Tuesday, November 19th, 2013 | Posted by Jamie Goodman | No Comments
For the past 18 years, photographer Carl Galie has devoted his artistic talents to conservation work, and his latest exhibit is no exception. "Lost on the Road To Oblivion: The Vanishing Beauty of Coal Country," tackles the difficult and poignant subject of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. The exhibit is on display at Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts through Feb. 7, 2014.
[ Read More ]Friday, November 15th, 2013 | Posted by Erin Savage | 3 Comments
Above are blue gills that were collected below the site of TVA’s 2008 Kingston Coal Ash spill. They all have “pop-eye”, a deformity caused by selenium pollution where their eyes bulge out of their heads. These fish had selenium levels of 2.5-6.5ppm, well below Kentucky’s newly accepted standard of 8.6 ppm for fish tissue.
Just today, after several months of delays, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its decisions on the Kentucky Department of Water’s (DOW) amendments to the Kentucky Water Quality Regulations. Unfortunately, the EPA has approved substantive changes to the selenium freshwater chronic standard that will not adequately protect aquatic life and will be difficult, if not impossible to enforce at mountaintop removal coal mining sites throughout eastern Kentucky.
In theory, states review their water quality standards every three years in an effort to make sure these standards are up-to-date with current science and are protective of aquatic life. In some cases, however, the review becomes an opportunity for special interests to influence state agencies. This year, under pressure from the coal industry, the Kentucky DOW proposed to weaken selenium standards. Standards are used to set permit limits for industries that may discharge pollutants into public waterways. Though some mines in Kentucky are known to discharge selenium into streams, the Kentucky general permit for valley fills does not currently include selenium permit limits.
Selenium is a naturally occurring element that can be released into streams through mountaintop removal coal mining. Once in the water, selenium bioaccumulates in fish and other aquatic life, increasing in concentration up the food chain. Selenium is toxic to aquatic life at very low levels. For these reasons, Appalachian Voices and our allies have been working to challenge Kentucky’s proposed selenium standards.
Kentucky DOW proposed to raise the acute selenium standard from 20 ug/L in the water column to 258 ug/L in the water column. They also proposed changing the chronic standard of 5 ug/L to a more complicated system where a level of 5 ug/L in the water column would not be enforceable, but instead would trigger the need to sample fish tissue. The new chronic standard would be 8.6 ug/g in fish tissue, or 19.2 ug/g in egg/ovary tissue. The 5 ug/L water concentration would only be an enforceable limit if no fish were available for sampling.
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Friday, November 15th, 2013 | Posted by Guest Contributor | 1 Comment
{ Editor’s Note } Anthony Flaccavento is a regional leader in sustainable agriculture, local foods and their overlap with economic development. This is the second part of a post on building a stronger regional economy in Appalachia. Click here to read the first part.
“What’s needed is not a dilution of our commitment to the environment or social justice, but an expansion of our strategy to include working folks, and their needs and concerns as central to our efforts,” Anthony Flaccavento writes about strategies to make real progress on strengthening Appalachia’s economy. Photo by Jessica Kennedy.
Last week, I briefly described three key questions to frame the discussion about economic transition in Appalachia and around the nation:
1. Is the economy for people, or are people for the economy?
2. What is the proper role of government, the right balance between the ‘public sector’ and ‘the market’?
3. How do we live within our means, cultivating more widely shared prosperity, with less energy, waste and dependency?
In this second part to last week’s post, I’ll suggest three strategies I believe to be essential to making real progress on economic transition that builds greater prosperity, self-reliance and ecological sustainability. As someone whose work focuses on the details of economic diversification and transition, my perspective here is deliberately broad in hopes of providing some guidance applicable across sectors, communities and regions.
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Thursday, November 14th, 2013 | Posted by AV's Intern Team | No Comments
By Rachel Ellen Simon — Editorial Communications Intern, Fall 2013
A graduate student in Appalachian Studies, Rachel was a frequent contributor to The Appalachian Voice and worked as our Editorial Communications intern for Fall 2013.
From L to R: The Lost Sea of Sweetwater, Tenn.; Burke’s Gardens; Pocahontas Exhibition Mine.
When my editor first asked me to compile a list of “Historical Hidden Treasures,” I imagined my words guiding readers to ancient, geological wonders; down fossil-riddled hiking trails through former sea basins; deep into old growth forests squirming with endemic salamanders and a host of yet-undiscovered species. My brave readers would venture into the unknown to chart the unseen, name the unnamed, describe the unsung – all while practicing “leave no trace” trail ethics!
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Thursday, November 7th, 2013 | Posted by Guest Contributor | 2 Comments
{ Editor’s Note } Appalachian Voices is pulling up another chair to the Front Porch. Through our new guest blog feature, we’ll regularly invite influential voices to reflect on issues you care about — mountaintop removal, clean water, and promoting a strong, healthy economy and environment for communities in Appalachia and the Southeast. To kick things off, we invited Anthony Flaccavento, a regional leader in sustainable agriculture, local foods and their overlap with economic development, to share how Appalachia’s economic transition is already underway.
Organic farmer and one-time congressional candidate Anthony Flaccavento works to build a “bottom-up” economy in Appalachia. Photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl, courtesy of Bread for the World
In the mid-1980s, more than 60,000 people worked in Central Appalachia’s coal industry. During that same period, more than 75,000 tobacco farms dotted the region, helping small farmers make a decent livelihood. By 2008, the year before Barack Obama became president, employment in the region’s coal industry had fallen by more than half, and today the number of tobacco farmers in Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee is barely a tenth of what it had been.
The economy of Central Appalachia is in the midst of a long term “transition” away from tobacco, away from coal, away from relying on a handful of industries for the bulk of its jobs. Without a doubt, it’s moving away from that. The question is, what will it move towards, and how will we get there?
As more and more people grapple with this question – from coal miners and entrepreneurs to activists and elected officials – it is good to remind ourselves of this: Appalachia’s economic transition is part of a larger national, even global, transition with many of the same root causes. To be clear, with so many people laid off from the mines, our region’s problems are particularly acute, and the solutions we seek are both urgent and specific to our place. But the essence of the shift we must make goes far beyond our mountains.
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Wednesday, November 6th, 2013 | Posted by Kara Dodson | No Comments
Through public meetings and community outreach, Appalachian Voices is working to help citizens living near coal plants like the Belews Creek Power Station stand up for their right to clean water.
Over the past three weeks, the Winston-Salem Journal published a series of excellent articles focusing on the significant environmental and health threat of toxic coal ash in North Carolina — specifically from Duke Energy’s coal plants.
Appalachian Voices’ Red, White, & Water team has been working this year in communities surrounding the Belews Creek coal plant near Walnut Cove, N.C., and we’ve found a mountain of stories and data pointing to Duke Energy’s poor pollution record.
The articles, researched and written by Bertrand M. Gutierrez, paint a clear picture of the air and water contamination spreading out from the Belews Creek coal ash pond. The three-part series includes:
Thursday, October 31st, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell | No Comments
This week, a federal court gave the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 60 days to propose a deadline for rules regulating toxic coal ash. Photo from southeastcoalash.org
After years of delays and setbacks, the clock is finally ticking on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to propose a deadline for federal regulations of coal ash.
On Tuesday, a federal judge gave the EPA 60 days to file a written submission setting forth a proposed deadline for its review and revision of regulations concerning coal ash, along with its legal justification for the proposed deadline.
This victory for clean water and healthy communities came almost month after the court sided with Appalachian Voices and our allies, agreeing that the EPA has a duty to stop the delays and issue federally enforceable safeguards for the toxic coal waste. You can read the memorandum issued this week by the court here.
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013 | Posted by Kara Dodson | No Comments
On back-to-back days this week, the Asheville City Council approved a clean energy resolution, and the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources ordered Duke Energy to provide drinking water to a family whose well water was contaminated by coal ash from Duke’s Asheville Steam Station. Photo by the Sierra Club.
Asheville, N.C., harbors a lively community that has united to push for clean energy and to put an end to Duke Energy’s polluting ways.
Two wins came this week for Asheville residents when the City Council voted to increase investments in clean energy and, the next day, the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources moved to protect a family’s drinking water from Duke’s toxic waste.
On Tuesday night, the City Council approved a resolution to build a partnership with Duke Energy to reduce carbon emissions by transiting from coal-fired energy to renewable energy and energy efficiency, and remediating coal ash pollution from Duke’s Asheville Steam Station.
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Thursday, October 24th, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell | No Comments
TVA’s Paradise coal plant in Muhlenberg County, Ky., relies entirely on coal from the Illinois Basin, which includes mines in western Kentucky. Recently, utilities in the Southeast have looked beyond Central Appalachia, even to reserves within a day’s drive, to purchase cheaper coal.
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Paradise Fossil Plant sits on the banks of western Kentucky’s Green River. The largest coal plant in the state, Paradise consumes approximately 7.3 million tons per year — none of which comes from Central Appalachian coal mines.
Although TVA recently announced it was cutting almost all of its use of Central Appalachian coal, a spokesperson for the utility pointed out that Paradise will still receive coal mined in Kentucky. But that portion of TVA’s coal purchases will be from mines in Kentucky’s western coalfields, just a few hundred miles from most of the state’s Appalachian coal-producing counties. Even just a day’s drive apart, the two reserves have dramatically different outlooks.
According to the most recent Kentucky Quarterly Coal Report, between April and June of this year, western and Eastern Kentucky coal mines each produced around 10 million tons of coal. But on a longer timeline, production and employment in Kentucky’s western counties have steadily increased while the state’s Central Appalachian mines have suffered.
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Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013 | Posted by Tom Cormons | No Comments
I know of no wiser or more insightful thinker alive today than Wendell Berry. The work of this Kentucky farmer, author and activist has been a constant source of inspiration for me ever since I read a collection of his essays, “Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community,” in college 17 years ago, so it was a real treat to see his rare television interview with Bill Moyers that aired on PBS earlier this month.
In the interview, we see a man gravely concerned with the state of the world. Yet, despite his acute awareness of the problems we face — including the rampant mountaintop removal mining in his home state — what makes Berry stand out today is his clear, unwavering vision of the good and the beautiful, which is informed and inspired by his own well-lived life. His writing celebrates nature, close families and communities, and the potential for healthy interaction between people and the earth — and, as a farmer who’s devoted his life to caring for the land and his loved ones, he writes with great authority.
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Monday, October 21st, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell | No Comments
Recent polls reveal the unpopularity of Congress, and North Carolinians’ and Virginians’ support for environmental protection.
Two recent polls reveal that North Carolinians and Virginians strongly approve of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s plans to regulate carbon emissions from new power plants and the agency’s role in protecting clean air and water for all Americans.
According to a Public Policy Polling survey of 803 North Carolinians commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council, roughly seven in ten residents say they oppose efforts to delay EPA’s work to cut carbon pollution, protect the environment and public health. So it should not come as a surprise that a majority of North Carolinians hold an unfavorable view of elected officials who suggest the EPA is overreaching or even unnecessary.
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Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell | 4 Comments
Stream “Wendell Berry, Poet & Prophet” below or watch it on Moyers & Company by clicking here.
Widely celebrated as a caretaker of the culture and myth of rural America, Wendell Berry has a distinct drawl and speaks like he writes, eloquently but with simple words and equal parts conviction and compassion. Beyond being a renowned poet and author, Berry is an abiding presence in the environmental movement — especially among those of us who live in or love Appalachia.
A new presentation by Moyers & Company, “Wendell Berry, Poet & Prophet,” provides a portrait of the literary icon’s growth and influence, his relationship with the land and his hopes for humanity.
Among the topics covered — industrialization, wealth inequality, the indifference of elected leaders to environmental degradation — is Berry’s anti-mountaintop removal activism, and his participation in a four-day sit-in at the Kentucky governor’s office to protest mountaintop removal.
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