West Virginia Blue
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Hundreds of people will arrive Monday morning at the Charleston Civic Center for a court-ordered mediation of claims they suffered health problems from polluted mine run-off water.
This will make the trolls under the bridge very sad. Evidently mega-doses of some elements are not just like taking vitamin pills.
As West Virginia's number of Marcellus Shale natural gas wells skyrockets, many concerned residents are calling on the state Department of Environmental Protection to increase its oversight of the industry.
And look who else is weighing in. Huffman has such a spotty track record.
If you ask Jeff Kessler, Orphy Klempa, Erikka Storch or Ryan Ferns, they believe the DEP needs to take a stand on regulating Marcellus drilling.
First they came for their overweight drilling rigs, now it's their water. Now we are going to have a chance to talk back.
West Virginia University Extension Service is helping members of the community obtain factual information on issues related to the oil and natural gas industry. The agency is sponsoring education and information sessions around the state regarding the Marcellus Shale - a large natural gas field in the form of shale rock - and the oil and natural gas industry.
Heather, people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. What factual information are you looking to be presented, and why the differentiation of the words citizen and client?
Except for its elevation - high enough to produce snow this week - a reclaimed surface mine on the upper slopes of Cheat Mountain's 4,429-foot Barton Knob is not much different from scores of other former mine sites scattered across West Virginia.
Remember when we were challenged to believe the flat tops, grassland with good hunting and all, were better than the original?
Hopefully progressives in Congress will also notice. Some of these issues are not just ours alone.
The Interior Department is writing new regulations for mountaintop-removal coal mining that would expand protection for waterways and require the restoration of dynamited areas.
Christopher Holmes, spokesman for Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, said the agency is rewriting its "stream protection rule" to boost environmental safeguards.
The proposal being drafted, Holmes said, would:
* Establish a clear standard for restoring dynamited mountaintops. The 1977 Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act requires that mountaintops be restored to their "approximate original contour," but defining the term has been left to individual states.
* Yank the right of state regulators to grant exceptions to the contour-restoration requirement. Federal authorities currently allow states to set their own standards for granting exemptions, and state standards vary widely.
* Set a federal definition for "material damage" to watersheds beyond permitting areas. The surface-mining law prohibits mountaintop-removal mines and other above-ground coal operations from damaging watersheds outside areas covered by mining permits, but the requirement has been difficult to enforce because "material damage" has never been defined.
* Require companies applying for mining permits to collect more information on the environmental health of watersheds where they intend to work and to monitor conditions during and after mining. Mines that inflict environmental damages beyond what is permitted would be required to change their operations or close.
* Clarify that seasonal streams and temporary streams are covered by the regulations, even when the streambed is dry.
The changes under consideration would apply to new applications for surface coal mining permits and would not apply to existing coal mines, Holmes said.
This is just one step in a long process as the new stream protection rule writing is on-going and far from final. The Office of Surface Mining is still working on the assessment of the proposal's environmental impact. OSM officials will be meeting with folks in impacted states over the next month for a round of feedback on the proposed rule changes.
The proposed rule is due for publication in February, 2011. Then a lengthy public review process occurs with a final rule update not due to go into effect until 2012.
I had the pleasure of attending the West Virginia Young Democrats State convention last weekend in Shepherdstown. The Environmental Caucus met, which got a lot of people renewing their thoughts about Mountain Top Removal (for brevity MTR). MTR has unfortunately plagued this state for a number of years, so I though that naturally there would be a general consensus that it was indeed a bad thing. For the most part I was right, but the idea was met with some opposition.
When expressing their dismay about MTR, one young fellow persisted to defend its importance to the state saying "we should all just accept it as a part of our state and the state's economy as a whole
Personally, I oppose MTR. It wreaks havoc across the state and is an environmental nightmare. Just ask the distinguished environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about it. He has visited the state on numerous occasions, championing the expulsion of MTR as a way of mining.
I realized after this brief encounter with an opposing view in the Democratic party arena, that maybe there isn't unanimous dissent of this mining method. I, however, still oppose MTR on the grounds of what it is doing to the state.
This is going to be a really hard one for the science-driven Obama EPA to ignore. They just announced new air quality standards in line with most recent smog science, now how will the EPA react to established water quality threats from mountain top removal?
Wow, Gov. Manchin comes across looking even worse than I expected in this video. Major kudos to the activists who handled themselves so well in this exchange.
"We want to do everything. We're committed to attracting wind farms and attracting solar farms. We're looking at all of that."
Gov. Manchin, let me humbly suggest that reading up just a wee little bit on the Coal River Mountain project might just help "trying (to) find a balance."
It's quite worrisome that Gov. Manchin views West Virginia as an "extractive state." If he widened his view just a little, at least thinking of W.Va. as an energy producing state--that would open up avenues.
Otherwise, you might want to read up on the resource curse some more, Gov. Manchin. If you are going to define our economy on the basis of extraction, there's a lot of negative consequences.
And, really, there's nothing wrong with being the Mountain State. There's a lot of great things you can do with Mountains. You can generate wind power, distributed small scale hydro, create beautiful tourism opportunities (including white-water rafting), and provide a wild, wonderful place to live.
Update: See below the fold for a statement from Climate Ground Zero on today's action.
Data from the Kentucky Division of Mine Permits show that development was planned for less than 3 percent of the land - amounting to less than 14,000 acres scheduled to be reclaimed for commercial, residential, industrial or recreational development, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Sunday.
I agree with Erik Reece of Lexington, KY. It's time for a 'new deal' for Appalachia(h/t to va dare for the link):
A form of strip mining called mountaintop removal has ripped apart all of the ridgelines that surround this forest, leaving miles of lifeless gray plateaus, lunar wastelands. Mountaintop removal entails the blasting of entire summits to rubble in an effort to reach, as quickly and inexpensively as possible, thin seams of bituminous coal. Trees, topsoil and sandstone are dumped into the valleys below. More than 1,000 miles of streams have been buried in this way, and an Environmental Protection Agency study found that 95 percent of headwater streams near mines have been contaminated by heavy metals leeching from the sites.
When it comes to mountaintop removal, a certain fatalism seems to take hold in Appalachia -- the coal companies are too powerful, some politicians are corrupt, the regulators won't regulate and the news media don't care. But we cannot give up on rehabilitating Appalachia.
Erik Reece continues outlining not only the problems we face, but a hopeful future for new solutions as well.
Appalachia's land is dying. Its fractured communities show the typical symptoms of hopelessness, including OxyContin abuse rates higher than anywhere in the country. Meanwhile, 22 states power houses and businesses with Kentucky coal. The people of central and southern Appalachia have relinquished much of their natural wealth to the rest of the country and have received next to nothing in return.
To right these wrongs, first we need federal legislation that will halt the decapitation of mountains and bring accountability to an industry that is out of control. Then we need a New Deal for Appalachia that would expand the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, or create a similar program, to finally return some of the region's lost wealth in the form of jobs and trees, rebuilt topsoil and resuscitated communities.
Financing should come from a carbon tax on Appalachian coal bought and burned by utility companies across the country -- a tax that would also discourage the wasteful emissions of greenhouse gases. Such a project would educate and employ an entire generation of foresters and forest managers, who would be followed by locally owned wood-product industries and craftsmen like Patrick Angel's brother Mike, who makes much sought-after hardwood chairs just like ones his grandfather fashioned.
We know that our species, and most other species, will survive only in a future that burns no coal or oil. The question now is whether we have the nerve to get there before the world's oldest mountains are gone.
I couldn't agree more. Let's start investing financial resources in sustainable development. The extraction economy has been a disaster for this region--liquid coal is not the answer. Sustainable energy solutions are sustainable economic solutions.
Flickr photo credit: Erik Reece by Kentuckians For The Commonwealth
This post co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, Deputy Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign
Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning - the agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop removal mining permits submitted to them for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush Administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama Administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia.
Mountaintop removal - a devastating form of coal mining that involves blowing up mountains and dumping the former mountaintops into neighboring valleys, burying streams - is governed by a patchwork of laws and federal agencies. Permits to bury streams with mining waste are initially issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, but EPA has ultimate oversight and may veto Corps-issued permits if they fail to comply with the Clean Water Act.
American Electric Power thinks so. They have asked the Federal government for stimulus funds to help them buy the additional coal they need to burn once they start carbon capture and storage (CCS) in September at Mountainer Power Plant in New Haven, W.Va.
Unless AEP pledges to buy coal only from companies who mine underground, those Federal stimulus dollars will be going to perpetuate mountain top removal.
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