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.

Hey, Kids, Can You Keep a Secret? Pennsylvania Fracking Settlement Includes Couple's Children

In reaching a monetary settlement with fossil fuel companies over damages cased by the companies’ fracking, a Pennsylvania couple has been placed under a gag order to not talk about the terms and conditions of the settlement. And their children have, too.

            Chris and Stephanie Hallowichs claimed that the fracking performed by Range Resources, Williams Gas/Laurel Mountain Midstream and MarkWest Energy adjacent to their 10-acre farm in western Pennsylvania contaminated their water supply and harmed the health of their entire family. They experienced burning eyes, sore throats, headaches, and earaches. They settled with the fossil fuel companies for an undisclosed amount.

            Gag orders in court settlements aren’t unusual. But this is the first time that children have been included in a gag order. As the article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette points out, legal viewpoints differ on whether children can be included in such a gag order. My suspicion is that the children were included to throw a wild card into the settlement. The lawyers for the gas companies know that adults have a hard time keeping their mouths shut, and it is almost impossible for children and teenagers to keep a secret. If one of the kids talks, it voids the settlement.

            It could be a win-win for the fracking companies.

Big Business Wants to Have their Cake and Eat It, Too, and They Want to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too, Too

One of the mantras of management that I heard throughout my years of working in manufacturing was the complaint of regulations. Whether they be for worker safety or environmental concerns management considers all law and regulations to be an impediment to their ability to do business. These news stories are therefore unsurprising. What is curious is the manner in which business is trying to play it both ways to get what they want.

In West Virginia, politicians from both parties rail against the federal government, particularly the restrictions that the EPA places on them to ensure that there is a modicum of clean water for the wildlife in the streams and for the people to drink.

            In this latest move, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act of 2013 (H.R. 2218). The bill, which was introduced by Republican and King Coal friendly West Virginia representative David B McKinley, would allow states to set their own standards for the management and disposal of coal ash, the waste product that is left over when coal is burned. Coal ash has a number of uses, such as the production of concrete. But much coal ash from coal-fired power plants is dumped into landfills. According to the EPA, an average coal-fired power plant, one producing 500 to 1,000 megawatts, would create a landfill of between 74 to 148 acres of coal ash refuse. The National Mall in Washington D.C. is about 148 acres, just to give you some perspective on the size of these landfills. The coal ash is also toxic, containing arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium. Theses large dumps of coal ash can therefore pollute runoff and groundwater.

            The dumping of coal ash is unregulated right now, but in the last few years the EPA has proposed rules that would govern the dumping of this industrial byproduct. The Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act would essentially negate any coal ash rules from the EPA, leaving it up to the states to set standards for its disposal. Essentially, if H.R. 2218 passes, it would maintain the status quo of unregulated coal ash disposal. State regulation is weak to nonexistent.

            OK, so we have industry wanting to keep federal regulation at bay and maintain state regulation of the byproducts of their business. But business can’t merely keep things going on a one-way street. According to the L.A. Times, lobbyists in Washington want the federal government to step in and keep states from enforcing laws that have higher standards than the federal standards. In the crosshairs of industry is California, which has some higher standards for consumer protection, workplace safety, and environmental protection than the rest of the country.

            States can set higher standards than federal regulations, but the fly in the ointment here is the federal ability to regulate interstate commerce. GOP member of Congress say that they want to curb the progressive regulation of California to protect the rights of states whose industries don’t want to be faced with complying with California’s standards or to be cut off from the Golden State’s market, the largest in the country.

            Targeted by industry lobbyists are California laws to restrict toxic chemicals, a law that mandates that chickens on industrial farms have enough room to spread their wings, a ban on cutting fins off sharks to make soup, and a state law protecting an endangered fish. This sort of maneuver takes one of the bedrocks of conservative thinking, that the states can serve as individual laboratories to test new ideas before they might be adopted by the greater Union, and defenestrates it down a legislative and philosophical window in the service of big business. Everybody knows we can't have California making laws that enable sharks to hold onto their fins. What if the good state of Vermont wants to make a whole bunch of shark fin soup?

            So there you have it. Big business likes the federal government when the states get in their way, and big business likes the states when the federal government threatens to be too strict. Are there any principles here? I didn't think so.

Fed Court Won't Rehear Spruce Mine Veto on Mountaintop Removal Permit Ruling

Fed court won't rehear Spruce Mine veto ruling  - News - The Charleston Gazette - West Virginia News and Sports -

Back in April the U.S. District Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA could withdraw a previously approved Clean Water Act permit for the Spruce Mine No.1., which would have been an enlargement of an already huge mountaintop removal coal mine and would have made it the largest such mine operation ever in the state of West Virginia.
            Today, the court refused to rehear the case, a setback for the mining operator, Arch Coal, and King Coal in general, but good news for just about everybody else concerned. There is no word, so far, from Arch Coal as to whether or not they will try to take the case to the Supreme Court. I shudder at the thought of this case going before a Roberts lead Court. Roberts worked as a lawyer for coal companies before he got his present gig. I think I know how he would want the Court to rule in this case.

West Virginia Fish Protected Under Endangered Species Act

West Virginia Fish Protected Under Endangered Species Act

This is great news for West Virginia, it’s people, mountains, and streams. The diamond darter, which was once found in the Ohio and several other river and streams in the East, has been declared as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
            Folks have thought of the diamond darter as extinct until it was found to be extant in the Elk River in West Virginia. Of course the mining companies petitioned to keep the fish from being listed, but now that the fish is protected, it may help protect its watershed, which makes a large swath across the state of West Virginia, from the most egregious mining practices.

The North Pole Has Melted. Again.

The North Pole Has Melted. Again. - Eric Levenson - The Atlantic Wire

This just in from the Atlantic. The ice and snow that stretched into the horizon when Mathew Henson and Robert Peary first reached the North Pole over a century ago is no longer—at least periodically. As the photos from The Atlantic show, the North Pole is now a lake. The ice and snow up there melts away from time to time now.

            The globe is warming a lot. Welcome to a very different world.

The lake at the North Pole. What should we call it? Lake Hubris? image North Pole Environmental Observatory 

As Though Things Aren't Bad Enough: GOP Budget Cuts For the EPA and More Destruction For Appalachia

As though we don’t have it bad enough already, the GOP in the House of Representatives wants to slash the budget for the EPA and turn Appalachia into even more of a wasteland.

            Under the House Interior and Environment spending bill to come before the House Appropriations subcommittee today, the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency would be slashed by 34 percent from its 2012 level. With this kind of budget slashing, it’s hard to imagine how the agency could adequately keep our air and water clean. The EPA budget for 2012 was $8,449,385,000, a dollar amount that is only three quarters of what it was 20 years ago had the budget kept up with inflation. The 34 percent cut would essentially half the agency’s budget from what it was a generation ago.

            As though the third-world regulation of mining practices in Appalachia aren’t lax enough, the bill has in its crosshairs language in the Clean Water Act that is related to the stream buffer rule and the definition of “fill material” that is allowed in our nation’s waterways. The buffer rule, which restricts the dumping of mining waste to at least 100 feet from streams, and regulation on fill material can be applied to mitigate, at least somewhat, the destruction of mountaintop removal coal mining. Seeing the extent of the destruction from mountaintop removal, I have a hard time seeing how it could be less regulated, but I guess the House GOP has the bigger and bigger mountaintop mines dancing in their heads.

The changes to the Clean Water Act would invalidate a recent victory for the EPA, in which the agency revoked a permit for an expansion of a mountaintop mine that would have destroyed miles of streams. The bill would also block the Interior Department from toughening up environmental regulations on the dumping of waste from mountaintop removal mining.

            There are a lot of other bad things in this bill. Arts funding is cut, and the sulfur content of gasoline would not be reduced, as per the EPA. As part of this package, even though we are not at war, the GOP plans to increase military spending.