Here is a link to the original article.

The administration deserves credit for some minimal restrictions on mountaintop mining, but the president’s hands-off approach to coal defeats his climate-change efforts.

Clear-cutting forests, then blowing the tops off of mountains and dumping the debris into stream beds is an environmentally catastrophic way of mining for coal. President Obama and the green activists he has appointed to run his interior-focused regulatory agencies surely know this. But their contortions over mountaintop mining would make a Cirque du Soleil performer wince.

The administration last week announced a number of new restrictions on mountaintop coal mining in the six Appalachian states where it occurs. They are minimal steps that, among other things, will make it harder for mining companies to escape environmental review when seeking permits to blow up mountains. For this, Obama merits polite applause.

That’s in contrast to the much-deserved boos he received last month from environmentalists after his administration quietly sent a letter to coal industry loyalist Rep. Nick Rahall II (D-W.Va.) saying the Environmental Protection Agency wouldn’t stand in the way of at least two dozen new mountaintop-removal projects. It was a dismaying move from an administration that in March had blocked several such projects on grounds that they needed further review — yet some of the ones it greenlighted in May were as big and damaging as the ones it blocked two months earlier. What gives?

Obama is clearly intimidated by coal’s powerful lobby. The industry is a major employer in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and other Appalachian states, where miners tend to vote for whichever party is friendliest to Big Coal. Yet there’s also strong grass-roots opposition to strip mining in those states because of the effect it has on local communities; the technique poisons water supplies and pollutes the air with coal and rock dust. It also turns forests into moonscapes, ravages ecosystems and buries streams, which is good for neither wildlife nor the tourism industry.

The best approach to mountaintop mining would be to ban it completely. It’s cheaper and less labor-intensive than underground mining, but not worth the environmental cost. At a minimum, Obama should address some other highly destructive rule changes imposed by the Bush administration — a good place to start would be restoring a regulation that forbade mining within 100 feet of a stream, and disallowing the use of mine waste as “fill” material in waterways.

Obama can’t sidestep this issue forever, especially because his hands-off approach to coal defeats the purpose of his efforts to fight climate change. Coal is a key culprit in global warming, and it makes no sense to encourage cheap coal while seeking to boost renewable energy.

Visit Appstate.edu HERE to read this article.

CNN – Anderson Cooper 360 – Friday 6/12/09 – 10:00 p.m. segment Eastern Time – TVA Coal Ash Disaster

https://lifeonswanpond.livejournal.com/55502.html

Another one from Mr. Biggers:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-biggers/clean-coal-knee-capping-s_b_214927.html

On the heels of a major Wall Street Journal report that we are reaching “peak coal,” and revelations that the Bush administration buried a 2002 report on the cancer risks associated with coal ash, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu made a $1.073 billion down payment today on the construction of FutureGen, “the first commercial scale, fully integrated, carbon capture and sequestration project in the country in Mattoon, Illinois.”

Chu’s buy-in into “clean coal,” a phrase that young liberal Democrat Francis Peabody first used back in the 1890s to peddle his brand of “smoke-free” clean coal in Chicago, places him in the company of FutureGen Alliance promoters like Peabody Energy, whose first quarter 2009 profits “only tripled” this spring–Peabody celebrated an 8-fold increase in profits in the last quarter of 2008.

… Read the entire article here.

As always, those intrepid and resolute reporters Ken Ward Jr. and Jeff Biggers alerted us to the Obama Administration’s new plan to “deal” with mountaintop removal coal mining.

From Ken Ward Jr.’s blog:

Administration officials announced that they are taking a series of short-, medium- and long-range steps that they say will allow mountaintop removal to continue, but reduce the impacts to communities and the environment.

We think Jeff Biggers summed it up best in his article on the Huffington Post:

In an extraordinary move to disregard a 38-year rap sheet of crimes of pollution, harassment and forced removal of some of our nation’s oldest and most historic communities, and the destruction of over 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres of deciduous hardwood forests in our nation’s carbon sink of Appalachia, the Obama administration will announce today that it has decided to “regulate” mountaintop removal mining operations, not abolish them.

All well-meaning intentions aside, if the Obama administration truly wanted to “enforce” mountaintop removal regulations and protect American watersheds, drinking water, and communities from catastrophic flooding and toxic blasting, it would simply reverse a 2002 Bush and dirty coal lobby manipulation of the Clean Water Act and restore the original definition of “fill” material to no longer include mining waste.

A growing number of Congress members understands this–and even conservatives like Sen. Lamar Alexander are now shepherding the Clean Water Protection Act. See: https://www.ilovemountains.org/appalachia-restoration-act/

Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards and Appalachian Voices distributed a press release this afternoon which included poignant quotes from two prominent mountain-lovers in Congress, as well as their organizational leaders:

Members of Congress working to end this devastating practice through legislative means applauded the Administration’s action, but also stress that until Congress acts, mountaintop removal coal mining will continue to be a threat to Appalachian communities, mountains and streams.

“The Administration’s announcement today is a positive step forward on this important issue and will help protect waterways and communities from the devastating process of mountaintop removal,” said Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ). “However, to address the heart of the problem, Congress needs to pass the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310), legislation I introduced to prohibit the valleyfill process, which allows coal companies to dump toxic waste into headwater streams.”

The Clean Water Protection Act, which was first introduced in 2002, would disallow the dumping of mining waste into the valley and streams near mountaintop removal sites. A companion bill, the Appalachian Restoration Act, was introduced into the Senate earlier this year.

“Mountaintop mining is one of the most destructive practices that already has destroyed some of America’s most beautiful and ecologically significant regions,” said Senator Cardin (D-MD), Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Water and Wildlife Subcommittee and sponsor of S. 696, the Appalachian Restoration Act. “Today’s decision by the Obama Administration to limit the practice through a stronger review of mountaintop mining permit applications is an important step in the right direction. However, it does not halt this incredibly destructive form of mining. We must put an end to this mining method that has buried more than a thousand miles of streams.”

Local groups fighting mountaintop removal in their communities also contend that until strong legislation is passed to end the practice, mountaintop removal will continue.

“We hope this will produce real change and not end up as business as usual,” said Kathy Selvage, Vice President of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards in Wise County Virginia. “But what we really need is a law to abolish mountaintop removal coal mining.”

The announcement also falls on the heels of two major events influenced by increases in mountaintop removal coal mining. Yesterday the West Virginia Supreme Court approved a second coal silo to be built less tha 100 yards from the Marsh Fork Elementary School, which rests immediately below a coal sludge dam and an expanding mountaintop removal mining site. And last month, hundreds of homes were affected by severe flooding in Mingo County, WVa, and Breathitt County, KY, exacerbated by increased run-off from mountaintop removal sites.

According to both industry and environmental groups, mountaintop removal mined coal provides less than 5% percent of our nation’s electricity.

“With coal demand down by 5% due to the recession, the administration is missing an unprecedented opportunity to replace mountaintop removal coal with new sources of energy,” said Dr. Matthew Wasson, Director of Programs at Appalachian Voices. “We’re concerned that this incremental decision-making could open the door for an even greater expansion of mountaintop removal coal mining when the recession ends and the price of coal rebounds.”

Press releases, reactions, and useful documents

• Announcement package – released by the White House
• Reactions – Ohio Citizens Action
• Press release – Virginia’s Governor Tim Kaine
• Obama’s plan for mountaintop removal … – Ken Ward Jr.
• Obama looks to end expedited mining reviews – Associated Press
• Coalfield residents respond to Obama’s announcement on mountaintop removal – Jeff Biggers
• UPDATE: Coalfield Advocates Respond to Mountaintop Removal Crimes and Misdemeanors – Jeff Biggers
• Mining technique to be monitored – LA Times
• Mountaintop Letdown – President Obama’s decision will enrage environmentalists, but it’s the right one. – Washington Post
• Mountaintop Mining To Get More Scrutiny – Administration to Announce New Policies – Washington Post
• Mountaintop Mining To Get More Scrutiny – Administration Announces New Policies to Reduce Environmental Damage – Washington Post

The following email was sent to the 36,000+ supporters of iLoveMountains.org. To sign up to receive free email alerts, click here.

Dear mountain lover,
Yesterday, the Obama administration took a small step in the right direction.

The administration announced an agreement between the EPA, Department of Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers that will end the streamlined permitting process for mountaintop removal coal mining.

The agreement also commits the Administration to help diversify and strengthen the Appalachian economy by focusing on clean energy investments and create green jobs in Appalachia.

BUT, we need you to call Obama and ask him to do more. Residents and advocates of coal communities were encouraged by the news, but disappointed in the lack of urgency displayed by the agreement. The announcement falls on the heels of two major blows to coalfield communities — the West Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to approve a second coal silo next to Marsh Fork Elementary School, and severe flooding in May which affected hundreds of homes in West Virginia and Kentucky — more than ever we need to push the administration to take aggressive action.

We applaud the Obama administration’s commitment to recognize and address serious issues surrounding mountaintop removal coal mining — but the administration needs to take the next step to actually end mountaintop removal coal mining today.

That’s why we need you to take action today.

Call the White House today to tell the administration that enforcing regulations is a good start — but that President Obama should take the next step by reversing the Bush Administration’s 2002 changes to the Clean Water Act that allows coal companies to dump their mining waste into our nation’s streams?

Reversing the Bush administration rule change will prevent most new mountaintop removal coal mining in the United States — but to make this reversal permanent, we need Congress to pass the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310) and the Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696) to permanently end the worst abuses of Big Coal.

So after you’ve called the White House, please take a moment to email your Senators and Representatives.

Thank you for taking action today.

Matt Wasson
iLoveMountains.org

P.S.–Please help us spread the word on Facebook.

The brave and relentless Ken Ward Jr. reported today on his blog:

Lawyers for the Obama administration this morning filed a notice that they plan to appeal the latest federal court ruling that — if not overturned — would require more stringent regulation of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Read the entire post on his Coal Tattoo blog.

A coalition of 109 organizations, including Appalachian Voices and the Environmental Integrity Project, is pushing back against Congressmen who do not want to regulate the disposal of coal combustion waste.

Please call your Congressperson and ask him/her not to sign on to letters sponsored by industry that seek weak CCW ”guidelines” that skimp on environmental protections. See below for more details

Urgent response needed – please help us prevent special interests from stalling our efforts for enforceable regulation of coal combustion wastes (CCW):

Congressional leaders, including PA Congressman Tim Holden, are circulating “Dear Colleague” letters seeking to maintain the status quo for disposal of toxic coal combustion wastes (CCW). Industry lobbyists are working hard to convince lawmakers that federal CCW “guidelines,” rather than national disposal standards, are all that is needed to protect human health and the environment: they say current state regulations of coal combustion wastes are “adequate.”

Following the TVA Kingston fly ash disaster, we know otherwise— CCW is toxic, and states are turning a blind eye to regulatory controls in an effort to preserve the so-called beneficial use status of these wastes.

Don’t be fooled—the status quo of patchwork state regulations may save the utility companies money, but it does little to safeguard humans or the environment, particularly our water sources, from the hazards posed by arsenic, mercury, chromium, selenium, and other CCW constituents.

The US EPA’s 2007 Risk Assessment found that communities closest to CCW impoundments can have a 1 in 50 risk of cancer: that’s 2,000 times higher than threshold beyond which the EPA deems any cancer risk to be unacceptable—1 in 100,000.

And, the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concluded that current state practices of calling the wastes “beneficial” did not prove their safety. The NAS recommended a federal regulatory standard and much more scientific studies.

Please join us by calling your Congressperson and asking him/her not to sign on to letters sponsored by industry that seek weak CCW ”guidelines” that skimp on environmental protections. Please ask them to, instead, support the following principles:

• Consistent and enforceable federal regulations, not guidelines, are needed to prevent coal ash disasters like the TVA spill and more insidious, but no less dangerous and on-going releases.
• Enforceable federal regulations can simultaneously promote coal ash recycling and protect the public and environment from toxic leaching from coal ash. Federal law already allows the EPA to distinguish between waste disposal and beneficial re-use of wastes. Following this precedent, the EPA can regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste when disposed in a landfill, but as a non-hazardous product when it is safely recycled. EPA has made these distinctions many times before without damaging the market for recycled products.
• The cost of implementing safe standards is marginal. In 2000, the EPA estimated that the cost of compliance with tailored hazardous waste regulations would be about $1 billion, annually – just 0.4 percent of utility industry sales. In a 2005 report, EPA reduced this cost estimate to $521 million for comparable standards. Even industry estimates of $5-6 billon is reasonable in light of the high risk posed by the waste.

Find your Congressional Members and their phone numbers by clicking on the following link – listing is by state:

https://www.gpoaccess.gov/cdirectory/browse-cd-aug08.html

Thanks for making these important calls – and for sharing this action alert with your friends, family and colleagues!

Lisa Graves Marcucci
Environmental Integrity Project
PA Coordinator, Community Outreach
412-897-0569
lisagmarcucci@gmail.com

We just got an email from Molly Wilkins, a graduate student in Washington State in a Master’s of Education program. As an assignment for her Social Studies Methods course, she wrote a paper on the importance of Appalachian cultural and environmental history in the social studies curriculum in the elementary public school system to help foster stewardship. Molly asked us to share her paper with you, so here it is:

I was raised in the Tennessee Valley, along with many generations of my ancestors. I went to public school in the small town of Athens, TN, starting in kindergarten and ending with my senior year of high school. Once I graduated high school, I made my first grand move across the mountain to Asheville, NC. There, I completed my undergraduate career with a degree in Environmental Management and Policy.

The brief biography is given to state this: of the 18 years that I was raised in the Tennessee Valley and educated in the Tennessee public school system, I knew very little of Tennessee cultural and environmental history. This was not due to a lack of interest. I continued my education to earn a degree in Environmental Policy; a decision and path I chose as a sophomore in high school. I adventured in the Tennessee hills and mountains with family and friends my whole life. I loved the area, but I didn’t know why. I love the area, but I didn’t know the history behind it.

When I began school at UNC-Asheville, part of the humanities and liberal arts curriculum included fostering a sense of place for incoming freshman. I began to learn more about Asheville and the history of North Carolina than I had ever known about Tennessee. Through this realization, I began my own investigations and fascination with Appalachian history. I was mainly interested in how the land and culture affected each other; how political acts, cultural beliefs, other influencing cultures in the surrounding area, and natural phenomenon came to create what I now call my home.

Through this personal research, I began to develop a sense of place with Athens, TN, a place that had already been my home for 18 years. I also began to ask my grandparents questions and slowly began to learn more about my own heritage. I learned about my Great-Grandfather’s farm being cut in half by the creation of Interstate 75, and how my grandmother helped to organize the Red Cross to make supplies in Athens for World War I.

I began to look at the Tennessee hills differently. They weren’t just dirt and red clay. They held the history of my family. They held the history of the environment and resources that I depend on. They held the history of a culture that I was immersed in and carried with me to any new situation. My heart began to hurt when I would see a hill cut in half for development or an entire mountain for sale- and for cheap. I decided to make my passions in life in line with stewardship and protection of Appalachian history and culture, particularly the Tennessee Valley.

I am now currently a graduate student in a specialized residency program in Washington State. The decision to leave the Southern Appalachian area that I love so much was difficult to make, but the program was specialized for environmental and cultural place-based education. The experiences I have had and learned from in this program are tremendous and will be very beneficial for me when I return to UT-Chattanooga to finish my Master’s of Education.

I plan to teach in the Tennessee Public school system, and once I am in the classroom, I plan on making Southern Appalachian and Tennessee cultural and environmental history a priority in the elementary curriculum. Social Studies standards for the elementary classroom include state and local community history, yet, as a product of the public school system, I can say that this has not been stressed enough.

It is of great importance to begin this historical and cultural education and discovery as early as possible. The Southern Appalachians are being developed, small towns are bought up by chain stores, and a culture, so rich to the American history as a whole, is being forgotten. By educating the youth and future generations, there will be a better connection to the land and the history that it holds. This connection will help to develop a sense of pride and a sense of place. It is then that we will be able to begin to foster stewardship for the land and the history that it holds.

Vist the News-Record.com HERE to view this article.

Check out Jim Hightower’s latest take on the Obama Administration’s handling of mountaintop removal coal mining at the link below

https://jimhightower.com/node/6849

This just in from the Charleston Gazette (story by Ken Ward Jr.):

Sludge Safety Project volunteers gathered at the West Virginia State Capitol during the 2009 WV Legislative Session.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State regulators on Thursday issued a moratorium on new permits for the injection of coal slurry into underground mine voids, a practice that residents of several West Virginia coal counties have complained is polluting their drinking water.

Randy Huffman, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, announced the moratorium at the same time he released a long-awaited DEP study of the issue mandated by lawmakers.

In a news release, Huffman emphasized that DEP’s study did not find damage to surface or groundwater quality caused by coal slurry alone. But the agency’s report made it clear that DEP lacked enough information to really provide much of an answer.

“Based on a review of the baseline data from the [underground injection control] and mining permits, there are insufficient surface and groundwater monitoring sample sites to determine effects from slurry injection on surface groundwater,” the report said. “Most of the assessment sites lacked detailed information on mine pool conditions and adequate monitoring of the quantity and quality of the mine pool associated with the injection activities.”

DEP officials did not indicate how long the moratorium would last, but the report and the agency’s release spelled out some improvements for any future permit reviews.

Along with the moratorium, the DEP study recommended site-specific groundwater monitoring during the injection process, requiring a full baseline water survey for organic materials and heavy metals for any new permits, and monitoring wells within a half-mile of the mine pools receiving slurry injection.

Read the rest of the article…

And here is the official statement from the Sludge Safety Project, the coalition that relentlessly lobbied the WV State Legislature asking for the study in the first place. They made it happen:

Donetta Blankenship holds up jars of well water contaminated by underground coal sludge injections.

We’re very pleased the DEP has admitted that slurry is dangerous while only testing 4 slurry injection sites and 2 prep plants. Although the DEP is making some progress by implementing a 2 yr moratorium on new slurry injection sites, the DEP’s recommendations are inadequate because people are going to be left with the same health issues for as long as companies are allowed to inject slurry under existing permits. The solution the DEP has come up with is inadequate because it does not stop the injection of slurry going on right now. There is one solution to fixing the problem of coal slurry contamination in West Virginia : a ban on all slurry. This solution would cost companies a mere 50 cents to one dollar per ton– pennies for the sake of saving human lives. We will continue to work with the West Virginia legislature to protect West Virginians from water poisoned by coal slurry.

– Maria Lambert, Prenter, Boone County
Representative of the Sludge Safety Project