in the coalfields, it is up to the rest of us to demand that funds be allocated to advancing the economic conditions of the coalfields. Without good roads and the economic diversification that comes with them, these citizens of the southern West Virginia coalfields will remain virtual slaves and a captive workforce for the coal industry that continues to use fewer and fewer workers

But don’t be mistaken. These are not a broken people, and to realize this one but has to look into the eyes of the children. For too long, these areas have remained forgotten and the people written off as lost causes. The children tell a different story. These kids truly are the hope of the future, but they must be encouraged when they are young. The inquisitiveness and intelligence of these children rival any in the nation, but without nurturing these hopes will die. There is a stark difference between the hopes and dreams of children in the coalfields and the twenty-somethings that remain in this area. I have seen this firsthand, and it made me wonder what went on in that space of time to completely eradicate that optimism? Could it be the 130+ years of oppression wrought by the coal industry? Continually being told (and shown) that you and your land are good for nothing except coal mining, and then being told that you need to keep your mouth shut if your opinions differ from those of the coal industry, has to take its toll on any human psyche. For far too long, the people of the central Appalachian coalfields have been America’s forgotten people. It is shameful that the very people who have sacrificed the most (and continue to sacrifice) for the prosperity of the United States, have received so very little.

Still, the seeds of oppression have sprouted into the flower of discontent, and the southern West Virginia coalfields now finds itself at a crossroads. No longer will it depend on a one resource economy. No longer will it rely on corporate politicians. No longer will its citizens sit idly by and watch their heritage be destroyed for the benefit of some faraway place. No longer will we accept being second-class citizens. Standing with us at this crossroads are the spirits of mountaineers long since passed; from Simon Kenton and Daniel Boone; to Michael Stoner and Mitchell Clay; from Devil Anse and Smilin’ Sid Hatfield; to Mother Jones and Governor William C. Marland. Their presence strengthens and unites us, and they root us in the knowledge that we are as much a part of this rugged land as the coal that is being ripped from the mountaintops.

Let’s stand together on this issue of economic diversification in the coalfields and demand better of our elected officials. No matter where you are from, contact your elected officials by email or letter, better yet call them and tell them your mind! If they continue to refuse to address this grave injustice, then I ask you to join me in actively campaigning against them (regardless of political party) in the next election. The coalfields are at a critical point in its history, and a changing of the guard may be just what is needed to save the coalfields from the coal industry.

http://endmtr.com/2009/10/06/the-eighth-circle-of-hell/

Earthjustice Seeks Supreme Court Review in Mountaintop Removal Mining Case

Comment: Mt. Top Removal must be stopped! It has ruin people's lives, ruin their water and ruin the land! Now Virginia wants to blow up the Piedmont of Virginia for uranium because the France and Canada wants Virginia uranium! No to Mt. Top Removal and Not to Uranium mining and milling!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2009
1:36 PM
CONTACT: Earthjustice
Raviya Ismail, Earthjustice, (202) 667-4500, ext. 221

Earthjustice Seeks Supreme Court Review in Mountaintop Removal Mining Case
Clean Water Act violated in issuance of permits for mining

WASHINGTON - August 27 - Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court that asks the Court to review a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a controversial mountaintop removal mining case. The case challenges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' issuance of permits allowing companies to dump waste from mountaintop removal mining into streams without following basic requirements of the Clean Water Act designed to prevent irreversible harm to the nation's waters.

"This case is of great national importance," said Earthjustice attorney Steve Roady. "The Corps of Engineers is ripping the heart out of the Clean Water Act by granting permits that allow coal companies to permanently entomb vital streams in the rubble of exploded mountains. The destruction caused by mountaintop removal mining is enormous and the adverse impacts on local communities are profound. We're asking the Supreme Court to hold the Corps accountable."
Earthjustice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment filed this lawsuit challenging several West Virginia mountaintop removal permits in September 2005 on behalf of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and Coal River Mountain Watch. The lawsuit challenged the Corps' violation of the Clean Water Act by authorizing the permits to fill 23 valleys and 13 miles of mountain streams in southern West Virginia without first performing even the most basic, legally required assessment of the harm that would occur when the streams are buried forever.

"The Supreme Court must intervene in a case that strives to provide essential protections for Appalachian mountain streams under the Clean Water Act," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy & the Environment. "The Corps has not adequately controlled mountaintop mining removal activity and has allowed for the wholesale destruction of our vital waterways."

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia in March 2007 found those permits violated the Clean Water Act. In February, a panel of federal judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled 2 to 1 in favor of the Corps in the case, with a strong dissent from one judge on the panel. Earthjustice then requested rehearing by the full court of appeals, but in late May, by a close vote of 4 to 3, with 4 additional judges abstaining from the vote, the court denied that petition.

However, two judges filed dissenting opinions, each of which Judge Diana Gribbon Motz joined.

In his dissent, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that he voted for the full court of appeals to hear the case because of "the potentially irreversible effects that the permitted operations will have on the Appalachian ecosystem." He concluded: "The requirements of the Clean Water Act are important. . . . Once the ecologies of streams and rivers and bays and oceans turn, they cannot easily be reclaimed. More often than not, the waterway is simply gone for good."

In his dissent from the denial of rehearing, Judge M. Blane Michael, who also had dissented from the panel's decision, explained that: "The ecological impact of filling headwater streams with mining overburden is both profound and irreversible . . . . No permit should issue until the Corps fulfills each distinct obligation under the controlling regulations. And this court should not defer to the Corps until the agency has done its job."

"We're constantly hearing about the decreasing amounts of clean water within our nation as well as 'water wars' between states," said Janet Keating executive director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. "Yet the coal industry is recklessly burying and polluting our headwater streams under millions of tons of mining waste in central Appalachia. We hope that the Court realizes how vital, urgent and necessary their input is on this matter."

"Scientific studies show time and time again that mountaintop removal does horrible damage to our nation's water supplies," said Vernon Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch. "It's now time for the nation's high court to uphold the laws intended to protect our communities from polluting industries that care only for their profit margin."

"In allowing high mountain headwater streams to be filled with waste rock, the Corps has allowed total disruption of the hydrology of hundreds of square miles of ancient mountains and the natural and human lives those ground and surface waters have supported for centuries," said Cindy Rank, chair of the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy Mining Committee. "The future well-being of the region depends on stricter adherence to the nation's environmental laws."

Mountaintop removal mining is a method of strip mining in which coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1000 feet off the tops of mountains to reach coal seams underneath. The result is millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation dumped into surrounding valleys, burying miles and miles of streams under piles of rubble hundreds of feet deep. Mountaintop removal mining harms not only aquatic ecosystems and water quality, but also destroys hundreds of acres of healthy forests and fish and wildlife habitat, including habitat of threatened and endangered species, when the tops of mountains are blasted away. As of 2002, the Appalachian region had already lost 1,200 miles of mountain streams to this destructive process-and the Environmental Protection Agency has predicted that this could rise as high as 2,400 miles by the year 2013 if current practices continue.

This practice also devastates Appalachian communities -- in West Virginia, Kentucky, southern Virginia and eastern Tennessee -- and cultures that have existed in these mountains for hundreds of years. Residents of the surrounding communities are threatened by rock slides, catastrophic floods, poisoned water supplies, constant blasting and destroyed property.

Additional Resources:
The EPA's Environmental Impact Statement on mountaintop removal mining can be found here: http://www.epa.gov/region3/mtntop/eis2005.htm
Pending permits can be searched here: http://www.appalachian-center.org/foia/
A map of permits in West Virginia can be found here: http://www.earthjustice.org/library/maps/westva-mining-permits.pdf
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Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/27-6

What is Mountaintop Removal?

Comment: Mt. Top Removal is ruining people lives, water, air, and land. Open Pit Uranium mining is not much different from Mt. Top Removal except uranium is radioactive! The Canadians will be blowing up hillsides in Virginia, will built a uranium mill with tailings ponds that will flood when Hurricanes bring heavy rains, will displace people off their lands for uranium and will ruin our lives, land, air and water!

Mountaintop removal is a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Primarily, mountaintop removal is occurring in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require.

The US Environmental Protection Agency defines mountaintop removal as follows:

“Mountaintop removal/valley fill is a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal. Mountaintop removal can involve removing 500 feet or more of the summit to get at buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then dumped in the neighboring valleys.”

There are 6 main components of the mountaintop removal process:

CLEARING — Before mining can begin, all topsoil and vegetation must be removed. Because coal companies frequently are responding to short-term fluctuations in the price of coal, these trees are often not even used comercially in the rush to get the coal, but instead are burned or sometimes illegally dumped into valley fills.

BLASTING — Many Appalachian coal seams lie deep below the surface of the mountains. Accessing these seams through surface mining can require the removal of 500-800 feet or more of elevation. Blowing up this much mountain is accomplished by using millions of pounds of explosives.

DIGGING — Coal and debris is removed by using this piece of machinery, called a dragline. A dragline stands 22 stories high and can hold 24 compact cars in its bucket. These machines can cost up to $100 million, but are favored by coal companies because they displace the need for hundreds of jobs. .

DUMPING WASTE — The waste from the mining operation, also known as overburden or spoil, is dumped into nearby valleys, burying streams. According to an EPA environmental impact statement, more than 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams were permitted to be buried as of 2001.

PROCESSING — The coal is washed and treated before it is loaded on trains. The excess water left over from this process is called coal slurry or sludge and is stored in open coal impoundments. Coal sludge is a mix of water, coal dust, clay and toxic chemicals such as arsenic mercury, lead, copper, and chromium. Impoundments are held in place by mining debris, making them very unstable. .

RECLAMATION — While reclamation efforts such as stabilization and revegetation are required for mountaintop removal sites, in practice, state agencies that regulate mining are generous with granting waivers to coal companies. Most sites receive little more than a spraying of exotic grass seed, but even the best reclamation provides no comfort to nearby families and communities whose drinking water supplies have been polluted and whose homes will be threatened by floods for the hundred or thousands of years it will require to re-grow a forest on the mined site.

Get more information about coal mining and the incredible environmental damage it causes at I Love Mountains.org

We need more mainstream bloggers talking about this. I read and listen to progressive bloggers and radio hosts all the time and rarely is this discussed. Recently, Thom Hartman and Mike Malloy have been discussing climate change and mountain top removal to a certain extent, but not to the degree that they talk about torture, health care, etc. We have all the time in the world to figure out some of these issues of war and peace, if not health care, but once the mountains are gone, they are gone forever. You don’t get them back once they are bombed, and you don’t get the streams and rivers the debris fills back either. MTR is forever. Why isn’t this discussed more?

Progressive bloggers need to know that we have to counteract the disinformation campaigns still actively funded by Exxon and the Heritage Foundation and CEI and other right-wingers who are in the business of denial. Their campaigns of lies really, seriously need to be counteracted. I don’t see enough of that coming from the “left” or from the center either. We have to call these deniers and friends of coal and other sympathizers and anti-science people out and expose them for what they are.

http://www.civilianism.com/futurism/2009/drunken-coal-thugs-and-mountain-madness/

Big Coal Lobby Does Not Want You to See This Powerful New Film

Here's the trailer:




Comment: Canada will be blowing up Virginia for open pit uranium mining, just as the State of Virginia is blowing our Mountains! Virginia and Canada just want the money; with little attention to what is doing to our families, our health, our land, our air, and our water! This is pure evil! Just think about the next time you turn on your lights, a way of life is being destroy for corporate greed and our comfort with diry coal and uranium mining. Demand Virginia to go to true green power, it is possible and it is renewable!

Coal Country Premiere: Big Coal Lobby Does Not Want You to See This Powerful New Film

Jeff BiggersAuthor, The United States of Appalachia
Posted: July 3, 2009 04:52 AM

As a groundbreaking clean energy counterpart to this summer's extraordinary Food, Inc. documentary on the agribusiness, the long-awaited "Coal Country" film on the cradle-to-grave process of generating our coal-fired electricity will be hitting the theatres next week with the big bang of an ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive.

And Big Coal ain't happy.

After a year-long campaign of threats and intimidation, the Big Coal lobby plans to have its Friends of Coal sycophants out in force to picket the premiere of the film on July 11, 7pm, at La Belle Theater in the South Charleston Museum in Charleston, West Virginia.

Why is Big Coal so afeared of this documentary film by native Appalachian daughters Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, producer and director of three-part award-winning landmark PBS series, "The Appalachians"?

If anything, Coal Country goes out of its way to include the views and voices of the Big Coal lobby and its executives, engineers and miners. This, in fact, might be why Coal Country is so compelling; far from any hackneyed agenda, Coal Country simply allows the coal industry and those affected by its mountaintop removal operations and coal-fired plants to tell their personal stories. The end result is devastating. In a methodical and deliberate fashion, Coal Country brilliantly takes viewers on a rare journey through our nation's coal-fired electricity, from the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of coal.

Once you see the breathtaking footage by cameraman Jordan Freeman, and the unaffected and heart-rending portraits of coal mining families, you will never flick on your light switch again without thinking about Coal Country.

From the git-go, West Virginia governor and coal peddler Joe Manchin declares: "There is no replacement for coal. There might be 30 or 50 or 100 years from now, but there's not today."

A French engineer cheerfully proclaims, "Coal is a wonderful resource. It's too bad it's dirty."

As one coal company executive coldly states, the millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives that rip through the Appalachian mountains and poison the watersheds and air of local communities daily, "might make some people uncomfortable."

Another coal engineer playfully recalls teaching his children to refer to coal-fired plants as "cloud factories" to bring the rain, in the face of some of the highest cancer and heart disease rates in the country, and an American Lung Association study that 24,000 Americans die prematurely from coal-fired plant pollution each year.

One reclamation engineer even breaks into tears, lamenting that his dedication and work are misunderstood. He waves his hand at denuded hills, stripped of the hundreds of species of flora and fauna in one of the most diverse deciduous forests on the American continent, and lauds his planting of a small stand of sycamores. After 30 years of reclamation laws and over 1.5 million acres of clear cut and destroyed hardwood forest, he champions the novelty of his tree-planting efforts: "We're trying them out on some mountaintop removal sites and seeing how they do."

Whew. Big Coal doesn't want you to see this stunning expose because they have been allowed to let the truth slip out of their mouths.

Michael Shnayerson, the author of Coal River, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, wonderfully plays the role of an informative commentator throughout the film, delivering his facts in a no-nonsense and quiet manner. Yet, he tells an interviewer: "Nothing prepared me for the visual devastation..." of mountaintop removal.

And this is where Coal Country shines the light on one of the darkest human rights and environmental violations overseen by federal and state regulators in our times. Through a series of moving portraits of coalfield residents, the film chronicles the extraordinary and largely overlooked toll of coal mining on the lives of Appalachian residents.

In a gripping montage, Coal Country shows how those affected by mountaintop removal and coal-fired plants have emerged as the most informed and articulate spokespeople against the ravages of the out-of-state coal companies. In effect, it is the gross indifference and recklessness of Big Coal that turns former coal miners and farmers and shopkeepers into the nation's leading coal and climate change activists--and true American heroes.

One of the film's most illuminating moments takes place during a hearing in West Virginia over the Bush administration's 2002 manipulation of the stream buffer rule, which allowed mining waste to be dumped into mountain streams. While a line of residents and coal company employees take their turn at the microphone, the room silences when a young man in a halting voice steps up and quietly tells the truth:

"Both sides are scared. And we're screaming insults back and forth at each other, and I think we're losing sight of the source of our fears. West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, and southern West Virginia is the poorest part of it. And I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping burgers. You look out and that's all you see. Mining and flipping burgers. And I argue that the coal company, that they want it that way. That they want that to be the only options. That is the only way they can get support on the way they treat their workers and treat our community."

In Rock Creek, West Virginia, Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds recounts the polarization and poisoning of the community's watersheds. She quotes Upton Sinclair: "It is hard to get a man to understand something when his paycheck demands him not to understand."

In eastern Kentucky, Teri Blanton describes the devastated woodlands landscape replanted with foreign grass, "which is fine for Montana, but it's not supposed to look like that in eastern Kentucky."

Former coal miner Chuck Nelson walks viewers through the union-busting tactics of out-of-state coal companies and mountaintop removal operations, and the rarely noticed destruction of real estate values for local coalfield residences due to coal dust and environmental ruin. Mountaintop removal, ultimately, he points out, "is not so cheap for people who have to live under these sites."

In southwestern Virginia, Kathy Selvage describes how she went from too shy to speak in public, to her transformation as one of the most articulate activists and well-researched coal experts. Far from being politically motivated, it comes down to an "assault on our community and way of life." Standing in the face of a pitiful reclamation efforts, she declares, "I grieve over the lost of a mountain."

Farmer Elisa Young in Meigs County, Ohio, tours the parade of coal-fired plants along the Ohio River that have led to the highest cancer and poverty rates in the region. "I'm not a trained activist, I'm not an environmentalist. I just live in a county that is being waled on...As a farmer, I need clean air, clean soil and clean water to run a farm."

With some spectacular photography in the background during a flyover across mountaintop removal sites, Kathy Mattea, the wondrous West Virginia country music star and granddaughter of coal miners, speaks of her support of coal mining families and the region's dilemma.

Mattea nails the issue of mountaintop removal: "It's not against the law," she says, "but what if a law is unjust?"

Coal Country should be required viewing for our nation's elected officials, and the administrators at the Council on Environmental Quality, the EPA and the Department of Interior.

In fact, Coal Country needs to be screened at the White House theatre.

For more information, visit: http://www.sierraclub.org/scp/coalcountry.aspx

or the Coal Country film site: www.coalcountrythemovie.com

Info on the West Virginia premiere is here:
http://thegazz.com/gblogs/wvfilm/2009/06/30/coal-country-new-film-from-mari-lynn-evans-july-11th/

A companion book volume, Coal Country: : Rising Up Against Mountaintop Removal Mining, will be release later this fall by Sierra Club Books, and edited by Shirley Stewart Burns, Mari-Lynn Evans, and Silas House.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/coal-country-premiere-big_b_225341.html

MTR: Destroyer of Mountains, Streams, Wildlife, and Communities

Comment: When you read the article, just replace the coal with uranium. We will have the same problems, our water will be ruin, and the air will have small uranium matter from the blast. The lies from the local uranium company about jobs, flying the American flag it is their duty to take out the uranium. We may be forced off our land for corporate monies. We will feel the blast of the open pit uranium mining, 24 hours a day, all week long. The churches in Sheva area will be shaking from the blast and the dust will settle on everyone cars! People wake up; we will be living the same way as our families and the legal Mt. Top Removal!


Published on Monday, June 29, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
MTR: Destroyer of Mountains, Streams, Wildlife, and Communities
The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia.
by Maria Gunnoe

The following was submitted as prepared testimony to the The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife on Thursday, June 25, 2009:

My name is Maria Gunnoe. I am 40 years old and I am a life long resident of Boone County in southern West Virginia. My family history there goes back to the 1700's. I know the areas and the people that are being impacted by mountaintop removal very well simply because this is the homeland where generations of our ancestors before me have raised their families and lived their lives. Most of these families have depended on underground coal mining to make a living but we as a culture of people have depended on these mountains to take care of our families. We are gatherers, hunters, gardeners, fishermen, active and retired miners, loving community members, we are stewards of this land and we are now organizers. We are working to protect and preserve the communities, culture and people that we love and hold dear to our hearts

Water Quality Impacts

There is a relatively new method of mining now happening in the coal fields of Appalachia called mountaintop removal coal mining. This method of mining is where the coal companies use nearly 4 million pounds of blasting material a day (in WValone) to blast the coal out of the mountains. Then everything other than the coal (including trees and topsoil) is used to create valley fills in our headwater streams. The artificial streams running off these sites are toxic with selenium.

The energy is temporary energy. You only burn coal one time. The destruction of the land, air, communities and people is permanent. There have been 500 mountains leveled for their coal and energy in the name of homeland security. These 500 mountains were surrounded by communities who depended on the mountain's resources and water for their very existence.

There have now been more than 2000 miles of streams buried by valley fills. People depended on these streams as much as any animals. The cumulative impact of the permits that are being allowed in some incidents are further depopulating and destroying communities and people. The regulatory agencies turn a blind eye to this pollution by continuing to allow the companies to buy more time to come in compliance with the existing laws. Without enforcement these laws are only words on paper.

Local communities truly do not have a voice in the process of these permits.

The DEP will set up what is called an informal conference to inform citizens of what the DEP and coal companies are planning to do and to give community members a chance to comment. These comments are recorded and we are told that they become a part of the permit record. In these hearings the citizens often beg the regulatory agencies to not allow these permits but commonly they approve every permit applied for. The people who live in these communities do not want mountaintop removal mining. Especially near their homes and communities simply because it is destroying everything they and their families before them have worked for.

In the 8 years of the Bush Administration the laws and courts were aligned to destroy any protection that we had for these beautiful and unique places and their people. The clean water act lost its meaning when the Bush Administration changed one word of this law - the definition of fill material. Another important rule, --the buffer zone rule- that protected our streams was done away with on the eve of Christmas 2008. With this rule change the Bush Administration opened us as residents up to nothing but destruction.

There are health impacts too. A study by Dr Michael Hendryx at West Virginia University has proven that there is reason to be concerned about the pollution that the people throughout the coalfields are being exposed to.

This study has not been taken seriously by our state leaders or our state regulatory agencies as a matter of fact it has been ignored. Portions of this study were based on the community of Twilight near where I live. Twilight Surface Mines surrounds the small communities of Lindytown and Twilight and the people who live there either put up with the impacts or leave.

The blasting has been horrible and the community's members concerns are not being heard.

There is near 4 million pounds of blasting material used each day in WV alone.

At one point the department of defense and Department of Environmental Protection allowed the coal company to dispose of old munitions from war {called tetryl its used as an igniter} on the mine site behind my home. It was too dangerous to use in war so they thought they would dispose of it in our community over our people's heads.

We have for many generations depended on the water from these mountains.

Now this water is being polluted forever.

In the case of Big Branch Creek where I live it is now polluted with toxic level of selenium. This is also present in my well water. This was quietly done by the coal company and the regulatory agency permitted it.

The entire aquifer of where I live is now pollution spill way. The loss of timber from our hollow alone will be felt for thousands of years to come. There is no way that the reclaimed land can grow the hardwood forest that the natural land does.

This land is dead. It's impossible to grow a healthy forest on dead polluted land. Reclamation is a pretty word but on the ground it has been proven to be impossible.


Culture

My family before me settled these mountains through the forced removal of the Cherokee known as the trail of tears and most of my neighbors have a similar story.

My grand father told me the story his mother told him of the men in the family dressing as women to allow the women and children to escape this forced removal. The women and children then followed the rivers to their headwaters and settled the area where I now live.

Throughout the past 250 years our families have built these places through determination and love for the place itself.

The mountains here sustained our families by supplying us with an abundance of food and fresh clean water in our wells, springs and streams. Southern West Virginians are fortunate enough to live in the second most bio-diverse region on this planet. This is richness beyond wealth. As residents we recognize our most valuable resources as being our land, water and people not the coal that lies beneath it all. Our people were here before the coal was discovered. Why should we have to leave now in the name of coal?

Some of our current resident's ancestors were awarded their land for military service to this country.

Now this very land being destroyed and the residents don't have the rights to protect it.

Appalachians are the history of this country. We have given all to build the infrastructure that supports this American dream that we all share. We help to supply 48% of this country's energy and the cost of this is never truly calculated. I have heard coal referred to as a cheap and clean energy. This ignores the facts. The facts are that the true cost of coal fired energy has never been calculated.

We must consider the cost of coal from the cradle to the grave. We must consider the cost of mountaintop removal coal mining not only the aquatic life and the wildlife where this coal is being extracted but on the human lives of everywhere it touches.

I have to ask what about the homeland security of the folks that are being forced to sell out to the coal companies in Lindytown W.V?

The people who proudly built this community are being told that they are in the way of coal production and that they must leave their homes of many generations.

The coal company engineers strategically buy out homes and family heir owned land to depopulate communities by making life unbearable. Their air land and water are being destroyed by mountaintop removal there is no way people can continue to live here and be healthy. They are being forced to leave home places of many generations to save their lives.

This alone is personally and emotionally devastating. The boom of "Big Bertha" -- a dragline -- swings over the community of Lindytown. Blasting is frequent and terrifying for residents that are holding out not wanting to sell.

This same "clean coal" that forced an elder woman out of her home who happened to die of a heart attack while she packed her belongings for the first time in 72 years. She too was in the way of production. The people in Lindytown were only free to leave. Why is it as homeland security increases here in DC ours only gets less and less likely to even exist?

In our mountains we have many mountain cemeteries that date back to the beginning of civilization here. We are grounded like our ancestors before us.

These cemeteries are awarded no protection by our regulatory agencies or law enforcement.

We as citizens are expected to register and account for these cemeteries in order to protect them from mining activity and most of the time the coal companies won't allow us into our family cemeteries to do this work. They stop us from visiting our dead by locking us out of our ancestral land in these mountains. I know of many grave yards that were in our mountains that no longer exist. The areas where they were are now gone.

The people here belong no where but here. These folks will thrive in their own environment but taken away from here they will perish as they are not where they belong. The culture of people in West Virginia is a culture of survivalist not environmentalist. We have survived here throughout times of extreme poverty during the rise and fall of the coal markets. We have always had the land to sustain our lives. Now the very reason for our existence as a culture of mountain people is being annihilated for its coal.

Jobs

Boone County falls second in poverty only to McDowell County, WV another leading coal producing county.

This is still the most impoverished area in the US today. If mountaintop removal was about jobs and prosperity where is it? In the 1960's we had 125,000 direct coal mining jobs in the coal industry in WV, but now we have less than 12,000. Ask yourselves is this really about jobs or profit and exploitation? These jobs are temporary jobs at best. The operation behind my home started in 2000. It is now closed down.

These good paying jobs only lasted long enough for the employees to get in debt.

I have watched as coal companies have destroyed one of the most beautiful places in this country by mountaintop removal coal mining. The people who live in these areas are often retired or active UMWA underground miners and their families. The people who work in mountaintop removal most often do not live in the environment that their jobs create. The companies are out of state coal companies and the workers are out of area workers. The companies commonly do not hire local people.

The coal companies will tell all that will listen that they are doing this for future economic development of an impoverished region.

They will say that we don't have any flat land for development. They will tell you that we need this flat land and that our mountains are useless land in their natural state. I have even heard them say that the mountains are in the way of development. There will be no future here for anyone with mountaintop removal. I cannot believe that we as a nation are depending on continuing to blow up mountains to supply energy in this country when the energy we need in this country rises with the sun everyday and blows in each churn of the wind. The ridges of southern WV are wind viable ridges until they are blown up. We cannot continue to allow this to be called clean coal.

Stop Mountaintop Mining

In my own mind I know that mountaintop removal coal mining will stop.

According to USGS we are running out of mineable coal and we are quickly running out of mountains in Southern, WV.

Global warming is very real. We are all just pawns on this chess board called earth. I hope that we can stop mountaintop removal and coals global attack soon enough to preserve some of what is left of one of the most beautiful and ecologically diverse places in this country. The rolling hills of Appalachia are becoming the flat plateaus of the West as I speak.

We have the opportunity to stop the annihilation of mountains and people by mountaintop removal and to change the history of energy in this country. We are at a cross roads.

We must put all special interest aside and follow what we know to be best for all of our future generations. Stop the attack on Appalachia's water supply and the people it sustains.

Thank you again to Senator Cardin and Senator Alexander for standing up for what any fellow human knows to be the right thing.

I would like to extend my tremendous appreciation to Senator Cardin and Senator Alexander for introducing Senate Bill 696 the Appalachian Restoration Act. This Bill if passed could turn back some of the Bush administration changes that is currently allowing coal companies to destroy valuable headwater streams and all that is connected to them. The residents I work with in the Boone County coal fields send their support for this bill as it is in some cases the only hope we have of remaining in our ancestral homes and in our ancestral homelands.

I leave you with photos and a recent article about flooding in the coalfields caused by run off from flattened mountains.

This is what inspired me to get involved in stopping mountaintop removal. There are other organizers just like me being created everyday by this industry. We have no choice but to oppose the practice of filling headwater streams, we live here!

Maria Gunnoe is an organizer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition [1], based in Huntington, W.Va.

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/29-1

Sunday Bloggers Act: Top Ten List on Why President Obama Must Visit Appalachia and Launch War for Green Jobs

Comment: Virginia allows legal Mt. Top Removal; therefore, VA is destroying people lives for Corporate Mining! Therefore, Virginia will not have a second thought about blowing up the Piedmont, valleys or the area around interstate 95 where uranium is in abundance! The dust from uranium open pit mining will be falling on us in the Piedmont, near University of Virginia and all the main rivers in Virginia!

(Bloggers across the nation are making a joint request this Sunday: It is time for President Barack Obama and CEQ chief Nancy Sutley to make their FIRST visit to a mountaintop removal moonscape and coal slurry impoundment and bear witness to the impact of the Obama administration's regulatory strip-mining policies on affected coalfield residents. For other posts, see Deviltower's DailyKos roundup: http://devilstower.dailykos.com/ )

First, let's us praise Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward, whose Coal Tattoo blog has become an indispensable forum for breaking news and debate in the coalfields. You haven't already, bookmark it:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/

Here's the beyond-the-Beltway truth: With millions of pounds of explosives ripping across the Appalachian mountains every day, and the Office of Surface Mining (OMSRE) still operating without a director, it is almost beyond belief that President Obama, CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson have made no attempt to visit actual mining sites under their jurisdiction.

Only through a firsthand look at the economic and environmental devastation wrought from mountaintop removal's 38-year rap sheet of pollution crimes and human rights violations, will President Obama, Lisa Jackson and Nancy Sutley truly understand three stark realities:

--stricter Obama mining regulations can easily be circumvented;

--as a vanishing carbon sink, the Appalachia coalfields are ground zero in any climate change battle;

--mountaintop removal destroys any chance at a sustainable economy or new initiatives for Green Jobs.

In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson made a trip to Tom Fletcher's porch in Martin County, Kentucky, to announce the launching of the "War on Poverty."

Forty-five years later, Martin County still ranks as one of the poorest counties in the country, with over 35 percent of the population living under the poverty level, while 67 percent of the coal mining jobs have disappeared due to strip-mining and mechanization in the last two decades.

This summer, President Obama should follow in LBJ's footsteps and journey to Martin County, Kentucky, a poverty-stricken area shamelessly ravaged by strip-mining and mountaintop removal (and the site of an ignored 300-million-gallon coal slurry accident in 2000), and announce his intention to launch a "War for Green Jobs and a Phase Out of Mountaintop Removal Operations."

August 3rd, the anniversary of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act that granted federal sanctioning of mountaintop removal in 1977 in a disastrous moment of compromise by liberal Democrats, would be a fine day for a visit.

For history on SMCRA, see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/dear-mr-president-declare_b_202321.html

In the meantime, here's my top ten list on what President Obama, Sutley, Jackson and others in his administration would learn from such a fact-finding trip:

1) Stricter Obama Regulations Can Be Circumvented--Just Asked Bo Webb About Getting Your House Blasted Daily by ANFO Explosives, Shelled by Fly Rock and Rained on by Silica Dust and Heavy Metals: While Vietnam vet/businessman Bo Webb received a slight reprieve this spring on the daily blasting above his home in Clay's Branch, West Virginia, he just received notice that the violations noted by federal regulators will be circumvented by a WV state decision. Webb was told on Friday: While operators were ordered to stop blasting in Clay's Branch until they placed all the material, rocks, flyrock, boulders, downed trees and all back on their permitted area, the WV Department of Environmental Protection reviewed solution is to blast down to the next seam of coal, blasting closer to residents so they can get to all the material that is off the permitted area.

So much for stricter regulations from Washington, DC.

Webb wrote President Obama earlier this spring of this state of terror in his community: "As I write this letter, I brace myself for another round of nerve-wracking explosives being detonated above my home in the mountains of West Virginia. Outside my door, pulverized rock dust laden with diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate explosives hovers in the air, along with the residual of heavy metals that once lay dormant underground. The mountain above me, once a thriving forest, has been blasted into a pile of rock and mud rubble. Two years ago, it was covered with rich black top soil and abounded with hardwood trees, rhododendrons, ferns and flowers. The under-story thrived with herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh, yellow root, and many other medicinal plants. Black bears, deer, wild turkey, hawks, owls, and thousands of birds lived here. The mountain contained sparkling streams teeming with aquatic life and fish."

To read the entire letter, see:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/urgent-webb-letter-to-oba_b_168604.html

2) Mountaintop Removal Kills Green Jobs and Clean Energy Project, Just Ask Lorelei Scarbro, a Coal Miner's Widow in Coal River Valley, West Virginia: Facing an impending 6,000 acre mountaintop removal operation bordering her property, coal mining families like Scarbro developed a plan for an industrial wind farm that would create more energy, more tax revenues and provide more sustainable jobs than the destructive mountaintop removal operations on Coal River Mountain, and save their historic communities. See: www.coalriverwind.org

3) Coal Companies Receive A Lot of Welfare, and Martin County, Kentucky, Home of the War on Poverty, Lost 67 Percent of Its Coal Mining Jobs Due to Stripped Down Mountaintop Removal Operations: For a chart on the relationship between mountaintop removal, lost jobs and poverty in Martin County, see: http://www.kftc.org/our-work/canary-project/campaigns/mtr/county-profiles

Earlier this week, a new study found that the Kentucky coal industry is a major recipient of WELFARE: Coal companies in Kentucky take $115 million more from Kentucky's state government annually in services and programs than they contribute in tax revenues.

4) Like Coalfield Parents, President Obama Wouldn't Want to Send His Daughters to the Marsh Fork Elementary School Either: Unlike the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, children at Marsh Fork school in Sundial, West Virginia, must play in toxic coal dust from a nearby coal silo, as 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge held back by a precarious earthen dam stare down daily at the playground, as mountaintop removal explosions take place nearby.

5) Union-Busting Out-of-State Coal Companies Have Polarized the Coalfields and Inflamed Violence: With less than 1,000 United Mine workers employed at mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia, the truth is that most mountaintop removal operators are owned and operated by union-busting outside corporations like Massey Energy, a Richmond, VA company that celebrated record profits in 2008, paid millions in penalties for criminal and civil violations, and then slashed its union-busted workforce this spring.

Infamous Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship revels in mountaintop removal conflict and union-busting--and yet, his ruthless operations receive tacit support from the Obama administration.

Here's a clip of a violent Massey supporter attack on this week's nonviolent march with Goldman Prize Winner Judy Bonds from Marsh Fork Elementary School this week:

6) Flooding from Mountaintop Removal Operations Still Rolls Down Like Injustice: Living under a mountaintop removal operation, Goldman Prize winner Maria Gunnoe, in Boone County, West Virginia, has seen seven floods sweep by her home, where the natural mountain valleys and waterways have been destroyed and clear cutting and blasting have led to massive erosion. Here's a clip from one of the floods:

7) Mountaintop Removal Stripmines Black History Month and Appalachian Heritage: Just as our nation has quietly overlooked the Appalachian coal mining origins of Black History Month godfather Carter Woodson, whose coal mining tenure in Raleigh County, West Virginia inspired his work as a historian and moved him to launch Negro History Week in the 1920s, the 38-year nightmare of mountaintop removal mining and its origins of betrayal in the same county of Woodson's mining experience have led to the destruction of the rich Appalachian heritage. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/stripmining-black-history_b_83918.html

8) Mountaintop Removal Operators Are NOT Coal Miners, But Mostly Heavy Equipment Operators (Bulldozer and Truck Drivers) Who Could Easily Be Used on Infrastructure Projects, Waterworks, Highway Projects, Genuine Reclamation and Reforestation Projects, and a Lot of Green Jobs Initiatives and Manufacturing Plants (Building Wind Turbines, Solar Panels).

In fact, every mountaintop removal operator job has taken away 2-3 jobs from underground coal miners.

9) President Obama Might Share a Beer But Not a Glass of Water with the Residents of Prenter, West Virginia: In a community stricken by coal sludge contamination of their wells and watersheds, illnesses including gallbladder disease abound--and yet, despite the overwhelming evidence of coal company negligence, American citizens can still NOT drink their tap or well water and must pay to truck in bottled water for the next two years until a new water system is set up. See:
http://www.prenterwaterfund.org/about

10) And When President Obama Returns to DC, Mountaintop Removal Will Come With Him: The joy of President Obama's air-conditioner at the White House and Oval Office requires the devastation of Appalachian mountains and historic communities, where coal stripmined from mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia are trained into the Potomac River power plant, which generates the electricity for Washington, DC.

Bottom line: It is time for the President and his CEQ and EPA administrators to come up to the mountain.

For more information, see: ilovemountains.org

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/sunday-bloggers-act-top-t_b_221976.html

Coal protesters assaulted and shot at, says Hansen - June 26, 2009

Comment: This may be our future in the Piedmont area of Virginia if the Corp. Virginia approves uranium mining! IT IS RUMOR SOME PEOPLE IN OUR LOVELY COUNTY IS AFRAID TO DISPLAY "NO URANIUM SIGNS" AROUND THIER HOME!

Jim Hansen has released a statement about his arrest earlier this week at a protest against coal mining by the company Massey Energy in West Virginia.

The NASA scientist and doyen of climate change protestors was arrested after those protesting against Massey’s mountaintop mining faced off against the company’s supporters. While Hansen describes local police as “courteous and professional”, he backs allegations made by some protestors that a supporter of the mining company assaulted one of their number. He also says that local man Larry Gibson, who has refused to sell his property for mining, has been the target of drive-by shootings.

However, he adds, “If Gandhi had the sequence right (first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win), we are already three-quarters of the way there. I noticed that it was only a handful of Massey people who were really vocal.

http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/06/coal_protesters_assaulted_and.html

Coal and Mortality in Appalachia and Making History

Comment: Mt Top Removal should never been allowed in any state but my home state of Virginia has ruin people lives for the profit of coal corporations, this needs to stop now! However, open pit uranium mining will ruin the rest of our lovely state! The state of Virginia needs to stop bowing down to corporations and take care of her citizens. Nuke and Coal Corp are going to ruin our state, ruin our homes, ruin our land, ruin our air, and make our families sick! Ban uranium mining and Mt. Top Removal!


Published by danawv, June 22nd, 2009

This is a historic week in the coalfields of Appalachia. A historic study quantifying the cost of coal in the form of human lives has come out (see below), and an historic action will take place in Coal River Valley on Tuesday.

And for the first time in over a generation we have legislation to end mountaintop removal proposed in both chambers of Congress and a hearing scheduled in the Senate. THURSDAY,

JUNE 25, 2009 3:30 p.m. Room 406 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building there will be a hearing to discuss MTR’s impacts on water — please come, but if you can’t, invite your Senator to attend by dialing (202) 224-3121 or email them to come out to the hearing.

And in case you’re still not sure how you feel about coal — a new study recently released has found that coal lowers life expectancy — not a surprise to those living in coalfield communities. This study assigns a monetary value to the human life lost and finds that coal comes up $34 billion short each year. Please note that carbon capture and sequestration does NOT prevent this loss of human life. The estimated number of lives lost each year to destructive coal practices is 1,736 and 2,889 people. Hendryx and Ahern measure that these human beings are collectively worth about $42 billion. The coal industry contributes $8 billion in revenue.

Assigning a monetary value to a human life is a cruel bottom line, but the premature death of thousands of good people — in the Appalachian region alone — each year is crueler still. This study illustrates this tragic loss of human life for “cheap” energy in a way that coal companies and governments understand — cold hard cash.

One hopes that this study will wake our government up, that officials will realize human lives are worth even more than money, and the swift transition to a healthy, sustainable economy begins as soon as possible. More info on the study after the jump.

Coal’s costs outweigh benefits, WVU study finds

By Ken Ward Jr.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths as the industry provides to the region in jobs, taxes and other economic benefits, according to a groundbreaking new study co-authored by a West Virginia University researcher.

In the latest in a series of papers, WVU researcher Michael Hendryx questions the idea that coal is good for West Virginia and other Appalachian communities, and recommends that political leaders consider other alternatives for improving the region’s economy and quality of life.

“Coal-mining economies are not strong economies,” Hendryx said in an interview last week. “[Coalfield communities] are weaker than the rest of the state, weaker than the rest of the region, and weaker than the rest of the nation.”

Writing with co-author Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, Hendryx reports that the coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region.

But, Hendryx and Ahern put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at — by their most conservative estimate — $42 billion.

“The human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits,” they wrote.

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2009/06/22/coal-and-mortality-in-appalachia-and-making-history/

Kaine Comments on Obama MTR Proposal

Comment: He is a Lame Duck and he has double standards when it comes to Virginia Mountains and Southside. He has not stop Mt. Top Removal and he would start blowing up the hillsides of Virginia for uranium if there was not a Moratorium on uranium mining but he will give the Green Jobs for Northern and Eastern Virginia!

June 11th, 2009 · No Comments

Gov. Tim Kaine issued the following statement today in response to President Barack Obama’s proposal to impose increased restrictions on mountaintop removal mining:

“I applaud the new guidelines announced by the administration, which will impose tighter restrictions on mountaintop mining.

“In Virginia, we’ve always taken a commonsense approach to how we meet our energy needs. At the same time—for the sake of this generation of Virginians and the next—we have made conserving the natural beauty of our Commonwealth and protecting our environment more broadly a real priority.

“The improved coordination inherent in the review process proposed by the Obama administration today will ensure we address both our energy and our environmental needs. Moving forward, it is critical we maintain transparency in the review process to ensure all stakeholders—including our citizens and representatives of the coal-mining industry—have faith that their concerns are taken into account.

“As we continue to meet the challenges of the global financial downturn, we have an obligation to permit the recovery of traditional energy sources that fuel our economy. However, we also have a responsibility to discourage the use of mining methods that exploit our mountains and valleys. While we continue investing in and developing renewable energy sources, we must focus on using those mining methods that complement our conservation goals instead of moving our nation backwards.

“Along with the Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy and the Department of Environmental Quality in Virginia, I look forward to working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the U.S. Department of the Interior as we move towards a new process for implementing the proper environmental protection around mining operations.”

http://newrivervoice.com/archives/2846

Obama walks a fine line over mining

Comment: All I have to say Amen, he wants to remove the mountain tops and mine uranium in the Grand Canyon, so he has sold out to the American people but not the corporations! At least the other dude was upfront with us with his 45 nuke plants!!! Plus Virginia may blow up the Piedmont with uranium open pit mining!!

Environmentalists feel betrayed by the EPA's decision not to block new mountaintop mining projects.

By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten
May 31, 2009

Reporting from Washington — With the election of President Obama, environmentalists had expected to see the end of the "Appalachian apocalypse," their name for exposing coal deposits by blowing the tops off whole mountains.

But in recent weeks, the administration has quietly made a decision to open the way for at least two dozen more mountaintop removals.

In a letter this month to a coal ally, Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), the Environmental Protection Agency said it would not block dozens of "surface mining" projects. The list included some controversial mountaintop mines.

The industry says the practice of using explosives to blast away a peak is safer and more efficient than traditional shaft mining. But critics say the process scars the landscape and dumps tons of waste -- some of it toxic -- into streams and valleys.

The administration's decision is not the final word on the projects or the future of mountaintop removal. But the letter, coupled with the light it sheds on relations between the mining industry and the Obama White House, has disappointed environmentalists. Some say they feel betrayed by a president they thought would end or sharply limit the practice.

The issue is politically sensitive because environmentalists were an active force behind Obama's election, and the president's standing is tenuous among Democratic voters in coal states. West Virginia, for example, voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election largely because Democrat Al Gore was critical of the coal industry.

Moreover, Obama needs support from local lawmakers for an energy agenda that would further regulate home-state industries, but halting mountaintop mining could eliminate jobs and put upward pressure on energy prices in a time of economic hardship.

Coal advocates have solicited help from officials as high up as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. And the issue has sparked contentious debates within the administration, including one shouting match in which top officials from two government agencies were heard pounding their fists on the table, according to sources briefed on the meeting who requested anonymity when discussing White House dealings.

The White House is "searching for a way to walk this tightrope," said Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America. "They have a large constituency of people who want to see an immediate end to mountaintop removal, and an equally large constituency . . . whose communities depend on those jobs."

Shortly after his inauguration, Obama won praise from the green lobby for taking a skeptical view of the mining process. And in March the EPA announced it would review the mountaintop projects, breaking from the Bush administration's practice of granting permits with little or no scrutiny.

The EPA has the authority to block mountaintop removal under the Clean Water Act. But if the agency raises no objections, the final decision on projects is made by the Army Corps of Engineers, which historically has approved mountaintop mining. The corps previously had indicated its intention to approve 48 pending permits.

Although environmentalists had expected the new administration to put the brakes on mountaintop removal, Rahall and other mining advocates have pointed out that Obama did not promise to end the practice and was more open to it than his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

A review of Obama's campaign statements show that he had expressed concern about the practice without promising to end it. On a West Virginia visit, when asked about the impact of the mining on the state's streams, he said he wanted "strong enforcement of the Clean Water Act," adding: "I will make sure the head of the Environmental Protection Agency believes in the environment."

And his EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, has said that the agency had "considerable concern regarding the environmental impact these projects would have on fragile habitats and streams." She pledged that the agency would "use the best science and follow the letter of the law in ensuring we are protecting our environment."

Soon afterward, the agency in effect blocked six major pending mountaintop removal projects in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

But this month, after a series of White House meetings with coal companies and advocates including Rahall and Democratic West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III, the EPA released the little-noticed letter giving the green light to at least two dozen projects.

"It was a big disappointment," said Joan Mulhern, a lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has led court challenges to mountaintop removal. "It's disturbing and surprising that this administration, headed by a president who has expressed concern about mountaintop removal, would let such a large number of permits go forward without explanation."

Mulhern charged that the EPA "blew off" Jackson's earlier promises that the agency would adhere to science and would conduct an open process.

Ed Hopkins, a top Sierra Club official, said some of the projects that have now obtained the EPA's blessing "are as large and potentially destructive as the ones they objected to."

"It makes us wonder what standards -- if any -- the administration is using," Hopkins said.

EPA and White House officials say that about 200 proposed mining projects are under review and that the administration already had taken steps to break from Bush-era policies.

"We want to make informed decisions guided by science and the law, and a change in such a practice is not something that happens overnight," said Christine Glunz, a spokeswoman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

But after the EPA's initial announcement in March that it would conduct aggressive reviews, Manchin and Rahall took the coal industry's concerns to White House officials, including Emanuel and Nancy Sutley, who heads the Council on Environmental Quality.

Manchin said he told the White House that "we are looking for a balance between the environment and the economy, and they assured me that they will work with us to find that balance."

Environmentalists were stunned to learn from Rahall's office May 15 that the EPA had given its blessing to 42 out of the 48 mine projects it had reviewed so far -- including two dozen mountaintop removals.

The news came in a letter to Rahall from Michael Shapiro, the EPA's acting assistant administrator, who wrote, "I understand the importance of coal mining in Appalachia for jobs, the economy, and meeting the nation's energy needs."

tom.hamburger@latimes.com
peter.wallsten@latimes.com


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mountaintop-mining31-2009may31,0,7589633.story

15 people arrested for protesting Virginia Congressman Boucher’s efforts to gut climate bill

Rep. Boucher’s Handouts to Coal Lobby Hurt Working Families15 people arrested for protesting Virginia Congressman Boucher’s efforts to gut climate bill

WASHINGTON, May 21, 2009-Fifteen concerned citizens were arrested today for peacefully blocking the entrance to Virginia Congressman Rick Boucher’s office protesting his efforts to gut strong climate legislation at the expense of American families. Congressman Boucher has driven efforts in Congress to give away billions of dollars worth of free permits directly to coal, oil and other dirty fossil fuel companies under a cap and trade bill.

“The problem is Rick Boucher, the victims are American families, and the solution, as proposed by President Obama during his campaign, is a simple and fair polluter-pays cap that solves the climate crisis while rebating consumers,” said Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who was among those arrested today.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) co-authored the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which regulates greenhouse gases. The Energy and Commerce Committee released the 946-page bill last Friday and has spent this week marking it up. Congressman Boucher, who received $176,000 from the coal industry during his most recent re-election campaign, has led efforts to weaken the bill in committee.

Instead of making polluters pay for the permits to dump carbon into the atmosphere, an approach President Obama supported during his campaign, Rep. Boucher negotiated a deal where 35 percent of the allowances will be given away directly to utilities, also called local distribution companies. Allowances given to these companies would be worth $20.8 billion a year starting in 2012.

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency conducted an analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (in discussion form) and found that giving free allocations to utilities under a cap and trade program would raise the total cost of the program and hurt poor Americans the most.

“Returning the allowance value to consumers of electricity via local distribution companies… makes the cap-and-trade policy more costly overall,” the EPA concluded in its analysis. “Freely distributed allowances to firms tends to be very regressive. Higher income households may actually gain at the expense of lower income households under this policy.”

More than fifty people gathered outside Congressman Boucher’s office at noon today to highlight how Boucher’s handouts to the coal industry will hurt working families and diminish efforts to fight global warming. They said they hoped their efforts would send a message to other members of Congress that now is the time for bold, urgent action to solve global warming and that they will be held accountable for their stance on the bill.

Virginia Tech student Joshua Deutschmann traveled to Capitol Hill to join the protest.

“As a student and a voter in Southwest Virginia, I was deeply disappointed by Representative Boucher’s response to the Waxman-Markey climate bill,” he said. “It appears he has played a key part in dismantling the core of the bill, emphasizing dirty coal instead of clean renewable technology and jobs in Southwest Virginia.”

Protesters compared the polluter giveaways to the government’s recent bailout of Wall Street and American Insurance Group. Except, unlike Wall Street, utility companies are not failing. Last year alone, America’s 48 largest utilities earned profits of $28 billion. Dominion Resources, a major campaign contributor to Congressman Boucher, made a whopping $1.8 billion last year.

Today’s protest was endorsed by Southern Appalachian Mountain Steward, a conversation group based in Wise County, Virginia. Participants stood outside the doorway holding statements of support sent in by southwest Virginians.

“I’ve been a supporter of yours since your first race, but it’s time to put the health of the planet ahead of short-term profits,” read a statement from Chris Prokosch of Floyd, Virginia. “The coal industry will have to clean up sooner or later — later may be too late for all of us.”

Click here to view article on CCAN website.


http://ecoclub.umwblogs.org/2009/05/25/543/

17 arrested for protesting Massey mine blast plan

Coal Sludge Pond which will be threaten by the blast!!!

Comment: The present president is no different from past presidents, blow up moutains and mine uranium ....The Change president is really Just the Same President ... Greed Talks!!!

Associated Press - May 23, 2009 9:25 PM ET

PETTUS, W.Va. (AP) - Seventeen people have been arrested in a protest of Massey Energy's plan to blast at a southern West Virginia mine.

The Charleston Gazette reports that protesters were arrested Saturday for trespassing.

Residents and environmental activists say they fear the possible collapse of a huge coal slurry dam at Massey's Marfork Coal Co. mining complex in Pettus.

Virginia-based Massey has permits to blast within a football field's distance of the dam's retaining wall.

Nearby resident Gary Anderson says Massey is creating the potential for a catastrophe that could wipe out miles of the Coal River valley.

The Gazette reports that the incident marks the largest number of arrests in mountaintop-mining protests that have been held across the state this year.

Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com

http://www.wric.com/global/story.asp?s=10415099

West Virginia Mountain Top Removal Coal Protests Heating Up

Coal River Vally, WV, has become home to a civil disobedience campaign against Massy Energy company in an attempt to halt their destructive mountaintop renewal coal mining practices.
Kay Sexton, with her regular run down of environmental protests, has been examining the “imperatives and complexities” of protests that are unique to the environmentalist movement. Here’s another data point to add into the discussion.

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t always think that the environmental movement benefits from protests. Channeling the Greenpeace mentality of chaining people to trees often seems to generate bad press more then it advances a cause. But, there are times when even my cynical take on the efficacy of protest has to be subverted by out-and-out necessity.

Obama Versus Coalbama
While Obama has been great for many issues near and dear to environmentalists, his stance on coal leaves a lot to be desired. Consider:

He keeps hitting the idea of “clean” coal, a fact that groups like ACCCE are using to their advantage. Every time he mentions coal on the list with other Alternative Energy sources, environmentalists wince. Even coal that burns cleaner then it does now has a tough road to walk to get to “clean” across the board.
His department of justice recently refused further consideration of a lower court ruling that would result in more closely regulated mountaintop removal, effectively negating the positive buzz generated by Ken Salazar’s reversal of a Bush strategy that allowed a particularly destructive type of mountain top removal mining.
While the EPA is set to review 150 to 200 permits for new or expanded surface mines (good news for regulation), legal action is still considered by many to be light years away from actually slowing destructive Mountain Top Removal policies. Ending it altogether is not on the board.
In short: Obama seems to be rational on the issue of the environment, but he has a blind spot when it comes to coal. The blind spot may be something that he could get around, but it’s not going to happen soon.

All Protests are not created equal
For those of you not familiar with mountaintop removal, the scale of the mining operations in West Virginia is pretty shocking. Over 1 Million acres of land have been flattened, but since those acres are at the tops of the Appalachians, the real effect of the damage is an order of magnitude larger.

So here is a situation where I am talking myself into protest by any means necessary. Public perception is turning against coal, especially the most draconian and damaging removal processes. A group called Climate Ground Zero has been gumming up the works for months now, and the mining company has now taken out a restraining order against them. Those already arrested are barred from any interference with Massy’s mining operations, and are being held in contempt of court for violating the temporary restraining order (TRO). Not content with that, however, the TRO goes one further, limiting anyone who has seen or heard of the order from protesting as well. (That’s right: as of reading that last sentence, I think you, dear reader, are legally barred from action against Massy.)

My feelings on protest tend to switch 180 degrees when civil disobedience is met with such sweeping legal action against the protesters. Attempts to silence protesters are, in many ways, playing right into the hands of civil disobedience, giving them the aura of legitimate wrongs. Massy has given up whatever high ground (mountain top pun intended) they had when they make this into a first amendment thing.

I am still concerned that protests (in general) provide the wrong public perception. Generally, the nature versus man debate comes down on the side of jobs and families for many Americans. However, when confronted with the harsh reality of peoples homes and lives being destroyed by coal run off, to go along with the complete decimation of entire mountain ranges, it seems more valuable to stop the process first and then hash out the next step. The debate of how we relate to nature can’t continue in good faith as millions of acres on the tops of watersheds are being knocked off. Good luck to all the Climate Ground Zero folks as they get bogged down in legalese instead of actual on the ground results. While they wait for the Obama administration to catch on about the process, I’d urge you to check out (and sign) their open letter here.

I’d also like to hear what people think about the results of protest. Are the actions that Kay is writing about having tangible results? I am curious to see how people react to this sort of civil disobedience when compared to something like this:

On 25 April, more than sixty climate campaigners ate their lunch in the check-in hall at Leeds Bradford Airport. Their picnic was a protest at the planned £28 million two-storey extension to the terminal building which they say will increase greenhouse gas emissions. Protesters ate cucumber sandwiches and gingerbread aeroplanes and said theirs was ‘… a very civil way to protest’ In reply, the airport authority claims it will ‘… improve and refine …method[s] of monitoring air quality in line with EU requirements and industry standards’.

Image: from flickr user ddimick

http://redgreenandblue.org/2009/05/03/west-virginia-mountain-top-removal-coal-protests-heating-up/

Good Friday Mountains

Friday, April 10, 2009

This is Holy Week in the Christian tradition.

This is a week where the faithful make some attempts to follow Jesus through the dark and difficult events leading up to his crucifixion and burial. It is the main time, I believe, for the church to focus on the shadows of life.

I spent the first part of this week in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, with a group of people trying to raise their own consciousness about the horrors of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is a radical form of strip mining where entire tops of mountains are blasted away, the material dumped into the valley (and streams) below, and the coal extracted.

It is far less expensive (to the coal companies that is) to extract coal this way than deep mining and other less extreme methods.

But it has all sorts of associated costs related to it - flooding, poisoned water supplies, coal dust and cracked foundations from blasting. (the same will happen with Open Pit Uranium Mining)

Oh, yes. And the fact that the mountains are no longer there.

So, we came to do flyovers and hear the stories of land owners and miners in the area.

The stories were horrible.

Not just for the land, but for the people.

It was surprising to me, though, that my most visceral reaction was not so much for damage to the land itself, but for the stories of damage to the people of the land.

The stolen land, the broken health and the continued poverty is outrageous.

The impunity of the coal companies and the collusion of the civic authorities is shocking.

It seemed like we were in some third-world country without the rule of law, where the dictator and his cronies could do whatever they wished without consequence. (It is happening now with Uranium Core Drillling, has poison wells but no one in our County are helping the locals!)

There were moments this week where I felt embarrassed to be human.

There were moments when I wished that fire would come down and consume the enemies of God.

There were times when I just wanted to turn away from the sorrow and loss of a helpless people.

And then there is that dull ache and paralysis of grief and my own complicity in the problems.

What do we do with all that? How do we continue to be willing to feel all that without turning away? How do we keep our eyes and hearts open in it?

That is where Holy Week comes in.

This week I felt it open my heart. It opened my heart because I recognized that the faith is not unaware of the depth of our brokenness and the darkness of our shadows. It gave me strength because I knew I was not the first or the last to see and endure such darkness.

It empowered me to not turn my face away from the mountains because the faith does not turn its face away either.

Without Holy Week, we could not have an Easter service on a mountain top removal site.