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.

Scientists Discover That Mountaintop Removal Is Bad For Fish

One of the best things you can do in West Virginia is fish. I did some as a little boy, catching mostly bluegill in a lake not far from our home in Anmoore, West Virginia, and my uncle went often up to Elkins for some great fishing up around that area. Mountaintop removal, however, could be removing those fish from the rivers and streams of Appalachia.

            A new study[i] from the peer-reviewed journal Ecology of Freshwater Fish finds that mountaintop removal threatens the fish in the stream of Appalachia. Robert L. Hopkins, assistant professor of biology at the University of Rio Grande, and Jordan C. Roush of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, studied the effects that mountaintop mining had on six different fish species that live in different stream ecologies in eastern Kentucky. Unsurprisingly, the scientists found that populations of four of the species were negatively affected by the existence of mountaintop removal in their streams’ watershed. Perhaps surprisingly, the study found that the effect of mountaintop removal was less dependent on the overall acreage of land destroyed by mountaintop mining in a watershed and was affected more by how large the individual mining operations were.

            Effects of Mountaintop Mining on Fish Distributions in Central Appalachia has just been published, so I only have access to the abstract. I don’t even know what kinds of fish or which watersheds were included were in the study. I will update this post as I learn more.

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[i] Hopkins, Robert L., and Jordan C. Roush. "Effects Of Mountaintop Mining On Fish Distributions In Central Appalachia." Ecology Of Freshwater Fish 22.4 (2013): 578-586. Environment Complete. Web. 27 Sept. 2013.

From Appalachian Voices: The Third 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 gives the third lie about mountaintop removal. The common wisdom around Appalachia say that no politician opposed to mountaintop mining can get elected in Kentucky or West Virginia.

            Well, a Catholic could never be elected president, the same was said a of black candidate. Common wisdom, as Thom Kay, Legislative Associate for Appalachian Voices, points out here is often wrong. Besides, folks in West Virginia and Kentucky don’t like mountaintop removal. It messes up the states they call home.

From Thom Kay's blog, a 2011 poll on mountaintop removal

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.

No Heavy Metals For Kentucky's Public Drinking Water

This is from the Kentucky Division of Water. A study that looked at 12 years of data of Kentucky’s drinking water found that the drinking water was safe from heavy metal pollutants, even in the counties where there is a lot of coal mining.

            Using data from the National Cancer Institute, the study compared counties where coal production has been high with counties where coal production has been low and found no significant difference in cancer rates, although the study did find that cancer rates were higher in the eastern Appalachian mountains of the state.

            Other recent scientific studies have found high rates of cancer, birth defects, and other ailments afflicting those who live among mountaintop removal mines. These studies were peer reviewed. The study from the Kentucky Division of Water has yet to receive peer review. Also, the study only considered public drinking water and not well water. It is water drawn from wells that is usually fouled by mountaintop mining. And, as well, cancer rates were compared between counties of high and low coal production. Including counties where there is no coal production, a control group, was not included.

            Even still, I’d be interested to know more about some of this research and what might be concluded after this study receives peer review.

Judas Priest, heavy metal you might want photo: last.fm 

A coal ash spill, heavy metals you probably don't want photo: celcias.com

Rand Paul: Mountaintop Removal Is Just "Missing a Hill Or Two Here and There"

Hot off his revival of the Senate tradition of filibustering for hours and hours over the administration’s foreign, and possibly domestic, drone strike policy, Rand Paul took the number one slot as their presidential choice in 2016 at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in DC last week.

When he speaks about mountaintop removal, Paul couches his approval of the mining practice in terms of property rights, which are, along with their ideas of “small government” and their views of the U.S. Constitution, one of the sacrosanct components for the libertarians' utopia. For Paul, if a coal company owns land, they can mine it any which way they want to. Of the destruction of Kentucky’s landscape caused by mountaintop removal, he goes on to say, “I don’t’ think that anyone is going to be missing a hill or two here and there.” And that’s pretty much it, when it comes to Rand Paul’s take on mountaintop removal.

            It makes my head spin that anybody who talks like this could be seriously considered for any public office, let alone the presidency of the United States. Is it that Paul has been so blinded by the vacuously constructed Ayn Rand view of the world that he simply believes that one of the most destructive mining practices the world knows is allowed because a coal company owns a plot of land? Or is Paul simply using the rhetoric of one of the extreme ends of the GOP to give cover to the mountaintop removal mining companies?

            A lot of folks at CPAC want him to be the next president. How crazy is that?

Just "missing a hill or two here and there." The mining operation close to Whitesburg, Kentucky, the state that Rand Paul represents in the Senate. photo from mountainroadshow.com