Great Segment, but NYT Reporter Matthew Wald Gets a Few Things Wrong

The Rachel Maddow show has been great about covering some of the media circus the coal industry has caused in Appalachia ove the last few years. From the singing lumps of coal, to the stock-photo-FACES-of-coal scandal, to their top-notch coverage of the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, they have been one of the leading news programs covering the devastating and deceitful practices of the coal industry in our mountains. In fact, this segment on the media-magnet-for-all-the-wrong-reasons that is Joe Manchin aired over the weekend, continuing some of the discussion (and even using some of the graphs) from our blog last week about mountaintop removal causing job loss.

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Hat-tip to Jeff Biggers

Substitute anchor Chris Hayes rightly points out that Joe Manchin has been making all the right mistakes to really earn his George Bush-like swagger. That much we expected. In fact, West Virginia resident Bob Kincaid told us:

This may just be my bias, but I honestly think Joe looks more silly and out-of-place in the Senate than Bush did in the White House. Believe me when I say I NEVER thought I’d say anything like that.

However,it was surprising to hear Hayes’ guest, New York Times energy reporter Matt Wald, suggest that the impacts of mountaintop removal on Appalachian citizens, mountains, and communities is “not very unusual” in the typical dynamic between the energy sector and the citizens who live where they produce energy. Wald also went out of his way to wrongly assert that what EPA did was “not a veto” (it certainly was), but in fact “they reversed themselves.” They did no such thing. As readers of this blog will know, while the Army Corps of Engineers did approve the permit, EPA never gave final sign off to the Spruce Mine permit, expressed concerns from the very beginning, and then vetoed the permit. Thats what it was. A veto.

Mr. Wald would be wise to have read his own newspaper’s editorial last week on this same subject.

From the NYT’s “A Clear No on Spruce“:

The Spruce No. 1 Mine, owned by Arch Coal, would have required dynamiting the tops off mountains over an area of 2,278 acres to reach subsurface coal seams. The resulting rubble, known as spoil, would then be dumped into the valleys and streams below — ruining, by the E.P.A.’s estimate, six miles of high-quality streams and causing “unacceptable” damage to the environment.

Thousands of miles of streams in Appalachia have already been poisoned in this manner in clear violation of the Clean Water Act.

Mr. Wald, we do not believe that mountaintop removal is not business as usual. We cordially invite you to come and visit Appalachia with us, do a flyover, and decide for yourself if the obliteration of more than 1.2 million acres, 500 mountains, 2000+ miles of streams, dozens of communities, 10s of 1000s of traditional mining jobs lost is “business as usual.”

Or, How I Started Worrying when I Learned that Joe Manchin Doesn’t Know What he is Talking About

We will start today’s post with a simple hypothesis. Mountaintop removal means FEWER mining jobs for Appalachia. We will go into the correlation with poverty, the horrific physical health problems, the desperate need for economic diversification in the region, the permanent aquatic impacts, the other opportunities Appalachian Voices’ and others are fighting for, and how Appalachian coal is in permanent decline. But for now, lets review why mountaintop removal has been a decades long NIGHTMARE for fans of job creation in Central Appalachia.

Mountaintop removal mining is designed specifically to remove the miner from the process, replacing manpower with machinery, and lowering the coal companies’ overhead cost. Coal mining employs fewer people today than it did at the turn of the 19th century. West Virginia, which once employed over 130,000 coal miners, now has a coal mining workforce of about 20,000 miners. Declining coal production and productivity in central Appalachia ensures that this downward trend will continue.

Reportedly 1,000 people showed up at a taxpayer funded rally to ignore the impacts of mountaintop removal at the state capitol in Charleston, WV yesterday. The real story is that those participants are less than 1% of the 10s of 1000s of miners whose jobs have been destroyed by the coal industry in the last few years. Now, we know that the coal industry is hell-bent on continuing to destroy the traditional coal jobs our region has depended on (not to mention the mountains, streams, and public health), but I want these folks who support a completely unregulated coal industry to understand that mountaintop removal causes unemployment.

But don’t take my word for it!

“Areas with especially heavy mining have the highest unemployment rates in the region; contrary to the common perception that mining contributes to overall employment.”
– Dr. Michael Hendryx, Mortality in Appalachian Coal Regions

“History shows that the transition from deep to surface mining devastated the region economically, and that the prosperity of mining companies has not gone hand in hand with the economic welfare of coal mine workers….Central Appalachia has suffered from current and persistent economic distress, and that this distress “has been associated with employment in the mining industry, particularly coal mining.
– Synapse Energy Economics, Economic Impacts of Restricting Mountaintop/Valley Fill Coal Mining in Central Appalachia

The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields.
– Senator Robert C. Byrd, 12-03-09

The state’s most productive coal seams likely will be exhausted in 20 years. And while coal will remain an important part of the economy, the state should emphasize green job development. That is especially important as pressure against mountaintop mining increases. Pressure is coming from both Republicans and Democrats. During the 2008 presidential race, Republican nominee John McCain came out in favor of ending mountaintop mining. It’s something that’s evolving over time in our industry and the responsible segment of our industry realizes that
– Congressman Nick Rahall (D-WV-03), 04-02-09

Mountaintop removal not only whittles away underground mining jobs, it also creates enormous barriers to economic development and diversification, by making the area less attractive for other industries, due to the pollution of the land, air and water. Coal mining communities in Appalachia shower higher rates of economic distress in proportion to the amount of mining that occurs there and significantly more than in non-coal mining communities.

There is popular bipartisan legislation, the Clean Water Protection Act (House) and Appalachia Restoration Act (Senate), which would end the devastating practice of valleyfills. No industry should be able to dump their toxic waste into streams, and the coal industry doesn’t deserve a special carve out that allows them to poison local communities. The 2003 EPA Environmental Impact Statement shows that stopping valley fills would have a less than 1% impact on electric rates. The cost savings of mountaintop removal coal on consumers is, at best, negligible. In fact, new data shows North Carolina (and other states) paid more for strip-mined coal than for underground-mined coal in 2008. It was actually MORE expensive to use mountaintop removal coal, by every single measure imaginable.

Even the coal industry’s biggest supporters recognize Central Appalachian coal production is in permanent decline. Production has dropped 20% since 2008, and the EIA expects another 50% drop in Central Appalachian production by 2015. Job-killing strip-mining will play an increasingly large part in that increasingly small number. What part of that do Joe Manchin, Nick Rahall, and Earl Tomblin not see? Probably the part that keeps coal money rolling into their campaign coffers. The tragic part is that it keeps the rest of Appalachia like this.

And next week, we’ll go into why mountaintop removal is a public health catastrophe, leaving Appalachia like this…

The FArCES of Coal:”With Our Head in the Sand, As Loud As We Can” Edition

Well, I’m not sure how it happened. But it seems like southern West Virginia has survived its first post-apocalyptic, economy-annihilating, way-of-life-ending weekend after EPA heroically vetoed Arch Coal’s Spruce Mine permit last Thursday. As bad as Joe Manchin and Nick Rahall said life was going to be after the veto, myself and most folks in West Virginia ended up having a pretty decent weekend, all things considered. Heck, we even learned that despite the snow many if not most nearby residents are celebrating EPA’s veto of Spruce #1 mine.

Which leads me to wonder…has anyone ever been so loud and proud about shoving their head in the sand and ignoring the cries of their constituents and colleagues, the consensus of scientists, and the pleading of health professionals as loudly as Joe Manchin and Nick Rahall? Senator Manchin certainly hasn’t had a very positive first few weeks in the United States Senate. In fact, despite not taking too many big votes, he has found that his actions have already left him with a lot to apologize for. He set another high bar last week when EPA announced its decision on Spruce. Not only was his rhetoric irresponsible, but his information is just plain incorrect – particularly in asserting that EPA was “retroactively” vetoing this permit.

First of all, if you do your research (as Ken Ward does) you know that EPA never signed off on the Spruce Mine Permit. GOT THAT? EPA has raised concerns since the very beginning about this permit, and when Arch Coal was pressed to address those concerns, what did Arch Coal do for the people of Appalachia? They walked away.

Despite EPA’s willingness to consider alternatives, the company did not offer any new proposed mining configurations in response to EPA’s concerns based on science and the law.

SNL Financial goes into further detail about a meeting between top EPA officials and Arch Coal from November 16th,2010:

“The permittee also indicated that other approaches previously discussed, such as ‘sequencing’ or ‘phasing’ of valley fills, remained unacceptable to Arch Coal, Inc., due primarily to economic considerations,” EPA said. “In the meeting, the permittee did not propose new or additional corrective actions for EPA’s consideration.”

But that’s not surprising. Arch Coal has been divesting in Central Appalachia for years, as it is becoming less profitable and more expensive to mine here due to declining supply across the Central Appalachian Region.

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