According to a report released today by The Pew Charitable Trusts, green jobs—Pew dubs these “clean energy jobs”— across the country grew at a national rate of 9.1 percent between 1998 and 2007, while traditional jobs grew by only 3.7 percent, a difference of nearly two and a half times. State levels also showed growth in clean energy outperformed overall job growth in 38 states and the District of Columbia during the same time period.

And this growth has happened despite a lack of sustained government support for clean energy jobs. According to the report, by 2007 more than 68,200 businesses across the nation accounted for about 770,000 jobs.

By comparison, fossil-fuel industries—including utilities, coal mining and oil and gas extraction—comprised about 1.27 million workers in 2007.

Green industries are also creating well-paying jobs people of all skill levels and educational backgrounds, including engineers, plumbers, administrative assistants, construction workers, machine setters, marketing consultants, teachers and many others, with annual incomes ranging from $21,000 to $111,000.

Read the full press release on their website.

The Progressive Caucus is taking questions our about energy! They have a lot on their plate, with the upcoming Waxman-Markey climate bill, and the Clean Water Protection Ac (HR 1310) now passing 150 cosponsors.

Please take a moment to vote, to ask Congressional Representatives about mountaintop removal.

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.

During the campaign, President Obama promised to make protecting Appalachian streams a primary task of his EPA. Earlier this week Mike Shapiro, the Acting Assistant Administrator for the EPA Office of Water, testified before the the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment regarding the EPA’s priorities in the upcoming year. Many in Appalachia are curious about where the well-being of our region falls on that list of priorities.

In response to the recent public outcry about EPA’s approval of dozens of new mining permits (including many mountaintop removal sites with multiple valley fills), freshman Democratic Congressman Tom Perriello (VA-05) sought to get some straight answers from EPA on how they plan to handle the mountaintop removal issue moving forward.

Congressman Perriello: Mr Shapiro, my understanding is that the EPA is currently reviewing about 150 to 200 mountaintop removal permits, and of the ones reviewed so far, roughly 90% have been permitted. Do you expect that percentage to remain in place with the remaining permits?

Mr. Shapiro: Its tough to predict. As you indicated, we’ve started a review focusing on those that were furthest along in the process, and as you indicated a relatively small percentage had been identified for further review by the agency in discussion with the Army corps of Engineers and the permittees

As we go forward it depends on the mix of proposals that are present. The kinds of considerations that weigh in our judgment when we decide to raise issues have to do with the scope and scale of the impact of the proposed mine, the sensitivity of the resources that might be impacted and at least our initial assessment of the degree to which damages have been avoided to the maximum extent practicable.

I think that although the evidence we have in the first 200 is the best we have to project into the future, we can’t guarantee, we’re not shooting for a specific percentage. We’re really shooting to identify those that are seriously problematic and to try and address them.

Congressman Perriello: When you say you’re looking at the ones furthest along, do you mean that have done the most to look at potential impacts on the ecosystem and environment, or simply furthest along in terms of investment and development?

Mr. Shapiro: Furthest along in the Corps permitting process, thank you for that question to allow me to clarify. What had happened is that because of some uncertainty involving lawsuits that were in play, there had been a hold up in the backlog of permits – had developed over time. So in fairness to the permitees we have focused early attention on those that were furthest along in terms of temporally their readiness for permitting in the view of the Corps’ process. As we work out way through that backlog we’ll try to do that in a way that respects the amount of time its taken already to get the permit up to where it is.

Congressman Perriello: Is their an issue at all with a lack of funding for oversight that hinders your ability to review and suggest alternatives to some of these mountaintop removal situations, around Appalachia in particular.

Mr. Shapiro: At this point I think we have, in my view, resources to do the job in front of us. Like anyone else, I think if we had more staff who were experienced in this area its possible we could move faster, but we were able to juggle the resources we have by focusing on those that are the highest priority, getting the maximum results in terms of our investment in staff.

Watch the video here. The exchange with Congressman Perriello begins at about 1:56:20.

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

Visit DemocracyNow.org HERE to view this segment.

Visit OhioCitizen.org HERE to read this blog post.

Appalachian Voices has filed a Freedom of Information Act request objecting to the secrecy over a new federal study focused on the safety of 15 high-risk sludge dams.

The study, by the federal Office of Surface Mine and Reclamation Enforcement, will be the first to combine elements of dam volume and downstream populations in a risk assessment. Although the engineering work is complete, release of the study is being held up so that coal companies and the state of West Virginia can review it, OSMRE said.

“Given the current state of emergency and severe flooding in West Virginia, we believe that this information has a direct bearing on vital issues of public safety,” Appalachian Voices said in a letter to OSMRE.

“We think that the government should not, indeed cannot in good conscience, wait for the document to be prepared in such a way as to satisfy stakeholders, but rather, that engineering data and draft conclusions must be released to the public immediately.”

Until recently, no federal office had taken a systematic approach to studying the safety of these earthen dams.

A previous FOIA request to the OSMRE this spring by Appalachian Voices revealed that since the late 1990s, the government has studied the safety of only a handful of “randomly selected” sludge dams. Those selected were among the smallest and newest in the region.

Visit ItsGettingHotInHere.org HERE to read this post.