Mountaintop Removal Affecting Bird Populations

This is just out from the U.S. Geological Survey. Mountaintop mining is not only changing the landscape, it is, unsurprisingly, changing the ecology of the Appalachians. According to a new study published in Landscape Ecology, songbirds that thrive in forested areas are in decline in areas adjacent to reclaimed mountaintop removal mines, while birds that live in shrub lands are increasing in these areas.

            The results make sense on the face of things. Even when MTR mines are reclaimed, they are mostly large grassland areas devoid of trees. And as you can surmise, it will take a while for trees to take root, grow, and reach maturity in reclaimed mines. Most optimistically the forests will grow to maturity in the mines in a matter of a few decades, but in most cases it will probably take longer.

            Here are some details from the USGS news release:

The study evaluated the bird communities in the forest that remains around the reclaimed habitats in West Virginia and Kentucky. Researchers found that even small amounts of forest lost to mineland or grassland within a landscape resulted in lower abundance for the majority of bird species in the forest that remained adjacent to the reclaimed lands.  Declines in abundance were detected for 12 species of forest interior birds and 11 species of interior edge birds including species of conservation concern such as Cerulean Warbler and Worm-eating Warbler.  But the numbers of some species did go up.

“Some shrubland species, for example the brown thrasher and song sparrow, or forest generalist species such as the brown-headed cowbird and the yellow-throated vireo, did have a positive response to the loss of forest and the gain in mineland or grassland, but most bird species did not,” said Doug Becker, professor of biology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and senior author of the study.  “If managers want to take actions that may benefit sensitive, forest-dependent species, they need to minimize the amount of forest lost in a landscape.”

A reclaimed mountaintop mine. No trees here. photo: ovec.org

The Cerulean Warbler, one of the bird species in decline around the mountaintop removal mines photo: nc.audubon.org

Other ecological effects have been documented, including the recent finding that the mining was threatening rare endemic crayfish. And it is needless to say that for years and decades we will be finding even more effects that mountaintop removal coal mining has had on the lives of Appalachians and the environment of their mountains.

Mountains that have not been removed for their coal, where many songbirds want to live

Interactive Map Highlights the Communities Affected By the Mountaintop Removal Mines

Working with Google and SkyTruth, an environmental mapping organization, Appalachian Voices has developed an interactive map that illustrates how the mountaintop mines have encroached on the communities of Appalachia. There are hundreds of towns and communities that are affected by the mines. This map concentrates on the 50 communities thought to be the most horribly affected by the mountaintop removal coalmines. The map is here.

Let the Mines Be Big and Toxic Because Those Hillbillies Just Don't Matter

Jeff Biggers gets it. The author of The United States of Appalachia and Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland and a man who grew up around coal mining and its legacy understands the hellishness that surface mining, and particularly mountaintop removal, unleashes on Appalachia. Here in his Guardian opinion piece, Would There Be More Regulation of Coal Mining If It Didn't Just Affect "Hillbillies," he explains that the Appalachian Mountains are ravaged and the streams and ecosystems are ruined because we simply disregard the lives of Appalachians. We think that they are just a bunch of dumb hillbillies who deserve their lot.

            There is obviously more to it than the larger prejudices of the country as a whole. There are the hand-in-gloveworkings of the coal companies and politicians of the region; the infection of school curricula in which students are given propaganda by King Coal to be learned as lessons in their classrooms; there is the endemic poverty that grinds down people’s spirits and keeps them ever distracted worrying about their mounting bills and being trapped in an economic system that gives them as much choice in their lives as their ancestors had in the company towns.

It's just a bunch of hillbillies who live nearby. So who cares?

But Biggers gets the larger picture of how mountaintop removal can be such a low priority, even for people and groups that care about poverty or environmental concerns. You really should read his opinion piece. Here is another link to it right here. And remember, Appalachian lives matter.

Mountaintop Removal, Just Not In the Press and Just Not On Our Minds

I know that this is something that bloggers are loath to admit, but often, particularly when I blog about mountaintop removal mining, the hits I get on this blog can be pretty meager, diving down from dozens or hundreds to only a few hits.

            The reason for this is quite simple. Mountaintop mining is simply not on the minds of most folks. This is due in part at least to the few stories about the mines in the press. In the past 15 years the New York Times ran 40 stories that were about mountaintop removal or mentioned mountaintop removal somewhere in a story.[1] Conversely, over the same period the Times ran 17,158 stories that were about or mentioned Israel.

            Certainly there is much that goes on in Israel that is newsworthy, and on the occasions when there are missiles flying or bombs going off there will be a lot of press coverage of that area of the world. But a scourge on the land and people of Appalachia—one that is occurring within our borders, one that has been investigated by the U.N. for human rights abuses, one which, unlike the politics or conflicts of a country thousands of miles away, we can actually do something about—why does it receive less than 0.3 percent of the coverage of that given to Israel?

            Because of the dearth of press coverage, we just aren’t curious about mountaintop removal and don’t try to find out more about it. Below is a graph showing the searches in Google[2] for mountaintop removal over the last ten years. The graph doesn’t give absolute numbers, but you’ll get my point in the next few graphs. You can see from the graph that interest in mountaintop coal mining peaked around 2010.

 

Goolging of mountaintop removal since 2005

Now take a look at the graph below. It shows the googling of mountaintop removal compared to the googling of fracking. The blue line is the one representing mountaintop removal and the red one is the fracking one. If you think about it, fracking has been in the headlines a lot more than MTR mining. Maybe this can be explained by more compelling and appealing documentaries about fracking. Perhaps the press covers the extractive practice more because more communities are affected by hydraulic fracturing than that of mountaintop removal.

 

Googling of mountaintop removal and fracking since 2005

OK, here’s the kicker. Below is a graph of the googling done on mountaintop removal, fracking, and Taylor Swift, the very popular singer. The line representing her Google searches is the dashed yellow one.

 

Googling of mountaintop removal, fracking, and Taylor Swift since 2005

Wow. The searches on fracking barely resister compared to the ones on Swift, and unless I knew that mountaintop removal was graphed, I would not know it was there.

            I don’t mean to take away from Taylor Swift and her popularity. She brings a great deal of joy to millions. I would like to see peace for the Middle East, and perhaps the press coverage of the region will help bring that about. The same can be said about fracking, that the press coverage and interest in the subject will help us to stop or severely restrict this dangerous extractive practice. But why such miniscule press coverage of the mines that are devastating our Appalachia? Why?

And here's a picture of Taylor Swift, just for good measure. photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images 

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[1] This search in the Times and other searches were performed using Proquest.

[2] These graphs were generated in Google Trends https://www.google.com/trends/

Mountaintop Removal Linked to Health Hazards Again

It’s been pretty well established that mountaintop removal is bad for the health of the folks who live around the mines. Mountaintop mining kicks up a lot of dust, and many of the ailments that afflict those who live close to the mines is directly related to inhaling coal dust or silica associated with the mines.

            Well, it turns out that recent research indicates that the ultrafine dust from the mines can make people sick, too. This is dust so small that you cannot see it. It is so small that it can pass through the incredibly small holes in the cell walls of living tissue. Once the dust enters the cell through the cell wall, inflammation occurs, and inflammation can lead to a number of ailments.

            Lab research backs this up. In one case, rats exposed to dust composed of titanium oxide, the white pigment in paint, suffered no ill effect. If the titanium oxide dust was very, very small, the rats died.

This mine can make you very sick.

If these particles are so small they can pass through the pores of cells, they are too small to be stopped by dust masks or other prophylactic devices. On the other hand, getting rid of these ultrafine dust particles in Appalachia is pretty simple. End mountaintop removal.

Appalachian Lives Matter

It is probably obvious that I care deeply about the things I write about in this blog. I love the mountains and the people of Appalachia where I grew up, the wonderful creatures that we share this world with, and the environment in general.

            Although these things are important to me, as I sit and write about them at my computer, these topics can become a little abstract for me. I’ll blog about the mines in Appalachia, but I’m thousands of miles away from them. I don’t wake up with coal dust on my windowsill, and I don’t see the yellow sulfur stains that the mining brings to streams and rivers.

            From the fieldwork that I’ve done, testing the water quality at the estuarial waters of the San Diego River, I’ve actually seen the salinity of the water increase over the last decade, evidence of rising seas and a warming world. Despite the concrete evidence, the numbers rising over time and the graphs inching upwards, I don’t perceive the world as being warmer than I remember it ten or fifteen years ago. I just don’t. Global warming remains a terrible abstraction for me.

That abstractness about the environment changed today. A Facebook friend sent the above video along to me. It’s a portion of a new film called Dear President Obama Americans Against Fracking in One Voice. The man who is talking about his work in fracking, his mishap, and his subsequent cancer diagnosis is Sal Bombardiere. I went to high school with Sal. He was a friend of mine. It is heartbreaking to see a man, any man, so sick and so broken. But I know this man. I remember Sal as a fun guy, a jokester. Somebody you certainly wanted as your friend.

            Although I’ve written critically about hydraulic fracturing (here) and (here), I have not read great deal on the topic; so I have been trying to keep an open mind. I’ve talked to folks in the industry, and they have been quite convincing when they have explained the safety of the extraction process.

            That has changed today. I don’t know how anyone can watch Sal in this video and dismiss the concerns of those worried about fracking operations close to or in their communities.

            Where I was suspicious, I am now angry. Chris Hedges, the journalist, author, and activist, in his recent book with cartoonist Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction Days of Revolt, has called Appalachia an economic sacrifice zone. Along with the economy, Hedges can add the sacrifice of human lives. Maybe it’s time for people to start saying and repeating another simple phrase: Appalachian lives matter.

ESA Protection Proposed For Two Appalachian Crayfish Threatened By Mountaintop Removal

Two crayfish that have died out throughout much of their range in Appalachia may have some hope. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to protect the two species under the Endangered Species Act.

            More than half of their habitats of the Big Sandy crayfish and the Guyandotte River crayfish have become too polluted, mostly from mountaintop removal coal mining, for these creatures to live in. The proposed protection by the Fish and Wildlife Service is in response to a petition and a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity.

Big Sandy crayfish photo: Guenter Schuster

Though the evidence that mountaintop removal causes ecological damage has been mounting, and the health hazards to people because of mountaintop mining have become more evident, this is the first news that I’ve run across that any legislators or government agency is doing anything to mitigate the harm that this mining practice inflicts on the people or land of Appalachia.

            You can read more about the proposed listing in the press release from the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Winners and Losers in Appalachia

It looks like somebody at least is doing his job when it comes to the toxic spill in North Carolina. The United States Attorney’s Office in Raleigh, North Carolina issued grand jury subpoenas to Duke Energy, the company that owns and ran the retired power plant that spilled between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River, and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

            The subpoenas are asking for emails, memos, and reports related to the spill that occurred nearly two weeks ago. The subpoenas also want information on the state of North Carolina’s oversight of Duke Energy’s 30 other coal ash dumps.

            It turns out that environmental groups had tried to force Duke to clear out leaky coal ash dumps, suing the energy company under terms of the Clean Water Act. In every case, the state of North Carolina blocked the lawsuits. Do you think that the subpoenas have anything to do with this?

            One of the most graphic and sickening pieces of journalism on mountaintop removal is published today over at businessinsider.com. Rightly, they identify this destruction as a product of addiction, our addiction to cheap coal. WARNING: these are graphic and disturbing images. You might think twice before clicking.

            The same website also examines the paradox that is mountaintop removal. Even while billions of tons of coal are being dug out of the mountains of Appalachia, coal jobs have sharply declined in the last couple of years. The article cites the booming of gas production, which is true in this case, as well as environmental regulation, which is false in this regard, as the causes of the downturn.  Quoted in the article is Luke Popovich, a spokesman for the National Mining Association. He says, “There's a gross inconsistency, in our view, of this administration's insistence that it wants to create high-wage jobs and more of them, and the reality that their policies are having on the employment marketplace.”

This is regulated, Mr. Popovich?

The canard of environmental regulation reducing coal jobs is risible. If you had the fortitude to click on the images of mountaintop mining, you can easily see that environmental regulation of this type of mining is nonexistent. As West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller recently told NPR, when it comes to coal and West Virginia, he says, “So the industries always win, the people always lose.”

Third Toxic Spill In Appalachia In a Month: Is It Time to Start Taking This Stuff Seriously?

What coal slurry looks like when it flows into a stream

Yet another coal-related spill in Appalachia. This time it’s coal slurry. More than 100,000 gallons of the black liquid poured into a stream in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Kanawha County is one of the counties that was also affected by the toxic spill of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol in the Elk River just over a month ago. The coal slurry came from a Patriot Coal processing facility.

            Like the Elk River spill, no one is quite certain how toxic coal slurry is. Despite there being thousands of impoundments of coal slurry, one of which in West Virginia is so large the earthen dam that impounds the sludge is as tall as the Eiffel Tower, there have never been sufficient tests as to its toxicity. The EPA says the toxins could originate from the coal, the coal matrix (the other rock and minerals dug up with coal in a mine), the chemicals used to “wash” the coal, such as kerosene and fuel oil, or chemicals like polyacrylamide that used to aide coagulation of the coal slurry.

If these were incidents of schools shootings, the press would be all over these stories. If they happened to be a dozen or so folks burning flags on two or three occasions, then talk radio and Fox News would blanket the airwaves with ceaseless blather on the subject. But these are toxic spills in Appalachia, an industrial sacrifice zone. No talking head on Fox News will mention this.

The Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment in southern West Virginia shown in relation to the Eiffel Tower

Do We Trust the Water? And Frank Words From Senator Jay Rockefeller

It seems that there is more confusion than anything else when it comes to the toxic spills in Appalachia. A month after the Freedom Industries spilled a large amount of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a chemical that is used to “clean” coal before shipping, into the Elk River in Charleston, West Virginia, poisoning the drinking water for 300,000 residents, the word from the Center For Disease Control was that the water is now safe to drink. Yet some schools are still closed. Two schools were closed Wednesday and Thursday due to the persistence of a licorice smell coming from the schools’ water supply. One student went to the hospital after complaining of burning eyes, and a teacher was taken to the hospital after the teacher fainted.

            It’s kind of the same story in North Carolina. An international group of water advocates testing the water of the Dan River, which received between 50,000 and 82,000 tons of coal ash residue from a retired Duke Energy power plant, said the river showed, “extremely high levels of arsenic, chromium, iron, lead and other toxic metals typically found in coal ash,” while Duke Energy claims that tests by the company and North Carolina officials indicated no adverse effect on the water supply from the river.

            I guest I know whom I would trust in this case.

            I don’t quite know what to think of this story from Politico about Jay Rockefeller, who served as West Virginia’s governor from 1977 through 1985 and has served as the Mountain State’s senator for the past 20 years (now retiring).

Frank words from Senator Rockefeller: Now that he's retiring, can he voice what he really thinks? photo AP

At a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s water subcommittee Rockefeller had some unexpectedly frank words concerning the spill in the Elk River and Appalachia in general. He lamented the characteristic fatalism that runs through the deepest parts of the Appalachian Mountains that perversely has people delighting in the hardships foisted on them by outside business interests. And he paired this fatalism with what he called an “Appalachian myth,” which is “the idea that somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them.”

            These words seem contradictory fatalism paired with a sense of blessedness, that the Good Lord somehow considered the folks of Appalachia special and His providence will work things out for these hardworking yet unlucky people. Having spent his entire adult life representing West Virginia, Rockefeller will tell you that these seemingly contradictory traits are two sides of the same twisted psychological coin that he rightly identifies with the remnants of the Scotch-Irish who had been the original white settlers throughout West Virginia.”

            Rockefeller again hits the nail on the head when he goes on to say that this mythology, that “somehow God has it in his plan to make sure that industry is going to make life safe for them,” is not true. He goes on to say:

Industry does everything they can and gets away with it almost all the time, whether it’s the coal industry, not the subject of this hearing, or water or whatever. They will cut corners, and they will get away with it. The world is as it is; we accept the world as it is. And the point is you don’t accept the world as it is, but as it should be, and you make it in that posture. I’m just—I’m here angry, upset, shocked, embarrassed that this would happen to 300,000 absolutely wonderful people, who, you know, work in coal mines and that stuff, but they’re depending on the fruit of the land, wherever it may be, for survival. They’re making it, but barely.

The fatalism of West Virginia, and indeed much of Appalachia, spread through the hillsides and hollers of that region long before Jay Rockefeller entered that state as a Vista volunteer in the 1960s. As senator, as governor, he has been powerless to change that. And yet, it is still disheartening to hear Rockefeller confess that his many years representing my home state have not been years of good stewardship and he was unable to ameliorate the lives of his constituents despite their fatalistic view of their world.

Appalachians Get Zero Hope or Change in the President's State of the Union Address

The number of times president Obama mentioned in his State of the Union Address the chemical spill in West Virginia’s Elk River that denied drinking water to 300,000 residents: 0

The number of times that the president talked about mountaintop removal: 0

I admit that this administration has an uphill battle against big business, King Coal, and the GOP. But if you’ve got a “pen and a telephone,” as the president says, maybe you could write up an executive order or two or make a phone call or two to help the folks in Appalachia.

The amount of hope and change promised to Appalachians by the president last night

GOP to 300,000 Thirsty West Virginians (and the Rest of Appalachia, too): Screw You!

As though things aren’t bad enough for West Virginia. At a time when the residents who live in the southern part of the Mountain State have been living through a massive coal mining related disaster, members of the House GOP quietly slipped into the $1-trillion budget appropriations bill a rider that would forbid the Army Corps of Engineers—the government agency that issues Clean Water Act 404 permits that allow for the dumping or dredging of material into streams and rivers—from redefining stream “fill material” so as to include the waste and overburden material that results from mountaintop removal mining.

            As part of a mountaintop mining operation, the top of the mountain that is removed to get at the coal is routinely dumped into adjacent valleys, burying mountain streams. It is estimated that over 2,400 miles of streams, the length of the Mississippi, have been buried or destroyed in Appalachia due to mountaintop removal.

Amount the GOP cares about West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia

The Obama administration has been trying to reintroduce stream protection provisions that were tossed out the window by the administration of George W. Bush. Now, even with the stream protection rules, valleys were filled in and streams destroyed. This rider will ensure that even the minimal protections afforded rivers and streams will not be reintroduced. Think of it. The type of lawlessness and lack of regulation that poisoned drinking water for 300,000 people will continue for mining in Appalachia. For this disaster there are no lessons learned, no urging to ameliorate a bad situation, and zero concern for the health and lives of those who live in Appalachia. 

From Appalachian Voices: The Fifth of the Five Worst Political Lies Used to Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

Thom actually posted this a while back. Sorry it took me so long to putting it up here. This is the fifth lie used to support the mountaintop mining industry, that we need to blow up our Appalachian mountains for what is called “energy security.”

            Thom Kay, Legislative Analyst for Appalachian Voices, explains how mountaintop removal provides such a small amount of the fossil fuel used for electricity production and how hollow this argument is. One thing that Thom could have mentioned is that ever since the original OPEC oil embargo the phrase “energy security” has been used by the fossil fuel industry as a rhetorical device anytime that the industry wants to loosen regulations on drilling and mining or when they are trying to pave the way for an additional pipeline.

            Once you couch your argument for more drilling or mining in terms of “security” you’re no longer talking about profits for your company or dividends for your investors, your talking about winning the war, Old Glory, mom, and apple pie. Industry knows how useful this rhetorical device is. Use it and those who oppose your efforts to loosen fracking restrictions, eliminate CO2 regulations, or get in the way of your mountaintop mine wind up looking like unpatriotic tree huggers.

            A brief Proquest search on “energy security” in the New York Times shows the term taking off in 1979, in the wake of the energy crisis, then gaining some currency during the eighties. It began to die off in the nineties but experienced a resurgence after 2000, perhaps due to the rise of more neocon rhetoric floating around during the second Bush administration.

From Appalachian Voices: The Fourth of the Five Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The above link takes you to the fourth of Thom Kay’s Five Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal. In this post he reveals the mendacity of the claims of reclamation, that the mined lands can be restored to their former ecological intactness or that the mines can give Appalachia needed flatlands. As Thom says:

One reason that claiming more flat land will lead to economic development is such an egregious lie is that the vast majority of this reclaimed land sees no economic development whatsoever. In 2010, Appalachian Voices worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council on a survey of reclaimed mine sites and discovered that, of the 410 mine surveyed, 366 (89.3%) had no form of verifiable post-mining development, excluding forestry and pasture.

Calculating the Enormous Environmental Costs of Mountaintop Removal

Over the last half dozen years or so research has been revealing what the folks of Appalachia have known for decades, that mountaintop removal is a bad thing. While previous scientific studies of MTR have concentrated on specific environmental impairments to streams or nearby ecosystems, a group of scientists have now calculated the total environmental costs of mountaintop removal, and it’s as ugly as any valley fill.

            Using satellite images and county-by-county records of coal production, the scientists examined mountaintop mining from 1985 to 2005. Appalachian coal produced during that 20-year period totaled 1.93 billion tons. That equals about two years’ worth of current domestic coal demand. To mine that coal about 770 square miles were converted from mountains and forest to mountaintop mine sites like the one pictured below.

 

Just one of the more than 500 mountaintop removal mines in Appalachia

770 square miles is the about the same area as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. From the paper’s abstract:

To meet current US coal demands, an area the size of Washington DC would need to be mined every 81 days. A one-year supply of coal would result in ~2,300 km of stream impairment and a loss of ecosystem carbon sequestration capacity comparable to the global warming potential of >33,000 US homes. For the first time, the environmental impacts of surface coal mining can be directly scaled with coal production rates.

OK, if the enormity of that doesn’t’ knock you out of your boots, the scientists have some other numbers. One of the scientists who worked on this study, Emily S. Bernhardt, says the carbon sequestration lost when forests are wiped out to make way for mountaintop mines is extremely long-term. The associate professor of biogeochemistry at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment said:

“Based on the average carbon sequestration potential of formerly forested mine sites that have been reclaimed into predominantly grassland ecosystems, we calculate it would take around 5,000 years for any given hectare of reclaimed mine land to capture the same amount of carbon that is released when the coal extracted from it is burned for energy.”

Brian D. Lutz, who is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at Kent State University and who began the analysis for this study while he was a postdoctoral research associate at Duke last year, adds that “Even on those rare former surface mines where forest regrowth is achieved, it would still take about 2,150 years for the carbon sequestration deficit to be erased.”

            The scientists found that great areas of the Appalachians were destroyed for sometimes paltry amounts of coal. Their data suggests that some mines were instigated to dig up coal seams that were only about one meter in thickness. Including the valley fills and other adjacent disturbance to the land, they calculated that the area disturbed by a mountaintop removal mine exceeds by 50 percent the spatial extent of the underlying coal.

            Working with Lutz and Bernhardt was William H. Schlesinger. He is a biochemist and President of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies an independent not-for-profit environmental research organization in Millbrook, New York. The study was published today in the online peer reviewed journal PLOS ONE.  No external funding financed the study.

From Appalachian Voices: The First of the Five Great Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The above link is from Thom Kay of Appalachian Voices. He discusses some of the distorted rhetoric of the coal industry and the politicians who support mountaintop mining. Today’s word is “balance.”

This Week a Mixed Bag of Court Rulings For Mountaintop Removal

UPDATE BELOW

As far as the court rulings go, it’s a mixed bag for the mountains and the people of Appalachia this week. Some good news, some not so good news.

            First the bad news. In Kentucky a judge ruled against the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations who had brought suit to block a permit for a valley fill that the Army Corps of Engineers had granted for a mountaintop removal coal mining operation in the eastern part of the state.

            When folks challenge the legality of these permits, they usually concentrate on the environmental harm that the mountaintop mining operation will bring to the hills, valleys, and streams of Appalachia, but in this case, the first to do so, the environmental groups said that the Corps had not considered the negative health effects that the valley fill would have on local residents.

            The judge, Thomas B. Russell, ruled in favor of the coal company, Leeco Coal, finding that the Corps did “not act unreasonably” and “adequately analyzed the issues” in issuing the permit. I’m uncertain if judge Russell considered the growing evidence that living around mountaintop strip mining is hazardous to your health. Had he done so, he probably would have ruled otherwise.

            In another courtroom, this one in West Virginia, a judge ruled that a coal industry friendly law that was recently passed by the coal industry friendly legislature of West Virginia did not protect coal companies from lawsuits brought against the mining companies because of the pollution from their mines.

Coal River Mountain Watch had brought suit against Alpha Natural Resources, saying that discharges from the coal company’s Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment bring about excessive selenium levels downstream, in violation of environmental regulation.

 

The Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment. So big it would dwarf the Eiffel Tower

Last year’s legislation allows coal companies to declare that they are in compliance with West Virginia water pollution standards if they meet certain discharge limits for chemicals specified in their permits. The water pollution permit for Brushy Fork does not specifically limit selenium discharges, despite West Virginia’s separate water quality standard.

            Judge Robert C. Chambers, in his 36-page ruling, said that this shielding law does not provide Alpha Natural Resources protection from enforcement from existing state and federal laws that allow citizens to bring suit against polluting companies.

           There you have it. One victory, one defeat for the mountains and people of Appalachia.

UPDATE: 9/4/13 There is some hope in the Leeco case in Kentucky. On appeal of its case to a higher court, a District Court issued an order  for Leeco to cease its operation of a mountaintop coal mine while the plaintiffs, Kentuckians For the Commonwealth, the Sierra Club, and Earthjustice, appeal their case to the Sixth Circuit Court.

New Video From the Smithsonian Displays the Enormity of Mountaintop Removal

This I’ve seen the documentaries On Coal River and The Last Mountain, which give you a very good idea of the costs to people’s lives because of mountaintop coal mining, but this new video from the Smithsonian Institution is perhaps one of the best primers on mountaintop removal that reveals the enormity of this holocaust that has ripped up Appalachia.

No More Excuses: Let the Children of Appalachia School You About Mountaintop Removal

This is from Appalachian Voices, an organization that works to protect the people and lands of Appalachia. Needless to say, they oppose mountaintop removal. Go ahead watch the video.

I’d like to see this go viral and get more hits than Gangnam Style. All the figures and statistics that that the children tell us, all in less than two minutes, are accurate. They are also frightening. No child should live with these threats to life and health.

I Stand With United For Coal: I Just Think the Blame Lies Elsewhere

This Saturday—if all goes according to plan, and so far it looks like things will go according to plan—residents of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio will gather along highways in a “United for Coal” demonstration. Sometimes called a “prayer line” and obliquely compared to the “Hands Across America” of 25 years ago, the demonstration is intended to call attention to the plight of miners, their families, and their communities, as more miners are laid off with little hope of ever getting their jobs back.

            The plight of these folks is real. Mines have been shuttered throughout the region. Just last month Alpha Natural Resources shut down eight mines in Appalachia, laying off 800 workers.

The organizers of this event say that the blame for their situation sits squarely with the Federal government and its environmental regulations. The United for Coal website says:

Our government has decided to commit "Regional Genocide" against our people. They have summarily executed the entire coal industry thru overreaching environmental regulation. This was done with no consideration of the human cost whatsoever. No replacement industry was offered, no migration path was planned. An entire society stamped out by rule of law with nary a thought about its citizens. Our "American Dream" has become a nightmare, and we are but the first domino to fall in an economic chain of events that will end the dreams of us all. Who can we turn to? Who will save us??

Now, inflammatory rhetoric aside, this narrative, that environmental rules are forcing the closure of power plants, which thus reduces the demand for the coal that is mined in the hills of Appalachia, is being reinforced by the press. That line of thought is conveyed in the headline of this Chicago Tribune story, published yesterday, “More US coal plants to retire due to green rules: study.”

            The newspaper story is based on a study by the international economic consulting firm The Brattle Group. But if you take a look at the study itself, the authors say that the retirement of the coal-fired power plants is due to lower prices for natural gas. The reduction of capacity is foreseen as being about 59,000 megawatts, going as high as 77,000 megawatts of capacity if strict environmental regulation is implemented. As The Brattle Group points out, however, the environmental regulations and deadlines for the coal plants are less restrictive than they had previously estimated. In the body of the Tribune story other factors affecting the closure of the power plants are mentionerd, including warmer than average weather. The headline is nonetheless misleading.

            Historically, the regulation for mining itself has been lax to nonexistent. In her groundbreaking expose of mountaintop removal mining for US New and World Report Penny Loeb said that the regulations of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the department in charge of permitting mountaintop mining, “are outdated, its enforcement muscle is puny, and it is constantly reacting to problems rather than heading them off.”[i] Most fines are low, even for serious violations. The average fine is about $800 per incident. The maximum fine can be $5,000, but after protests by mine owners DEP assessment officers reduced nearly 80 percent of fines recommended by inspectors.[ii] And as illustrated by the disaster at the Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010, mine owners continue to disregard regulations, with little action by Washington even in the wake of a large and headline grabbing disaster such as Upper Big Branch.

            Now, things are bad for the folks of Appalachia. You can read books about the Battle of Blair Mountain or watch the movie Matewan and get a glimpse of the hardscrabble life of the Appalachian miners and others as they fought for unionization in the early twentieth century. Fifty years ago, as he campaigned through Appalachia, John Kennedy was moved as he witnessed the poverty of the region, leading him to form the Appalachian Regional Commission, intended to raise the living standards of Appalachians. Lyndon Johnson followed through with this effort by signing the bipartisan Appalachian Regional Development Act.

            But any ameliorative efforts by the Johnson and Kennedy administrations have been erased by 30 years of mountaintop removal, which requires only a fraction of the miners employed by more traditional mining techniques, and the union busting by the coal companies, particularly Massey Energy. The folks at United For Coal are correct. They need help. That help will not come from the coal companies. They are showing no solidarity with the miners and their families with United for Coal. Washington needs to do something. Just as the auto industry bailouts kept people working in Ohio and Michigan, investments in infrastructure or green projects could keep paychecks coming into Appalachian’s wallets.

            I support the people who will stand along the highways of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. In spirit I am United for Coal. I believe, however, that the dire condition of the miners and their communities lies with forces beyond their control: a warm winter that drove down the demand for all fuel, as well as natural gas whose price has plummeted. They are also at the mercy of an industry that has been indifferent if not hostile to their needs, mountaintop removal that destroys the land and ruins communities, and state governments that are often more beholden to the coal companies than their own citizens.

            United for Coal is correct that the Federal Government is to blame for their plight as well. But it is more the fault of a short sighted and gridlocked political system than are the environmental requirements for cleaner air and water.

           

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[i] Loeb, Penny, “Shear Madness,” US News and World Report (August 3 1997)

[ii] ibid