Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Jessica Kennedy
Editorial assistant, Summer 2012
"Why we come to Washington"
We’re in the nation’s capital for our 7th Annual Week in Washington! Most of us arrived last night, and we’re spending all day training to hit the ground running tomorrow. We’ll be lobbying Monday and Tuesday and having our Day of Action and group lobby on Wednesday. Even if you’re not here, we’d love to have your support… (more…)
Read More ...Friday, May 25th, 2012 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Jessica Kennedy
Editorial assistant, Summer 2012
Faith leaders from across the country testified for the environment in Washington, D.C., Thursday in support of the Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever proposed limits on carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants.
The proposed limits would cut 123 billion pounds of carbon emissions annually. Power plants in the United States currently emit 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. New plants would be limited to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon per megawatt hour of power produced.
Read More ...Thursday, May 24th, 2012 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Anna Norwood
Editorial intern, Spring 2012
Pro-mountain activists in Kayford, W. Va. blocked coal transport in two areas this morning (Thursday) protesting mountaintop removal.
Mountain Justice and RAMPS activists are fed up with the coal industry’s disregard for the health of citizens in Appalachia. In protest, five activists locked their bodies to a barge on the Kanawha River with a banner reading, “Coal leaves, cancer stays.” Other activists blocked access to the haul road on Kayford Mountain, preventing coal trucks from entering or leaving the Republic Energy mine.
Read More ...Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Jessica Kennedy
Editorial assistant, Summer 2012
Just because it’s listed in the “Facts” section of FacesOfCoal.org doesn’t mean it’s true.
Coal industry front group FACES of Coal reports that coal supplies half the electricity consumed by Americans. But data released May 8 show that coal didn’t even come close to providing half of the country’s electricity in this year’s first quarter.
According to the Short-Term Energy Outlook report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up only 36 percent of the country’s electricity in the first quarter of 2012. This is a nearly 20 percent drop from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
Read More ...Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Anna Norwood
Editorial intern, Spring 2012
Environmental activists at Greenpeace are feeling victorious since Apple’s recent announcement to use entirely renewable sources in the Maiden, North Carolina data center by the end of 2012.
Greenpeace has been pestering Apple for more than a year to commit to renewable energy. If pestering in the form of window washers, black balloons and giant iPods got Apple to make this change; I say more power to Greenpeace. I chuckled while reading about two Greenpeace activists who were arrested for barricading themselves inside of a giant iPod outside of Apple’s headquarters in California while broadcasting messages asking Apple to use renewable energy. Creative.
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Thursday, May 10th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell | No Comments
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We’re happy to share this guest blog post by Kathy Selvage. Last month, Kathy traveled to Florida to speak at Gainesville Loves Mountains. There she found engaged citizens with open hearts and minds.
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I landed at the airport in Jacksonville, FL., on Saturday afternoon, April 14, 2012 at the behest of Jason Fults who invited me to be part of the second Gainesville Loves Mountains series of events and activities. The image of two smokestacks near Jacksonville, seen from high above the earth, seemed to drive their image into my chest as we descended. It haunted me for quite awhile but quickly dissipated by the warm and wonderful people I met afterward.
Saturday night was devoted to getting to know my extraordinary hosts, Jason Fults and Laurel Nesbit, and I was thankful for that time to unwind slightly before we wound ourselves up again for what has proven to be a whirlwind of events.
The very next morning, I attended service with amazing people at UC Gainesville. It was a beautiful service, amazingly inclusive, a wonderful sermon by a seemingly “too young to be a minister” young man named Vince Amil. The repetitive words from a song stuck with me: “When the worship is over, service begins.” After crossing a very inviting courtyard, we met at 11:00 in a separate room for an Adult Education Class on Mountaintop Removal. How cool is that? I left them with a book for the church library accessible to all to remind others of the consequences of burning fossil fuels in this country, the consequence that is most often left out and ignored, the consequence of the extraction process on the Appalachian region and its people. I left there knowing in my heart that these intelligent, thoughtful people would engage and continue to be creative in ways not yet imaginable by me.
Circles close quickly when we are open to others and will have heartfelt conversations with them. I met a woman in the Church who was born in Wise, VA, where I have lived nearly all my life. (more…)
Read More ...Wednesday, May 9th, 2012 | Posted by Matt Wasson | 16 Comments
So CNN ran a sensationalized and superficial story built on stereotypes that lacked any news value. Big news, right? Grow up, kid, this is the entertainment business…
That’s an excerpt from the conversation in my head before deciding to write a post about the photo-essay that was posted on the front page of CNN.com on Monday with the teaser image of a burning cross. The link was titled “Everyday Life in Appalachia.”
Teaser Image for CNN's "Everyday Life in Appalachia"Photo Essay
I’ll spare you the righteous indignation and the pages of moralizing that virtually burst from my fingertips and get right to the point of why it’s worth calling attention to this particularly offensive piece of pseudo-journalistic garbage: misleading stereotypes have real world consequences.
Read More ...Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 | Posted by Erin Savage | 1 Comment
By Jillian Kenny
Appalachian Water Watch intern, Spring 2013
I had the amazing opportunity to be on a team of students at Appalachian State University that has been working over the past school year to create a miniature wetland to install in the local salon Haircut 101. Bobbie Jo Swinson, the project’s student leader, received a $15,000 grant for the project last year from an EPA P3 Phase I grant. The purpose of EPA’s P3 — People, Prosperity, and the Planet — is to inspire students to design sustainable solutions for world issues and bring their ideas into the marketplace.
Our project, Grow Clean Water, was inspired by Bobbie Jo’s work as a hair stylist and her experience watching chemicals from hair treatments lost down the drain. Students from appropriate technology, biology, chemistry, interior design, and sustainable development worked to design the biological graywater system to treat the hair salon water using aquatic plants before being recycled through the salon’s toilets for flushing. Graywater is the water from sources such as baths, sinks, and laundry machines; it is not to be confused with blackwater, which contains fecal matter. Aside from removing contaminants, we also wanted the system to function as living art that would educate the community about recycling graywater. (more…)
Read More ...Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell | No Comments
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Join us in Charlotte on May 9 to remind Bank of America, the largest financier of the U.S. coal industry, of their responsibility to citizens and the environment. Visit our action page for more info and to sign up.
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“BREAKING: Daring Action at Bank of America Stadium,” read the first email in my inbox this morning. Immediately, I thought what a crazed football fan might be capable of — in the offseason no less — if they were to break into the complex.
Turns out my imagination had taken the wrong course. The “daring action” at Bank of America Stadium targeted the bank itself. This morning, five activists from the Rainforest Action Network scaled the stadium walls before unfurling a banner suggesting a more appropriate name for the corporation. The “Bank of Coal” banner is a reminder to shareholders, board members and thousands on their daily commute, that the Charlotte-based bank cannot hide its long-standing relationship with coal industry under fluffy pronouncements of corporate responsibility.
Read More ...Monday, April 30th, 2012 | Posted by Tom Cormons | No Comments
I’ve been thinking a lot about the future lately. Our family has a set of newborn twins expected home from the hospital within another week or two, and it’s funny how babies simultaneously awaken you to the present moment and highlight the importance of preparing well for the coming decades and beyond. Kids transform the future from something abstract to something so literally tangible that you regularly hold it in your arms.
There’s the personal side of this, of course – everything from financial planning to the apple and pear trees my four-year-old and I planted in the backyard earlier this year and the new garden beds we’re building. But there’s no escaping the fact that, prepare individually as we might, the fates of our families and offspring – and everything else we care about – are tied to the future of our communities, our society, and the planet itself. To be sure, contemplating this reality can lead to despair for those attuned to the array of threats to our common future. But despair get us nowhere, and there’s something far more useful that comes just as naturally: the excitement of working together to lay the foundation for a bright future in the face of these threats.
Read More ...Friday, April 27th, 2012 | Posted by Eric Chance | 1 Comment
Yesterday the Kentucky State Supreme Court ruled in favor of Appalachian Voices and our partners KFTC, Waterkeeper and the Kentucky Riverkeeper. The ruling upheld lower court rulings allowing us to intervene in a lawsuit between Frasure Creek Mining and the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.
That case was brought about in October 2010 when we filed a Notice of Intent to Sue against Frasure Creek Mining, and International Coal Group (Now an Arch Coal subsidiary) for 20,000 violations of the Clean Water Act with potential penalties of over $700 million. The bulk of these violations relate to false and potentially fraudulent reporting of water pollution levels. Under the Clean Water Act companies have limits on the amount of pollution they are allowed to release, and they are required to monitor their pollution to make sure they meet these limits.
In an effort to keep us from being able to bring a case in federal court, the coal companies reached settlements with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, but those settlements needed to be approved by a state court. The settlements amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist; they have minimal fines and no meaningful measures to ensure that the same problems will not continue. Through the citizen suit provision of the Clean Water Act, citizen are allowed to participate in legal actions to protect public waters. Using this provision, we intervened in the state court case in order to argue that the state’s settlement was not fair, adequate and in the public interest.
Read More ...Tuesday, April 24th, 2012 | Posted by Sandra Diaz | No Comments
Keep Coal Ash Out of our Water and the Transportation Bill!
West Virginia Rep. David McKinley is a man on a mission — to save the coal industry from the bullies at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. McKinley’s afraid that the EPA may eventually require coal-fired utilities to contain their coal ash so it’s not allowed to continue to pollute our waterways. But McKinley is not alone — he had some help from the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, the organization currently under fire for providing industry the means to unduly influence our elected officials.
McKinley’s bill, H.R. 2273, would literally prevent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from protecting families from the water and air pollution associated with poor storage and disposal of coal ash, the toxic remnants of coal-burning.
Last Wednesday, McKinley attached the entire toxic bill as an amendment to the “must-pass” House version of the Transportation Bill. With the Senate version already passed a few weeks ago, there will now be a conference of House and Senate members to hammer out the final Transportation bill.
The passage of this coal ash bill would have real consequences for real people. Just ask Steven Johnson, Gloria Dorsett, Robert Deveaux and Donna Keiser, whose lives have been forever changed by the toxic menace of coal ash. (more…)
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