The Front Porch Blog

Treesit on Coal River Mountain enters fourth week

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 | Posted by Jamie Goodman | No Comments

According to RAMPS (Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival), a treesit by Catherine-Ann MacDougal near the Bee Tree surface mine has entered its fourth week. MacDougal was joined for the first two weeks by another sitter, Becks Kolins. According to the press release, Kolins “descended to begin legal processing” and was charged with “conspiracy, trespassing, and littering and was released Tuesday on personal recognizance.”

According to RAMPS, this treesit is the longest in West Virginia history.

Visit rampscampaign.org for the full story.

Slurry Lawsuit Comes to an End

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 | Posted by Jillian Randel | No Comments

Through underground injections and an alleged faulty slurry pond, Mingo County, West Virginia’s water has been inundated with a “toxic soup” of heavy metals cumulatively amounting to a volume larger than the BP Oil spill.

Rawl Sales and Processing Co., a subsidiary of Massey Energy, began dumping coal slurry—the substance produced from washing coal—into a local slurry pond in the mid 1970s.

The class action suit began in 2004 and represents 732 clients. Because of the complexities of each individual client (effects on property, health, etc.) the case was relabeled as a consolidated class action suit, and lawyers had to build a case around each individual client.

Two years ago, the judge in charge of the case (Judge Thornsbury) was recused from his duties when it was revealed that Rawl Sales and Processing Co. was a former client of his. A mass litigation panel replaced him and was responsible for last week’s out-of-court settlement two weeks before the case was supposed to go to trial.

The settlement amount has not yet been announced publicly, leaving much to be questioned.

Virginia: Call in Day to Keep Ison Rock Ridge Standing This Wednesday

Monday, August 1st, 2011 | Posted by Mike McCoy | No Comments

The following message was sent to 13,000 Virginians this morning from the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition of which Appalachian Voices is a part. To sign up for alerts form Wise Energy for Virginia click here

The state of Virginia has signed off on destroying Wise County’s Ison Rock Ridge through mountaintop removal coal mining. They have OK’d the leveling of 1200 acres above several communities – home to about 1,800 local residents. Many families’ back yards abut the slopes of Ison Rock Ridge. These families could be forced to live through explosions, dust, for years as they watch their mountain leveled, streams buried and lost forever.

Right now, further review of the permit by the Environmental Protection Agency is the only thing stopping the coal companies from planting explosives uphill of these families. The locals at the Southern Appalachian Mountains Stewards have been fighting hard, and many of you have sent several letters to the EPA, but now it’s time to step up the pressure.

This Wednesday, August 3rd, we need you to call the EPA and ask them to deny this permit and to keep Ison Rock Ridge standing. The EPA needs to hear from as many of us as possible so please recruit friends and family to also make calls.

Early on Wednesday morning you will receive another email with the number to call and some points to bring up. Once you make the call please ask your mom, your spouse, your uncle, your coworkers and your friends to also make the call. It is a simple call to make, no expertise is necessary, and it could help protect the heritage and quality of life for those living near, and downstream of, Ison Rock Ridge.

Thank you for all that you do.

Until Wednesday,

Mike McCoy
Wise Energy for Virginia

To sign up for alerts form Wise Energy for Virginia click here

Guest Blogger: Chuck Keeney – What’s next for Blair Mountain

Friday, July 29th, 2011 | Posted by Jeff Deal | 2 Comments

Cross posted from iLoveMountains.org

C. Belmont Keeney, or Chuck as most people know him, has a Ph.D. in Appalachian and American History from West Virginia University. His great grandfather, Frank Keeney, was president of the United Mine Workers of America and helped organized the Miners March in 1921. Chuck was one of the principle organizers of the June 2011 March on Blair Mountain.

Since Chuck is an active board member of Friends of Blair Mountain, we asked him to summarize last month’s march and tell us what’s next for Blair Mountain:

Two weeks after the June 2011 March on Blair Mountain, I accompanied Brandon Nida, a doctoral candidate in archeology at U.C. Berkeley and a good friend, on a day long trip back to the community of Blair. It was a Sunday, overcast and rainy, unlike the sunny mid-ninety degree temperatures under which we marched a couple of weeks before. Everyone who marched remembers the heat. But on this day, Brandon and I drove a nice, air conditioned car down 119 South to Six Mile Road and then winded down the curvy Route 17 through the mountains and into Logan County. To be honest, it is difficult to describe what I felt as we drove by so many familiar sights along portions of the March route. We passed by a lovely country home where, during the March, an old lady invited us to stop and eat lunch. As it turned out, this lady was the granddaughter of a woman who fed the miners during the 1921 March and we found ourselves resting under the shade of the very trees where rebellious miners had been ninety years before. We passed by homes where people applauded us and homes where people reviled us. I have lived my entire life in West Virginia, spent years studying the history of Appalachia, and yet I think I only truly saw my home for the first time from June 6-11, 2011 when hundreds of activists and concerned citizens marched the fifty miles from Marmet to Blair Mountain, West Virginia.

The story of the March itself is different for everyone who participated in it. Much has already been written about it as the people begin to tell their stories. No doubt, much more will be written, and I look forward to seeing what tales emerge from this memorable event. For myself, suffice it for the moment to say, I met many incredible people, formed friendships, and renewed some old ones, which have changed my life in ways I never would have anticipated before. I have met union miners, proud mountaineers, environmentalists, lawyers, scholars, and even people who believed so greatly in the justice of our cause that they crossed oceans in order to make their voices heard. To say that the march has been inspiring is an understatement. But in spite of the profound experience of the march and the attention that we have received around the nation and even the world, Blair Mountain is still in danger and we still have to save it. So as I drove from Charleston to Blair with Brandon and revisited so many places burned into my memory, one overarching question emerged:

What do we do now?

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A Cup of Arsenic in the Morning Does a Body…Good?

Thursday, July 28th, 2011 | Posted by Jamie Goodman | 1 Comment

In what some folks would call the “no-duh” factor, the TVA has found contaminated groundwater near some of their coal fired power plant coal ash sites.

Following the 2008 coal ash disaster at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tenn., the topic of toxicity in coal ash has raged hotter than a coal-stoked furnace.

According to an article by EnergyCentral.com, the TVA Inspector General has found that contaminants in groundwater near the Gallatin plant in Sumner County (50 miles northwest of Nashville) are at “health-hazard levels.”

Pollutants above drinking water standards near the plant include beryllium, cadmium, nickel, arsenic, selenium and vanadium.

Contamination was also found at a coal-fired power plant in Memphis–a plant conveniently nestled directly above the aquifer that supplies drinking water to the city of Memphis and nearby areas.

Prior to the Kingston disaster–which dumped 1.1 billion gallons of coal fly ash into the Clinch and Emory rivers–coal ash was regarded as harmless to humans, namely because the coal companies claimed it was.

Thanks to independent testing and verification by labs, universities, environmental groups and the U.S. government at the Harriman site, we now know that coal fly ash contains toxic minerals such as arsenic, selenium and other delicious minerals that you wouldn’t want to drink with your morning orange juice.

The EPA’s attempts to treat coal ash as a toxic substance have been repeatedly attacked by the current Congress. A bill to strip the agency’s ability to oversee coal ash passed in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and currently awaits a floor vote.

The only Tennessee representative on the committee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Brentwood) voted for the bill.

The real question is, would Blackburn be willing to use that water–now that we know what is in it–to brew her morning coffee?

Modeling: Pretty is as Pretty Does

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | Posted by Mike McCoy | No Comments

The following is a blog post by Betsy Shepard of Surry County, Virginia. The largest coal plant ever proposed for the state is proposed within the small town of Dendron, in Surry County and upwind of nearly 2 million people in Hampton Roads, a region already suffering from poor air quality. Somehow Betsy finds time in between raising her kids, running a business with her husband and living life to fight this proposed coal plant and to write awesome blog posts like this one.

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Coal Model

Recently the issue of “modeling” has come up as it pertains to the proposed Surry Coal Plant.

No, this is not another ad campaign by the “Clean Coal” folks showing scantily clad models pretending to be coal miners—or coal plant operators in this case.

This kind of modeling has to do with making accurate predictions about air pollution from a proposed source —a key component in understanding the impacts of the largest coal-fired power plant proposed for Virginia. And an essential consideration for the 1.8 million Hampton Roads residents who live directly downwind.

According to the EPA, modeling refers:

“. . . to a general technique that uses mathematical representations of the factors affecting pollutant dispersion. Computers are used extensively to help scientists model the complex systems responsible for transport and dispersion of air pollutants.

In modeling air pollution transport and dispersion, specific information is gathered for an emission point. This information includes the location of the emission point (latitude and longitude), the quantity and type of pollutants emitted, stack gas conditions, the height of the stack, and many meteorological factors that include wind speed, ambient temperature profiles, and atmospheric pressure. Using this data as input for a computer model, scientists can predict how pollutants will be dispersed into the atmosphere. Concentration levels can be estimated for various distances and directions from the site of the stack.” Source: EPA

Modeling the pollution from the coal-fired power plant proposed by the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) will provide vital information for these downwind communities as they seek to understand the impacts they could expect from such a proposal.

Recently the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) released a report predicting rather dire consequences for downwind communities, citing “illnesses, premature deaths, and health-related costs” should the coal plant project come to fruition.

Responding to the Foundation’s report, ODEC’s David Hudgins, director of member and external relations had this to say:

“The report is inaccurate and misleading, and grossly misrepresents the potential environmental and public health . . .”

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Boulder crashes through home in Perry County

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | Posted by Jeff Deal | No Comments

Cross posted from WYMT News:

Federal and state officials are investigating after a boulder came crashing through a Perry County home on July 26.

This was not the first time this quiet community was shaken up.

“It’s shaken in here a many a time, yeah,” said Shirley Campbell, sales clerk at Campbell’s Station in Dice, Kentucky.
“They’ve been letting shots off, but they’ve never been that bad.”

A home on bailey way in dice was damaged when a boulder fell through the bedroom ceiling.

“It was probably about as big as a basketball,” said Orby Dean Campbell, describing the rock that came in through the roof and exited through the bedroom wall. Campbell owns the trailer which was damaged at around 11 a.m.

Campbell said his daughter and her husband were inside the home with their children, 6-year-old and 2-year-old boys, at the time of the accident.

“It could have killed every one of them if they’d been in there,” said Campbell.

Workers in the area said they heard what happened from about a half-mile away. Shirley Campbell was working at Campbell’s Station when she heard that her niece’s residence had been affected.

“I seen all of that smoke and it was all at once, just come right up,” said Shirley Campbell.

Orby Campbell said that the boulder came down from the mountain above the home. He said he believes blasting at a nearby mine is to blame.

“I want them to know to lighten on those shots back there if they are gonna work back there – lighting those shots can kill people,” said Campbell.

He said he was thankful nothing worse had happened. No one was injured in the incident.

The Division Of Mine Reclamation Enforcement, DMRE, surface mine inspectors and the explosives and blasting branch are investigating along with MSHA and the OSM, Office of Surface Mining to determine the cause. Officials from DMRE said it will be a thorough investigation and will likely take several days.

State mining officials are not able to determine if the boulder came from the nearby mining company.

Breaking: New Study Links Mountaintop Removal to 60,000 Additional Cancer Cases

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | Posted by Jeff Deal | No Comments

by Jeff Biggers, cross posted from Alternet.org
Among the 1.2 million American citizens living in mountaintop removal mining counties in central Appalachia, an additional 60,000 cases of cancer are directly linked to the federally sanctioned strip-mining practice.

That is the damning conclusion in a breakthrough study, released last night in the peer-reviewed Journal of Community Health: The Publication for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Led by West Virginia University researcher Dr. Michael Hendryx, among others, the study entitled “Self-Reported Cancer Rates in Two Rural Areas of West Virginia with and Without Mountaintop Coal Mining” drew from a groundbreaking community-based participatory research survey conducted in Boone County, West Virginia in the spring of 2011, which gathered person-level health data from communities directly impacted by mountaintop mining, and compared to communities without mining.

“A door to door survey of 769 adults found that the cancer rate was twice as high in a community exposed to mountaintop removal mining compared to a non-mining control community,” said Hendryx, Associate Professor at the Department of Community Medicine and Director of West Virginia Rural Health Research Center at West Virginia University. “This significantly higher risk was found after control for age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure and family cancer history. The study adds to the growing evidence that mountaintop mining environments are harmful to human health.”

Bottom line: Far from simply being an environmental issue, mountaintop removal is killing American residents.

…

Read the entire article on Alternet.org

Massey Energy Gets to Continue Business-As-Usual While Tim DeChristopher Gets Two Years in Prison

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | Posted by Sandra Diaz | 4 Comments

Please join Appalachian Voices, Free Speech for People and Rainforest Action Network in asking that Massey Energy’s corporate charter be revoked

True community exists when neighbors respect each other. Good neighbors are mindful of the impacts that their actions have on the whole. When a powerful neighbor, like a corporation, does not respect their neighbors, communities can become literally endangered.

The corporation is Massey Energy, and this time around, the community is Rawl, West Virginia.

Over 700 people from Rawl and surrounding communities are suing Massey Energy in a class-action lawsuit claiming that Massey Energy is responsible for poisoning hundreds of southern wells with coal slurry. Water pollution is one of the most severe and life-threatening impacts of coal mining and processing. The trial is set to begin August 1.

UPDATE: According to an AP report, Massey Energy has settled the coal slurry lawsuit. The deal was struck earlier after a three day long mediation. The terms are confidential and all parties remain under a gag order.

Jennifer Massey-Hall, who is featured in the movie The Last Mountain, walks us through her neighborhood in Prenter, about 50 miles away from Rawl as the crow flies. Six people have brain tumors, with most of them now deceased. The national average for brain tumors is 6.5 per 100,000 men and women per year.

Here is the first of a 3-part video series by WCHS- TV, the local station about the illnesses. You can watch the other two here:

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Tim DeChristopher Sentenced, Speaks on MTR

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 | Posted by JW Randolph | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Justice in the Coal Bearing Areas of Appalachia

Tim DeCristopher, an native West Virginian, has been sentenced to 2 years in jail plus a $10,000 fine for putting a false bid on an oil lease at a public auction, essentially nullifying the results of the auction. The punishment Tim received is roughly equal to that of a Kentucky company which sent a boulder the size of a mini-van into a nearby house in 2009. The only difference is that when the company allowed that boulder to crash into that house, nobody went to jail. That $10,000 fine obviously didn’t do much to how business is done, as another boulder flew into the home of a Kentucky family with children (2 and 6 years old) again this week.

DeChristopher’s entire statement is below, but in this section he specifically addresses mountaintop removal in a manner that we hear time and time and time again from citizens having to live with the impacts of this horrible practice. I hope his words serve as food for thought for all of us.

…I have openly and explicitly called for nonviolent civil disobedience against mountaintop removal coal mining in my home state of West Virginia. Mountaintop removal is itself an illegal activity, which has always been in violation of the Clean Water Act, and it is an illegal activity that kills people. A West Virginia state investigation found that Massey Energy had been cited with 62,923 violations of the law in the ten years preceding the disaster that killed 29 people last year. The investigation also revealed that Massey paid for almost none of those violations because the company provided millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions that elected most of the appeals court judges in the state. When I was growing up in West Virginia, my mother was one of many who pursued every legal avenue for making the coal industry follow the law. She commented at hearings, wrote petitions and filed lawsuits, and many have continued to do ever since, to no avail. I actually have great respect for the rule of law, because I see what happens when it doesn’t exist, as is the case with the fossil fuel industry. Those crimes committed by Massey Energy led not only to the deaths of their own workers, but to the deaths of countless local residents, such as Joshua McCormick, who died of kidney cancer at age 22 because he was unlucky enough to live downstream from a coal mine. When a corrupted government is no longer willing to uphold the rule of law, I advocate that citizens step up to that responsibility.

This is really the heart of what this case is about. The rule of law is dependent upon a government that is willing to abide by the law. Disrespect for the rule of law begins when the government believes itself and its corporate sponsors to be above the law…

The rest of his statement is below the fold:
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Make Your Voice Heard: Support New Mercury Standards To Protect Human Health

Monday, July 25th, 2011 | Posted by Erin Savage | 3 Comments

The EPA has proposed new standards for mercury and other toxic air pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants. You have until August 4th to make your voice heard at the EPA. Even if you are not concerned about the effects of mercury on your own health, you should be concerned for your future children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and all unborn children. Here’s why:

Mercury emitted from power plants enters the air and then accumulates in our environment through atmospheric deposition. Atmospheric mercury spreads around the country, which means that concentrations in the air are thankfully not that high. The problem is that mercury bio-accumulates in fish when the mercury settles out of the atmosphere and is washed into our rivers, lakes and oceans. As fish live in mercury-contaminated water, they progressively accumulate greater amounts of mercury in their tissues. When we eat these fish, we consume the accumulated mercury.

The developing fetus is most susceptible to adverse effects of mercury consumption, making fish consumption by pregnant women very dangerous. Mercury exposure in children can lead to neurological deficits, including problems with attention, fine motor function, language skills, visual-spatial abilities and verbal memory.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the country. The proposal from the EPA would seek to reduce mercury emission by 91%. The additional standards for other toxic air pollutants would, according to the EPA, prevent “as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks a year. The new proposed standards would also provide particular health benefits for children, preventing 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 11,000 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year. The proposed standards would also avert more than 12,000 emergency room visits and hospital admissions and 850,000 fewer days of work missed due to illness.”

Coal companies are fighting the rule by claiming the new regulation would lead to the early closure of coal-fired power plants and the loss of jobs. Can we really claim that preventing the closure of out-dated, dirty power plants outweighs protecting the health of our children? Furthermore, a study by CERES and Political Economy Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts shows that this regulation and the Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR) will create a combined total of over 290,000 jobs.

Tell the EPA you support new mercury and toxic air pollutant standards!

EPA Guidance Will Not Protect Appalachian Communities

Thursday, July 21st, 2011 | Posted by JW Randolph | 2 Comments

After hearing that EPA Would Rely on the Best Science to Protect People from Mountaintop Removal Mining Waste, This Guidance is a Bitter Disappointment

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency released the final draft of their long-awaited surface coal mining guidance.

In light of new information showing a link between mountaintop removal and sickness, birth defects, and cancer clusters, this guidance falls disappointingly short of the “comprehensive” steps necessary to protect Appalachia and its people from what EPA themselves call “permanent” and “irreversible damage” from strip mines. We really, really need an EPA to protect us from a dangerous, dishonest, and often two-faced coal industry. This particular action by the EPA will not even come close to protecting citizens from the actions of these companies, or the most destructive mining practices in America.

We should take a moment to applaud EPA for taking a step in the right direction. Taking action to protect people from mountaintop removal is the right thing to do. They are certainly under seemingly unprecedented pressure from the coal lobby and their Congressional allies. For giving their time and attention to protecting citizens from mountaintop removal, we applaud and thank them.

However, there were several things EPA could have done to properly protect the environment and public health.

Firstly, this is just a guidance, which is a weak regulatory device for pursuing the regulation of deadly and dangerous practices like strip-mining. Ideally, the Administration would have fought for strong permanent protections in the form of a law, such as the bipartisan Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1375), which has over 100 cosponsors in the House, and would keep toxic mining waste out of our streams. At the very least, EPA should have gone through a formal rule-making process.

So not only is there little that is enforceable about this guidance, but in the final draft EPA actually backslides, and presents something that is even weaker than previous drafts. Of particular concern is that fact they are permitting valleyfills at all. Even worse, they went from “sequencing” valleyfills (allowing one at a time) under strict review, to allowing several at a time on particular mine sites.

My colleague Dr. Matt Wasson will have much more on this later, but its interesting to look at which words were changed in the new guidance compared to previous drafts.

There’s not a lot to like in that chart, but if you’re starting to worry that we’re moving backward rather than forward on mountaintop removal it might be reassuring to take a look at the word cloud from the final guidance memo released today.

Despite it’s flaws and the recent backsliding, the EPA’s guidance is a step forward in protecting Appalachian communities, streams and mountains. It’s just not a very big step, nor is it permanent. So we’ve got more work to do.

Appalachian Voices’ full press release is below…
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