| By Clem Guttata
A quick recap
Two months ago, back on Thursday, June 25, 2009, Cabinet Secretary Randy Huffman of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection testified in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife hearing entitled, "The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia."
At the time, he was criticized for better representing the interests of coal companies than the interests of West Virginia residents. Among other things, Sec. Huffman minimizes damages from MTR by saying: "Without evidence of any significant impact on the rest of the ecosystem beyond the diminished numbers of certain genus of mayflies, the State cannot say that there has been a violation of its narrative standard."
A week ago, Ken Ward, Jr., made the bombshell disclosure that a staff scientist at WV DEP had written a memo pointing out a critical factual error in Sec. Huffman's testimony. The memo provides detailed scientific evidence of additional impacts of MTR, including that entire genus of mayflies and stoneflies (not just individual species) the entire order of mayflies and the entire order of stoneflies (not just individual species, genera, and families) have been wiped out by mountaintop removal.
This week, two of Sec. Huffman's subordinates issued a press release repeating a portion of Sec. Huffman's congressional testimony and claiming there was nothing misleading about it. In stark contrast to the level of detail in the leaked memo, this press release includes no new information. Furthermore, it did not dispute any of the facts presented in the leaked memo.
About Congressional Testimony
Providing testimony to Congress is very different than giving a speech to, say, a Friends of Coal dinner. Congressional testimony is typically given under oath ("to swear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth"). Knowingly making a false statement in a Congressional hearing is grounds for a charge of perjury.
Even short of perjury, getting caught providing misleading information to Congress is very embarrassing. It undermines whatever you are advocating for, can do great harm to your personal reputation, and can end up pissing off people with a lot of power.
Amending Testimony
Because the stakes are so high in Congressional hearings, everyone wants to get the information right. Thus, "often the chair will announce that the hearing record will be left open for a period of time so that additional information can be entered into the formal hearing record" (source: "Hearings in the US Senate" (pdf) found via Wikipedia). Also, "some committees provide for review by witnesses of their testimony for the
purpose of determining errors in transcription, grammatical corrections or obvious errors of fact."
Point of Order (What I'd like to know...)
So, here's what I like to know...
Can Sec. Huffman still amend his testimony? If so, does he plan to?
In this week's press release, Mandirola said. "The sentence in his testimony that is the subject of the issue should not have been construed to mean that the only impact of valley fills was a diminished number of a certain genus of mayflies."
Seeing as how no other impact of valley fills was mentioned in Sec. Huffman's testimony, it might be important for him to provide more detail to the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife. Just what are those additional impacts of valley fills that the WV DEP has identified? I'm sure the subcommittee would like to know.
Even more to clarify
Inspired by this press release, I went back and read Sec. Huffman's testimony in its entirety. Here's a something else from his original testimony (pdf) that Sec. Huffman might want to clarify, too.
Coal production is the leading revenue generator for West Virginia
How does Sec. Huffman figure that?
By jobs? Mining and logging, the industry category that includes coal production, accounted for only 3.4% of West Virginia jobs in July, 2009. Here is a list of industries that employed more West Virginians in July, 2009: Construction, Manufacturing, Retail Trade, Financial Activities, Professional and Business Services, Educational and Health Services, Leisure and Hospitality, Other Services, and Government (that's almost every other sector of the economy).
By West Virginia government revenue? The major source of industry-specific revenue provided by coal production is the state severance tax.
In July, 2009, WV severance tax revenues were 10,872,000. Here are five larger sources of revenue:
Personal Income Tax (102,857,000)
Consumer Sales Tax/Use Tax (97,492,000)
Motor Fuel Tax (36,074,000)
Insurance Tax (24,545,000)
Vehicle Sales (Privilege) Tax (14,159,000)
And two more that were nearly equivalent:
Business and Occupation Tax (10,247,000)
Cigarette Tax (10,622,000)
No matter how I slice it, I can't come up with any way to make the statement "Coal production is the leading revenue generator for West Virginia" true.
If I was a Senator and found out a witness couldn't get a basic fact like that right about their own state, it would make me wonder what else the witness was wrong about in his testimony.
And, another...
Here's another really odd statement in Sec. Huffman's testimony:
The greater concern for the Department of Environmental Protection, however, as protector of the State's water resources, is the unintended consequences of the Environmental Protection Agency's recent actions that have the potential to significantly limit all types of mining.
Let's read that again real slowly. "The greater concern... as protector of the State's water resource... is the unintended consequences of the EPA... potential to significantly limit all types of mining."
Let's say that your only job was to protect WV water resources. Can you come up with a single way in which doing more mining in West Virginia would make your job easier? That's what Sec. Huffman said, that as protector of West Virginia water resources his job would be more difficult if mining was limited (by the EPA) in West Virginia.
His statement makes absolutely no sense. It is nonsense.
Let me be really clear here: I'm not advocating for the EPA to stop all mining (and neither are they; Sec. Huffman was arguing a straw man). What I am saying is the person responsible for protecting our water resources should find that job easier to do if there is less mining. That's a straightforward logical fact.
The Mission of the WV DEP
On the DEP website, Sec. Huffman says:
As citizens, we are responsible for determining how these resources are to be used so that our quality of life, and that of future generations, is enhanced. Please join me and the 800 WVDEP employees who are working to improve our water and air quality, resource recovery processes, waste management, abandoned mine land reclamation, and brownfields remediation.
There's a big difference between what Sec. Huffman says on his website and what Sec. Huffman said in his testimony. In his testimony, Sec. Huffman does not sound like someone pursuing that mission.
I find it really embarrassing to West Virginia that people are calling for a federal takeover of a major department of our state government. Unfortunately, when a WV Cabinet Secretary appears before Congress this poorly prepared for testimony, it is a real black eye for our state. |
