Fasting and Frustrations In the Mountains of West Virginia

There’s been a lot going on in the hills of Appalachia in the last week or so. Unfortunately for me, I’ve been busy with other work and writing. So here is a brief rundown of what’s been happening in the mountains.

For the last two weeks, actually a bit longer, 16 days total now, Roland Micklem, a retired science teacher who is now 85 years old, has been conducting a fast at the West Virginia state capitol building to inspire awareness of climate change, which includes mountaintop removal mining. He has fought for the mountains and the people of Appalachia for some time. In 2009 he organized a walk of senior citizens in West Virginia to protest mountaintop mining. He says his environmental awareness goes back to the 1950s, when he noticed that some of his favorite birds and animals were disappearing from his native Virginia.

Micklem has been joined by two other activists, Vincent Eirene and Mike Roselle. Here is a short video of Micklem from a couple days ago as he explains his motivations:

You can keep up with Micklem’s efforts through a Facebook page that follows the fast.

And I thought this was very interesting. Over at Coal Tattoo, the excellent blog about all things coal, Ken Ward points out the blatant subservience Senator Joe Manchin has to all things coal, as he held a stakeholder meeting to discuss the EPA’s new rule on emissions from existing power plants and to “find a balance between economic and environmental concerns.” As Ward point out this “balance” is a sort of Fox News type of balance that only included the interests of the fossil fuel companies. No one from any environmental organization or agency was invited to this stakeholder meeting.

            For blog posts, I only rarely read any of the comments, but please read the comment from Bo Webb on this post. Webb is of course the man who, in hopes of finding a simple rural life, returned to West Virginia only to find his homeland ravaged and his neighbors sickened by mountaintop mining. The story of his growing awareness and activism makes up part of the documentary On Coal River. In his comment Webb recounts his absurd meeting with Manchin as an environmental stakeholder in the state of West Virginia. I don't believe that Manchin could have sent a clearer message to Webb that the Senator did not care one fig about Webb, his community, or his mountains.

            

West Virginia Leaders in Washington Sing the Same Old Tune

West Virginia leaders sing the same old tune

It seems that in Washington things remain quite the same,

with the law makers from West Virginia continuing to toe the line for King
Coal. Once again, this is from Ken Ward, who knows way more about West Virginia
and coal than I ever could, and his Coal Tattoo blog.

West Virginia Water Bill in Final Sausage-Making Phase

Fat possums: Water bill coming down to the wire

Ken Ward’s Coal Tattoo blog on the ins and outs of the West

Virginia legislation crafted in response to January’s chemical spill in the Elk
River. Lots of last minute sausage making moves going on, and Ken sums things
up really well.

With a "Trickle" of Drinking Water, Questions Remain in Elk River Chemical Spill

OK, so the latest word is that, after four days, most of the residents in southern West Virginia are still without water due to the chemical spill in the Elk River. There is a “trickle” of water to some residents and business, but most folks are still high and very dry from this industrial disaster. In the meantime there are a few things that have been pointed out.

            Pointed out by the Huffington Post is the immense oversight made by the Sunday morning talking heads shows, the ones with George Stephanopoulos, David Gregory, and other well-dressed and well-spoken folks. Apparently, one of the greatest disasters to affect health and the environment since the BP oil spill received zero airtime during these political talk shows.

 

Amount David Gregory and George Stephanopoulos and the other talking heads  mentioned the chemical spill that deprived 300,000 West Virginians of their drinking water

More than 300,000 people without drinking water is a big story. And there are implications for the rest of the country. Are there other chemical storage places for chemicals that could potentially foul the water in other states? What responsibility doe the state have? What responsibilities are to be born by the federal government in such a matter? It seems that Cokie Roberts could have something to say about this.

            Maybe it’s just that this happened in West Virginia. Mountaintop removal has seriously altered much of the landscape and affected the lives of tens of thousands, yet the news coverage of this crisis has remained slim over the decades.

            Aljazeera reminds us that there is a long history of coal operations polluting the wells and streams of the Mountain State. Wilson Dizard, the author of “Coal mining’s long legacy of water pollution in West Virginia” in Aljazeera America, tells us that the coal industry has been fouling streams and wells for years and years. In his story Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition says that for years and years the coal companies have been pumping chemical-laden wastewater directly into the ground. Once there, it can spread to other parts of the water table and poison wells.  “All this waste is going underground for years, and then one day people start noticing their well water turning sometimes orange, sometimes black. The water stinks,” says Stockman. “For more than a century, the coal industry has had pretty much free rein to do whatever it wants.”

            And once again some of the best coverage of the incident and its ramifications has been done by Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette. As he points out in his Coal Tattoo blog, governor Ray Tomblin and the coal companies are trying to distance the coal industry from the incident by insisting that the spill is a “chemical company incident” and not a “coal company incident.”

            Ward also points out that the West Virginia took no steps to create a program that would have prevented chemical accidents like this spill, even after a team of federal experts urged the state to do so after an industrial explosion and fire killed two workers in Institute, West Virginia in 2008. And what is that stuff that poured into the river anyway? It seems that no one is certain.

W.Va. Gov. Tomblin Easing Up On Coal Rhetoric?

W.Va. Gov. Tomblin easing up on coal rhetoric?

A great deal of what this blog concentrates on is how we think of the environment and how institutions, business, and industry try to influence our thinking on the world we live in, you might say it looks at where the rhetoric meets the rhododendron.

            In the above link, Ken Ward, in his blog Coal Tattoo, noticed a slight change of tone in West Virginia governor Earl Tomblin’s State of the State address yesterday. Although still harping on the EPA’s “misguided policies on coal,” Tomblin goes on to say that, “we should remind ourselves a challenge doesn’t always lead to confrontation. Last summer I sat across the table from EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and shared our story. We have been hit hard. But with planning and perseverance I believe the obstacles can be overcome.”

            Wow. No mention of a “war on coal” or other such inflammatory rhetoric. Might it be that Tomblin is gently trying to let the folks of West Virginia know that the easy coal has already been mined? That he is hinting that there is less and less of a future for coal in the Mountain State? We shall see. It will be interesting to listen to what Senator Manchin has to say about coal and mining in the near future.

From Coal Tattoo: EPA Approves Industry-Backed Selenium Rule For Kentucky

EPA approves industry-backed selenium rule for Ky.

Another blog from Ken Ward and his Coal Tattoo. Apparently bowing to pressure from the coal industry, the EPA is allowing Kentucky to lower the standards of how selenium is measured in streams.

            Surface mining for coal, particularly mountaintop removal, raises the level of selenium in nearby streams, and this can harm ecosystems. West Virginia wants weaker standards. We'll see if the same thing happens there.

UPDATE 12/13/13: Today the Sierra Club, along with other community and environmental groups sued the EPA to keep these weaker standards in Kentucky from going forward. The text of the full complaint can be found here.

The Mountaintop Removal Word For the Day: Thwart

Thwart is the word for the day, when it comes to mountaintop removal.

According to this story from The Hill, the GOP in the House of Representatives is set to thwart efforts by the Interior Department to reset environmental standards that protect Appalachian streams from the harmful effects of mountaintop mining.

Under president George W. Bush, the Interior Department rewrote a section of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act to do away with the 100-foot buffer zone rule. That rule restricted mining companies from dumping mining waste and overburden to areas 100 feet or more from rivers and streams. The proposed legislation, H.R. 2824, would keep the present administration from reinstating that rule and returning the regulation to what it was before George W. Bush entered the White House. The Hill says that the bill, called “Preventing Government Waste and Protecting Coal Mining Jobs in America,” will likely pass the House Natural Resources Committee. If it becomes law, regulating the areas where mining companies can dump their waste would be given over to the individual states, with their tradition of more lax regulation and oversight giving way to the federal rule.

The second example of thwarting comes from my old college town of Huntington. According to Huntington’s Herald Dispatch newspaper, an Energy and Natural Resource Symposium, sponsored by the Huntington Regional Chamber of Commerce, is to be held at a conference center at Huntington’s Saint Mary’s Hospital. Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, president and CEO for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, an organization set up by the coal industry to promote coal and coal mining, is to give the keynote address.

            The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OHVEC), a nonprofit that has worked for decades to end or mitigate mountaintop removal, has planned a rally in opposition to the hospital hosting the event. The hospital is seeking an injunction to thwart the efforts of the environmental group. The hospital says that it seeks the injunction to prevent disruption to its normal functions. The environmental group says, however, that disrupting the hospital is not their goal, as reported in the Herald Dispatch:

Janet Keating, OHVEC's executive director, said the rally is based on the principle that it's inappropriate for a facility meant to heal to host an event promoting coal mining, which numerous medical studies have linked to health problems.

“There's been a lot of silence from our state leaders about these health studies and the impacts on communities around coal,” Keating said. “It's a mystery to me why a hospital would want to host this. Our whole thing is, ‘Let's not have it at a hospital, where you're supposed to be helping people.’”

She said the organization has a reputation for peaceful protests and those who join the rally will be asked to remain on the sidewalks outside the property, which is located near the corner of 5th Avenue and 29th Street.

“We had no intention to be on their property or at the hospital,” she said.

As Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette, who gets a big hat tip for leading me onto this story from Huntington, points out in his blog, Coal Tattoo, there is something a little funny about a hospital hosting a function for an industry whose mining practices have been shown in a larger and larger body of studies to contribute to the ill health of the residents who live among the mines.

UPDATE 11/12/13: The judge in this case, Paul T. Farrell has denied the restraining order sought by the hospital. I guess you can only thwart so much.

UPDATE 11/14/13: The House Natural Resources Committee approved H.R. 2824. 

West Virginia Democrats Hold Hands With King Coal and Go to Washington

The West Virginia Democrats go to Washington

As Ken Ward points out, it is a sad commentary on the politics of West Virginia when one political party, the GOP, repeats the mantra of “Obama’s war on coal,” while the Democrats, holding the hands of King Coal, go to Washington to give Gina McCarthy, the new EPA head, an earful about regulations on the coal industry and coal mining.

            In the meantime, neither party is speaking about the real reasons for coal’s decline in Appalachia: cheaper natural gas, competition from other coal producing areas, and the dwindling seams of cheap and easy coal in the Mountain State.

Hendryx leaving WVU, but research will continue

Hendryx leaving WVU, but research will continue

This just in from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo blog: Dr. Michael Hendryx is leaving West Virginia University for a new position at Indiana University. Hendryx is presently the Director of the West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and Founding Chair of the Department of Health Policy Management and Leadership in the School of Public Health at WVU. The move, he says, is prompted by his wife getting a great job offer.
          Although mountaintop removal had been a mining practice since at least the eighties, no scientific studies had been performed on its health effects until 2007, when Dr. Hendryx published a study on hospitalization patterns among residents of coal country. A health expert with dozens of other peer reviewed scientific papers published, Hendryx has gone on to produce a number of other studies on the health consequences of large-scale surface mining. The findings of his work are staggering and scary. One study of mountaintop removal published last year found that folks who live close to mountaintop removal mines have cancer rates that are twice that of their fellow Appalachians who do not live close to these mines.
          Hendryx says that his work will continue. Let us hope so.