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.

Environmentalists Sue Landowners Over Pollution From Closed Coal Mines

The damage to people, communities, and the environment have always long outlasted the life cycle of a surface mine. What I recall from growing up in West Virginia were dozens of scarred landscapes from mines that had been abandoned ten or even twenty years earlier. Waterways suffer long after a mine closes. As I wrote in a previous blog, as a schoolchild I remember passing over a very polluted Simpson Creek. The acid mine drainage that stained the rocks and sand in the creek a rusty orange and killed all the fish was from mines that had been closed years before.

            Now, in a move that is intended to address this mining legacy, three environmental groups are suing the Pocahontas Land Corporation and Hernshaw Partners LLC over alleged violations of the Clean Water Act in a U.S. District Court in Huntington, West Virginia. The environmental groups—The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and the Sierra Club— say in their lawsuit that pollution still flows from two former mines in Mingo County that are owned by the companies, even though the mines were “reclaimed.” The reclamation of these mines entailed cleaning them up and planting them with vegetation. The environmental groups say that state and federal regulators are not working to end the pollution, so the landowners should be held responsible. The lawsuit demands monitoring and sampling, a restoration program, and a judge to fine the defendants $37,500 per day for each violation.

            When they wrote the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in the late seventies, it was supposed to mitigate the damage to the environment that I grew up with. That never really happened. The enforcement of SMCRA in the past has been lax to nonexistent.[i] And the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has in the past been exceptionally negligent in fulfilling its protection of West Virginia and its people. In the late nineties investigative reporter Ken Ward uncovered that the department did not know the number of acres permitted for mountaintop removal. The DEP could not even provide to Ward the number of permits that it has granted for mountaintop mining.[ii] Given the even worse track record of the second Bush administration, I have no reason to hope that things have changed much in the last fifteen years.

            With the failure of the regulatory framework for surface coal mining, this move by environmental groups is an obvious and wise move. Whether it is the coal companies or the landowners, somebody should be responsible for what they are doing to Appalachia and Appalachians.

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

[ii] Ward, Ken “Flattened,” Charleston Gazette, 9 August 1998

Is It Time For West Virginia's DEP To Start Doing Its Job?

In a 13-page letter, a group of environmental organizations—the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club—has given the EPA 60 days’ notice demanding that the agency reject as inadequate a list of polluted streams that West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently submitted to the EPA or face a lawsuit. Something like this should have happened long ago. As far as West Virginia and mountaintop removal go, things have been out of whack for a long time.

The law that governs mountaintop removal, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), gives to the states the responsibility of issuing permits for mountaintop removal mining. In West Virginia, the DEP issues these permits. Way back in 1997, in the pages of US News and World Report, Penny Loeb first shined the national spotlight on Appalachian mountaintop removal. Even back then she said that the, “DEP's regulations are outdated, its enforcement muscle is puny, and it is constantly reacting to problems rather than heading them off.”

            Whenever the DEP has stepped in to “enforce” the law, most of the time the fines are very low, even for the most serious of violations. The average fine is about $800 per incident. Nearly 80 percent of the fines were reduced after mining companies protested their fines.

            Over 20 years ago, in an investigative report, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward found that the West Virginia DEP did not know the amount of land of the Mountain State the had been permitted for mountaintop removal. The DEP did not even track the number of permits that it granted for mountaintop removal. Ward also found that one third of the acres to be mined by MTR in West Virginia were designated to be reclaimed for “fish and wildlife habitat,” a use that is not allowed under SMCRA.

In this latest development, the West Virginia Legislature, in a bow to the coal companies, passed weaker water quality standards last year. Instead of following protocol and submitting the new standards to the EPA for consideration, the group’s letter says that the DEP “has defiantly taken the indefensible position that [the new standards are] not a revision.” In the Kafkaesque world of West Virginia and coal, West Virginia’s DEP is saying that a revision to the rules is not a revision to the rules, even when the rules change.

The environmental groups contend in their letter that the EPA has the duty to ensure that state agencies properly perform their functions and do not abuse their powers. The group also contends that for the EPA to allow West Virginia to operate as it has gives a clear message to regulators and coal companies that they can continue to disregard our nation’s laws “without consequence.” They urge the agency to intervene in the case of West Virginia or otherwise be subjected to their lawsuit.

I cheer the West Virginia Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and their latest efforts. It is high time that the rule of law apply to the state of West Virginia and its mining companies.

Patriot Coal Announces They Are Ending Mountaintop Removal

This news is a wonderful surprise. Patriot Coal announced today that they are ending their practice of mountaintop removal. The coal mining company said that its decision came as part of their agreement over a water pollution lawsuit with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the Sierra Club, and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

Patriot Coal is to be applauded. Credit is due as well to the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy and other organizations that have been working with legislators, state agencies, and the courts to ensure that the remaining mountains of Appalachia continue to stand; the waters of those mountains run clean and clear; and the residents of the eastern coalfields can live lives unharmed by the ailments associated with mountaintop removal.

            Mountaintop removal by Patriot Coal is not ending today. The company will be phasing out mountaintop mining production over the next three to four years. But all things considered, the news is still good.

Appalachians: Should They Be Treated Like Americans?

The Sierra Club, along with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, are suing to have the approvals for mountaintop removal mines in Kentucky and West Virginia reversed

            The groups contend that the Army Corps of Engineers did not consider the detrimental effects the mining would have on the health of the local residents. By law health concerns are part of the permitting process.

            There is growing evidence that there is nothing healthy about living near a mountaintop mine. Health investigations have found learning disabilities, kidney stones, tooth loss, diarrhea, rash, and some forms of cancer in individuals living close to Mountaintop mines.[i] Mountaintop removal has also been associated with birth defects of the circulatory, respiratory, central nervous musculoskeletal, gastrointestinal, and urogenital systems.[ii] And people who live around this destructive mining practice also experience extreme psychological stress.[iii]

            Considering that the people of Appalachia are our fellow Americans, how much of a stretch is it to think that they should be safeguarded by the same laws that keep the rest of us safe and healthy?

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[i] Holzman, David C. “Mountaintop Removal Mining.” Environmental Health Perspectives Vol. 119, Issue 11 November 1, 2011 electronic journal

[ii] Ahearn, Melissa M. et at. “The association between mountaintop mining and birth defects among live births in central Appalachia, 1996–2003.” Environmental Research Vol. 111 Issue 6. Aug 2011, p 838-846 electronic journal

[iii] Paige Cordial, Ruth Riding-Malon, and Hilary Lips. Ecopsychology. Vol.4, Issue 3, September 2012, 201-208. electronic journal