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LOUISVILLE, Ky. - PNC Bank has announced it will stop financing projects that extract coal using a controversial form of surface mining known as mountaintop removal.
The Pittsburgh-based company is the latest of a group of major commercial lenders that have backed away from underwriting mountaintop removal projects after pressure from environmental activists.
PNC said in a statement it will not fund individual projects or "provide credit to coal producers whose primary extraction method is" mountaintop removal.
Via Ken Ward Jr. at Coal Tattoo, The New York Times has an editorial praising President Obama for taking action.
Over the years, the federal government has done far less than it should - and far less than the law requires - to guarantee the safety of Appalachia's miners. So it was a welcome break with grim history when the Labor Department asked a federal judge last week to shut down a Kentucky mine owned by the Massey Energy Company. The mine has been cited for about 700 safety violations this year alone.
Massey is also the owner of the violation-plagued Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where a methane explosion killed 29 workers in April. The company is reportedly the object of two grand jury investigations in connection with that disaster.
What makes last week's complaint particularly interesting is that it is the first time the federal government has moved to close a mine since it was given that authority under the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act 33 years ago.
Don Blankenship wants to be able to put profits over the lives of people and it's going to cost the company still more money. Perhaps Massey shareholders should have dumped Blankenship long ago, but until they have an executive in place that recognizes rules are meant to be followed their mines should all be shut down. They are supposed to be coal mines, not death traps.
The EPA makes a lot of sense. Ken Ward Jr. has the story:
EPA released a statement in response, saying that state officials "have not engaged in a meaningful discussion of sustainable mining practices that will create jobs while protecting the waters that Appalachian communities depend on for drinking, swimming and fishing."
"EPA continues to be willing to work with industry to reach common sense agreements allowing them to mine coal while avoiding permanent environmental impacts and protecting water quality," said EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan.
Senator Robert C. Byrd said we needed an honest broker on the issue. Unfortunately, Manchin, in trying to appeal to Republicans who aren't going to vote for him anyway, is putting election season politics ahead of good policy. That is a losing proposition for both his political ambitions and for the state. It does not matter how much he tries to distance himself from President Obama, he's going to fail because he's trying to reach out to irrational folks.
Scapegoating and stoking fear among workers over the permitting process is counter-productive ... when coal industry representatives stir up public anger toward federal regulatory agencies, it can damage the state's ability to work with those agencies to West Virginia's benefit ... West Virginians may demonstrate anger toward the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over mountaintop removal mining, but we risk the very probable consequence of shouting ourselves out of any productive dialogue with EPA and our adversaries in the Congress.
In invoking Senator Byrd at his press conference, Governor Manchin overreached.
Considering the majority of West Virginians oppose the destructive practice of mountaintop removal perhaps Joe Manchin really wants to lose his Senate bid to John Raese.
Ken Hechler may be 95 years old - 96 by Election Day in November - but you sure can't tell by listening to him speak.
He's interviewed today by Salon (link at the end of this diary), and here's an excerpt:
I'm not really running for the Senate, I'm running to enable the people of West Virginia to register at the polls their opposition to this devastating practice [of mountaintop removal], which hurts so many people in the valleys when they dump the rocks in the soil and all the things that they're blasting out of the mountains into people's front yards. Ruining the aquifers so that if they have water wells they run dry and also drying up the streams where people are fishing and using for recreation. And it's a practice that is so vicious that it outta be abolished. Every time a poll is taken in West Virginia it's two to one in favor of abolishing it but there's never been an opportunity for people to put it on the ballot and so I'm saying every vote for Ken Hechler is a vote tantamount to opposition to mountaintop removal. That's the only reason I'm in the campaign.
Personally, I think that's a pretty damn good reason.
Ken Ward Jr. at Coal Tattoo has details on the Appalachia Rising group meeting in Charleston to discuss their September trip to Washington, D.C., to drive home their message:
Appalachia Rising declares that we are not a national sacrifice zone. We will not stand idly by as we see our past and future blasted to rubble, our communities and mountains eliminated, and our neighbors poisoned as coal executives and their shareholders grow rich. Appalachians are not, and never will be, collateral damage. We are proud of our coal mining fathers, hard-working neighbors, and Appalachian past, present and future
An environmental disaster like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is ongoing in West Virginia, but it is supported by businesses and the government. We have to let them know our mountains are not going to come back when they're destroyed.
Sadly, the lack of outrage over MTR may boil down to images and quick definitions. It's easy to turn the spill into a quick sound bite (Oil is pumping into the ocean) and not so easy to do the same with MTR, which is a much more complicated issue; for one thing, it's hard to convince people that to be against MTR does not mean one is against miners. Most of the MTR opponents count miners as one of the reasons they're in this fight to begin with.
And there is that dramatic, sickening image that is easily captured (the oil pumping into the ocean) and put on the morning news shows. A camera can't quite capture the scope of MTR. Even seeing it in person can't really do it justice. The only way one can truly take in the devastation is to do a fly-over, so the sheer magnitude of it can be realized. Which is another reason why Obama should do a fly-over of Appalachia, the same way he's done in the Gulf.
The EPA announced in March its proposal to revoke the mountaintop removal (MTR) permit for Spruce No.1 unless the mine, operated by St. Louis-based Arch Coal, was modified to reduce its environmental impact. According to the EPA's website, "we are concerned that the project could result in unacceptable damage to the aquatic system, particularly to water quality and fish and wildlife resources." The agency said the environmental damage would be irreversible.
"We're looking at this as a test of whether EPA will stand behind what they've been saying," said West Virginia Sierra Club organizer Bill Price, below. "The coal industry has been unable to prove it can do this type of mining without extreme impacts on the environment and the communities nearby."
snip
"The EPA is here not about our poverty, not about our political corruption, not about our jobs, not about the loss of our jobs, and it's not about shutting you down," said farmer and native West Virginian Sara Cowgill, below. "It's about the reality of the vital importance of clean water. And there is no question whatsoever that MTR mining is environmentally devastating and catastrophic to every community that it touches, extending into the entire state."
You can either be for destroying West Virginia one mountain at a time or you can be for West Virginia.
We can look at the ongoing mega-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and no one has a solution how to stop it.
Yet too many in West Virginia, including politicians we support for their stance on many other issues like U.S. Rep.Nick Rahall Jr., are in favor of mountaintop removal.
The first speaker at the May 19 hearing in Charleston was West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall. "Pursuing this course would have a chilling effect on the coal industry and the Appalachian region," he said. "It will send a message that investing in coal mining is nothing but a high-risk bet."
There should be a chilling effect on the ongoing environmental disaster that is mountaintop removal.
Because BP's oil spill is ongoing in public view (despite efforts by BP's CEO to limit coverage), people see the environmental disaster.
But the destruction of West Virginia has been permitted for decades and the devastation extends beyond the mountains and into the valleys and the water systems.
Just as deep water drilling is now shown that it is as dangerous as environmentalists warned, environmentalists are sounding the alarm bells on mountaintop removal.
We are poisoning our wells through this practice. We are destroying our state. The mountains are not going to grow back. They are gone forever.
(Welcome to WVaBlue mtngirl2! Thanks for your post. - promoted by wvblueguy)
I am writing this blog in response to the decision made by the West Virginia State Board of Education to provide in excess of 8 million dollars to Kanawha County to build a "School of the Future" while other projects in Southern West Virginia were ignored and Marsh Fork Elementary in the Coal River Valley of Raleigh County was offered only a portion of what would be needed to build a new school safe from the threats that the children in this school face daily. As a child I attended school in a coal town. Even though we had fantastic teachers who always did the best they could, the resources that were needed weren't always available. Every day millions of dollars in coal passed through our town on trains and trucks, thanks to the work of the fathers of many of my classmates, but still we did not receive needed resources, adequate facilities or the same opportunities available to children who attended school in Princeton or Bluefield.
As I have watched the events that have unfolded in the last year I can't help but see the similarities of these situations. The fact that the children of the coalfields are not given equal treatment by our state government is glaringly obvious. We eventually received a new high school, built on an old strip mine site that was really unstable and not suitable for building. We moved into a largely uncompleted school in the fall of 1983 and to my knowledge many of the completions were never made. Structural problems have appeared as a result of where the school was built. It is now an elementary/middle school because the declining populations of the small communities forced an unwanted but accepted consolidation of the county's four smallest high schools and in the near future the middle school students will face the same consolidation and I suspect the elementary will soon follow.
I have written all of this history to say that the children of the coalfields deserve better. The communities where billions of dollars in coal are extracted by the blood and sweat of their citizens should be some of the wealthiest in this state. Instead the coal counties of Appalachia are the poorest in the nation. The people who are subjected daily to coal dust, bad roads, unregulated coal companies, poverty and poor health conditions, should instead have the best kept roads (funded by the coal companies in my opinion), state of the art health facilities, libraries and schools along with the promise of bright futures for their children. Instead children grow up thinking that they aren't important and that they can never have professional careers because they would have to leave their homes to find work. They accept whatever insecure jobs are available from non-union coal mines or fast food establishments so that they can remain in the area where they grew up. This is oppression.
The children of the coalfields of Appalachia deserve so much more than they are given. The children of the Coal River Valley attend school in a 70 year old building that sits below the Shumate dam, which is one of the largest coal sludge impoundments in the nation. Less than 400 feet away is a coal silo with another one being constructed, a coal haul road and a coal preparation plant. They live with the daily threat of a break in the coal sludge dam that is situated directly above their school, now containing millions of gallons of thick, toxic coal sludge. Add to all of that a large mountaintop removal coal mining site where blasting is occurring daily, adding to the already ever present coal dust and the instability of the Shumate Dam.
It would seem to me that the number one project for a new school in West Virginia would be a new school for Marsh Fork Elementary followed closely by other inadequate schools in Southern West Virginia. With the health and lives of so many children and staff at stake, how can a "School of the Future" for Kanawha County be so important that it has received the largest amount of the available funding? More and more in West Virginia we are losing our communities. For too many years the people of Southern West Virginia have sacrificed so that other areas (i.e. Charleston, Parkersburg, Morgantown) may prosper. And, the people of Appalachia sacrifice every day for the comfort of America. We, the people of Southern West Virginia must demand our share of the wealth that is extracted from our mountains and it should begin with investments in the future of the children of the coalfields.
While coal supporters tout the supposed economic benefits to the state that coal produces, West Virginia's coal counties are a very unhealthy place to live.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Mountaintop-removal mining continues to damage the environment long after regulators sign off that mine sites have been properly reclaimed, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
GAO investigators found that mountaintop removal damages water quality, reforestation efforts need improvement, and mine operators often do not comply with the approximate original contour reclamation requirement.
And in a 68-page report to Congress, the GAO said federal and state regulators could do more to limit the damage and to ensure mine operators are held financially responsible for cleaning up industry messes.
Of course when we weigh the actual costs of mountaintop removal versus the benefits, we see mountaintop removal is disastrous economically and environmentally to the state. Unfortunately too many politicians can't look beyond the next election and be honest with the people of the state so they focus on only the short-term issues. However, mountaintop destruction is destroying the state's long-term viability.
Don't get me wrong. Senator Byrd's statement has the ring of truth, and I do believe that he truly cares about West Virginia. But the real truth behind his above statement that "Major coal-fired power plants and coal operators operating in West Virginia have wisely already embraced this reality" is at the link he provided:
The Mountaineer plant emits about 9 million tons of CO2 a year. The project will capture more than 100,000 tons of CO2 a year, or about 1.5 percent of the plant's total.
I had to read it twice to make sure I that got it. They're only capturing a lousy 1.5 percent. At that rate I'd have been too embarrassed to even mentioned it, because the same article also reveals
The company has applied for more than $300 million in federal stimulus funds to install a commercial-scale carbon dioxide capture and storage system. The total cost is estimated at more than $600 million.
In other words, they got Senator Byrd to brag about their little shill operation. Notice that in the same article AEP President Morris salivates over landing future juicy rate increases. Has the last six months with coal-financed "Democrats" really got Senator Byrd taking the bait? Because the rest of us have long been bleeding from the hook and gagging on the line. Don't be surprised when more and more real Democrats start spitting the sinker right back at those coal fired cadre of "Democrats".
What I'm getting at here is that spending stimulus money for coal-fired projects does absolutely nothing to mitigate the pollution right here where coal is being mined, puts only a few West Virginians to work during a brief construction phase, and gobbles up stimulus money which could be better spent at other far more productive "green" projects.
So the question at this point would be, why is a cadre of "coal state Democrats" spending so much of my favorite Senator's precious time helping coal operators become even more of a corporate welfare dynasty than it already is?
"Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana and, at No. 50, West Virginia. All suffer from a mix of toxic waste, lots of pollution and consumption and no clear plans to do anything about it. Expect them to remain that way."
Hmm. That was back in '07. What have our coalfield Democrats done to change that problem? Or perhaps they don't see it as a problem. many of us do..
Just today President Obama hosted a national jobs forum. Vice President Biden recently said "Recovery Through Retrofit is a blueprint that will create good green jobs - jobs that can't be outsourced, and jobs that will be the cornerstones of a 21st-Century economy."
Senator Byrd obviously understands that coal operators and coal-fired power plants will never voluntarily help West Virginia move towards energy independence. Simply because it is against their corporate interest to do so. Instead, they're compelled by their nature to see to it that nothing will replace coal. So they will always lobby to gobble up all of the state and federal subsidies, while playing like they're earnest in helping to develop a replacement.
It goes without saying that large corporations will always make as much money as possible, and they'll always try to do it as efficiently as they can. Since their biggest obstacle lies in leveraging political leaders to mitigate environmental regulations, and judicial leaders to ignore laws, no sense of civic duty ever completely halts the corporate machine's never ending grind towards capital. But it is up to our justice system, our regulators, and our political leaders to keep them from killing people. Which is exactly what they're doing, make no mistake.
So I applaud Senator Byrd's effort to give public notice that we should all demand truth and justice from our system.
He's lived here long enough to have witnessed West Virginia slide from a rich, diversified economy with a broad manufacturing base towards what essentially looks more and more like a mono-economy. During that same period, West Virginia's political system has devolved from what was basically a plutocracy into a well-greased dystopian coalocracy.
For example, prior to the last election, the coal industry spent $35 million in a campaign outreach effort in primary and caucus states to rally public support for coal-fired electricity. On top of that, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity lobbyists spent a whoppin' $10,465,276. source.
Now, suddenly, my Senator informs me that he just spent six months listening to coal state Democrats tell him that the only way to "progress" is to go backwards. So forgive me if I'm skeptical about anything any member of either party tries to sell when it comes to justifying the giveaway of millions to help the coal industry continue to poison my water, screw up my roads, and underfund my kid's education.
Senator Byrd didn't have to be a "treehugger" to have noticed the dire cost of coal pollution here. But he stopped shot of mentioning that cleaning up the hundreds of toxic coal slurry impoundments strewn across WV offers great potential for shovel-ready jobs. Yett it's pretty obvious what's going on when none of the coal-fired "Democrats" ever publicly mentions how "green" it is to retrofit the infrastructures of each of their communities by using stimulus funds for remediation.
Now I don't mind that stimulus funds are now being used to supply water to coalfield communities whose aquifer has been poisoned by coal industry, although it is sort of suspicious when the Governor's website hides it. No, my tax dollars are fine helping those folks out, even though it was Manchin's DEP that let Massey get by with killing their aquifer in the first place. But it gets pretty hard to swallow that Federal Coal, one of three companies responsible for screwing up Boone County's well water, is now blocking the right-of-way for that water project. Could that be an attempt to stall whilst forcing a settlement in the ongoing lawsuit. Yet apparently one coal-state Democrat in particular (Governor Joe Manhin) in particular isn't willing to persuade the coal slurry impoundment operator that what Federal Coal operates qualifies as a fullout toxic dump site.
Speaking of infrastructure, according to the WV Department of Commerce, WV exports more (coal fired) electricity than any other state. Why isn't the state rolling in cash? Why have we cut back on state highway workers? Why are our coalpatch public school districts always those seized by the state -due to lack of funding? Before you ask what does education have to do with the coal industry being unwilling to embrace the future, you need to understand that far too many of our political leaders mistakenly believe that coal is our most precious natural resource otherwise West Virginia wouldn't be ranked dead last in educational services for our students.
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