tagged w/ Coal Kills
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Thousands of people besieged a government office in a southern Chinese town Tuesday and blocked a highway to demand a halt to a planned coal-fired power plant because of concerns about pollution, protesters said.
Riot police used tear gas in an attempt to disperse the protesters at the highway in the town of Haimen in Guangdong province, and the demonstrators hurled rocks, water bottles and bricks in return, said one of the protesters, a 27-year-old man surnamed Chen.
It is the second major protest in two weeks in a corner of coastal southern China that has been seeing periodic unrest over the last few years, primarily over land disputes. In much of Guangdong province, conflicts have been intense because the area is among China’s most economically developed, pushing up land prices.
In Wukan, a village to the southwest of Haimen, protesters drove local authorities from the area nearly two weeks ago over a land dispute. Wukan protesters reached by phone Tuesday said plans for a large march on a nearby government office on Wednesday would go ahead.
In Haimen, some protesters clashed with police, leaving dozens hurt including women and police. Some in the crowd speculated that one man who was lying on the ground bleeding from his head had died, but that could not be confirmed, Chen said.
“We don’t have any weapons, only mineral water bottles and we threw them at the police but the police were using batons to beat people up,” Chen said in a phone interview. He estimated that around 20,000 people participated in the demonstration.
The protesters had first gathered in the morning at the office of the Haimen government and demanded a meeting with the township party secretary, Chen said.
A woman who answered the phone at the Haimen government office said the protesters had left and then hung up.
The protesters think that an existing coal-fired power plant has contributed to what they say is a spike in cancer cases and heavy pollution in the seas, a serious problem for a town where fishing is a source of livelihood.
“People are worried about the pollution that will be released by the (new) power plant,” said Wang Xiebo, a fisherman reached by phone.
Another protester, a man surnamed Yang, provided a similar account of the protest and subsequent clash.
“Two or three of us fainted on the ground when they fired tear gas at us,” Yang said. “The government offended us again and again by trying to build a power plant. This is going to affect our future generations. They still need to live,” Yang said.
Photos circulating on China’s popular Twitter-like microblog Weibo showed a crowd of protesters amassed at a large government building and then at a highway, as well as riot police with plastic shields and helmets lined up in tight rows. Some photos showed protesters and police injured and bleeding.
After three decades of laxly regulated industrialization, China is seeing a surge in protests over such environmental worries.
More at the linkThousands of people besieged a government office in a southern Chinese town Tuesday... more
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Officials say a new US-backed coal plant outside Johannesburg will be a boon to the community. Locals beg to differ.
—By Kate Sheppard
Earlier this week, I traveled to South Africa's Mpumalanga province, the center of the country's coal industry and the home of one of the newest coal-fired power plants, Kusile. Most Americans would probably be surprised to learn that their tax dollars have been used to underwrite Kusile, but they are. And when completed, the 4,800-megawatt plant will be among the largest in the world.
EMalahleni, the municipality in which Kusile is located, means "place of coal" in Zulu. South Africa consumes 93 percent of all the coal used in Africa, much of that here in Mpumalanga. While much of it is burned in the region's 11 power plants, 25 percent of it is exported to other countries. South Africa is the fifth-largest producer of coal in the world, and 80 percent of its mining takes place in this province.
A significant chunk of Kusile's upfront financing—$805 million—came from a direct loan from the Export-Import Bank of the United States to Eskom, South Africa's state-owned electric power utility. Construction on the plant began in 2007 and is expected to be completed in 2015. In April 2011, ExIm agreed to provide the loan to the plant to help ensure its construction. Kusile will be the 12th coal-fired power plant in this area, which lies to the east of Johannesburg.
The Kusile power plant
The region is also home to the Sasol plant in Secunda, which is both the largest coal-to-liquids plant and the largest point source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. The plant produces 160,000 barrels of fuel from coal every day, which is used to power buses, planes, and automobiles in the country.
The South Africa-based environmental group Groundwork reported that in a single four-month period last year, the country exceeded its ambient air pollution standards 570 times—mostly due to the emissions from plants in this region. The national air quality law, which was passed in 2004, is actually pretty good, says Groundwork director Bobby Peek, "but government doesn't have the capacity to enforce it." There are fines for violating the law, but in an area with numerous plants like Mpumalanga, it can often be hard to peg the violations to one particular plant.
Peek was my guide earlier this week for a trip to the region. The first plant we see is the Kendal power station, also owned by Eskom. Its six generators have made it the largest station in the country since it was completed in 1993, but Kusile will be even bigger.
More at the linkOfficials say a new US-backed coal plant outside Johannesburg will be a boon to the... more
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It's 4:29 PM. The blast will go off at any minute. Even though you grew up hearing the sound, it's still jarring. You have no choice but to breathe in the dust. When you turn on your tap, red water flows out. It smells like sulfur, so you don't drink it, but you shower in it and use it to wash your dishes and clothes.
You know it's affected your health. You have gastrointestinal problems, including a bad case of gastritis. Your neighbors are getting cancer and dying. You know this isn't right, but you're not supposed to speak out, question what's going on or do anything about it.
This is 21-year-old Junior Walk's reality. The people living in his West Virginia coal mining community are expected to go about their business, keep their heads down and stay silent. "The coal companies control everything you do," he says. "There's been a system of economic slavery in place in Appalachia for the past 150 years. The coal industry has had the people under its thumb for that long. It's so ingrained into the culture. Folks are afraid to stand up and make their voices heard and are afraid to be associated with anybody that does."
Walk was born and raised in the Southern part of West Virginia on the banks of the Coal River. In his community, you have three options: join the military, take a minimum-wage job in a fast food joint or work in a coal mine. If you're one of the lucky few who can afford to go to college, you'll most likely leave the area and never return.
Walk had no idea how to apply for college or scholarships, so following in his father's footsteps, he took a job with Massey Energy (now Alpha Natural Resources) after high school. He quit six months later. After a year of working at various minimum-wage jobs, he found work as a security guard at a mountaintop removal site. "I felt like the most miserable human being for being part of that."
He says he was the smallest cog in a machine that was destroying his home and killing his people. "The people at the bottom of that mountain were getting sick and dying. That's what really kicked me in the rear end," he says. "I couldn't sit on my hands anymore and let this go on."
Walker contacted his hero, the late environmental leader Judy Bonds, and began volunteering with Coal River Mountain Watch, a group that works to stop the destruction of communities and the environment by mountaintop removal mining, helps rebuild sustainable communities and anonymously wrote critical articles about the coal industry for their newsletter. His parents, whose income comes from Massey Energy, supported him as long as he stayed anonymous. As soon as he decided to put his name on his pieces and publicly speak out, they kicked him out of the house. "My father would've been fired," he says. "He wouldn't have been able to take care of my little sister and mother."
Since then, Walk has been on a mission to educate the public about the degradation caused by surface coal mining. He's now outreach coordinator for Coal River Mountain Watch. He attended the Keystone XL protests in Washington in August. In July, he was arrested for participating in a tree sit-in to stop blasting, and he's being sued by Massey Energy for trespassing. His court date is scheduled for November 14. He faces six months in jail.
Walk has spent the past year traveling around the country speaking at colleges and conferences and he just received the Brower Youth Award, which honors young people in North America for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of social and environmental justice advocacy. The Earth Island Institute established the Brower Youth Awards to honor founder and legendary activist David Brower.
"It's been an insane experience," he says. "I hardly ever got out of the holler before I started this work. I wouldn't talk to anybody. Look nobody in the eye. It got me so mad, I knew I could do anything."
Walk says the youth he meets across the country are more aware. They want information. They want to do something and "take a stand for a more progressive world." He believes that if the "mainstream media would step up and do its job, we'd have a revolution on our hands."
http://www.truth-out.org/young-activist-stands-industry-enslaves-his-community-appalachia/1319120788It's 4:29 PM. The blast will go off at any minute. Even though you grew up... more
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The federal government and the West Virginia Coal Association want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit aimed at protecting Logan County's Blair Mountain from surface mining and returning it to the National Register of Historic Places.
In new court filings in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the Department of the Interior, the National Park Service and the Keeper of the Register argue that environmental and preservation groups lack legal standing to sue over the 1,600-acre site of a 1921 armed uprising by coal miners.
The Southern West Virginia landmark, considered by many to be an important site in U.S. labor history, was briefly listed on the historic register, then removed when property owners objected.
The government contends the Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, West Virginia Labor History Association and other groups can't demonstrate any concrete harm from the delisting, don't own property on the mountain and lack legal permission to visit any of the privately-owned parcels.
"Their interest in the site is purely notional, and even if mining were to occur on Blair Mountain, the injury that they allege they would suffer is purely speculative,'' the motion for summary judgment argues.
In a friend-of-the-court filing, the Coal Association says the plaintiffs cannot claim they've been stripped of their right to enjoy the mountain because citing specific places they visit would be admitting they've trespassed.
Except for a road, everything in the proposed boundary area is privately owned, "with the majority being owned or leased by members of the WVCA who have strict no-trespassing policies,'' it argues.
"Simply stated,'' the association says, the plaintiffs "have no right to visit or enjoy the Blair Mountain nomination area.''
More at the linkThe federal government and the West Virginia Coal Association want a judge to dismiss... more
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The story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West Virginia, a time when King Coal reigned supreme, openly and without apology.
Mining companies owned workers' homes; they owned the schools, the air and water; they owned the police and even private armies. They owned miners' lives.
Which is why murder seemed permissible. When a notorious strikebreaker shot down labor hero Sheriff Sid Hatfield, who refused to be bought by the coal companies, more than 10,000 enraged miners and pro-union forces rose up in Mingo and Logan Counties and converged on Blair Mountain. A private army of management mercenaries shot guns and dropped leftover bombs from WWI—it was the nation's largest armed conflict since the Civil War and the largest labor confrontation ever.
Don't know about the Battle of Blair Mountain? There's a reason for that. West Virginia—a state still dominated by the coal industry and its political interests— has resisted highlighting the battle in history books and has denied commemoration attempts. When the federal National Register of Historic places chose the historic site for protection, the state—working with coal company lawyers—contested the decision. The site was de-listed last year, when West Virginia state officials submitted a "revised" list of 57 landowners supposedly objecting to the historic preservation decision. The list even included 2 dead people.
This Battle of Blair Mountain continues today. Coal companies stand literally to erase this history by obliterating the mountain.
Massey Energy and Arch Coal hold several permits in various stages to mine this land in the very worse form of strip mining on this planet: Mountaintop removal mining (MTR). One active mountaintop removal site is already blasting away the mountain and is moving within a few hundred yards of the historic battle site. Massey Energy, of course, is the company responsible for killing 29 of its workers last April in the Upper Big Branch mine explosion. Since then, it has come under extreme fire for its tens of thousands of violations of safety law and its corporate culture of profits before people. Not to mention, by Massey's own records, they've had 67,000 violations of just one of the environmental statute. It's influence among West Virginia politicians, of course, is far-reaching.
All across Appalachia today, mountaintop removal mining is destroying mountain communities by ripping apart its landscape, environment, health, heritage and economic prospects. Mining companies come in, break the law, reap profits, and leave a wasteland. In MTR regions in W. Va, companies are exploding dynamite the power of a Hiroshima-sized bomb—every single week. This form of mining isn't good for jobs either. Ripping up the mountain rather than carefully extracting coal is "efficient" -- i.e. it replaces people with machines to enhance company profits. As is noted in the wonderful documentary The Last Mountain, which is being released this week, while Appalachian coal company profits and production have skyrocketed in recent decades, at the same time some 40,000 mining jobs have been lost.
This is a new "Battle of Blair Mountain" taking place today --- and raising national awareness about this amazing story could help pressure an agency that hardly ever received much attention to reconsider its decision. This victory would be a huge symbolic win for the Appalachian communities, and for the organized labor movement around the country, which is again under siege today.
contThe story of the Battle of Blair Mountain starts in the southern coal camps of West... more
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The Advantages of Coal
* Coal is one of the most abundant sources of energy, more so than oil and natural gas
* Coal is inexpensive when compared to other fossil fuels (or alternative energy sources)
* Coal is versatile enough to be used for recreational activities such as BBQ’s or simply for home fires
* Burning coal can produce useful by-products that can be used for other industries or products
* Electricity produced from coal is reliable
* Coal can be safely stored and can be drawn upon to create energy in time of emergency
* Coal based power is not dependent on weather which cannot be said for alternative forms of renewable energy such as wind or solar power
* Transporting coal does not require the upkeep of high-pressure pipelines and there is no requirement for extra security when transporting coal
* Using coal reduces the dependence on using oil, which is often found in nations where there is unstable political regimes
Crude oil (called "petroleum") is easier to get out of the ground than coal, as it can flow along pipes. This also makes it cheaper to transport.
I ought to point out that some scientists are claiming that oil is not a 'fossil' fuel - that it is not the remains of prehistoric organisms after all. They claim it was made by some other, non-biological process. Currently this is not accepted by the majority of scientists, but you can find out more about the idea at space.com
Advantages of Fossil Fuels
Ah, the evil fossil fuels. Fossil fuels that were once exalted as the power source for the industrial revolution are now demonized because of global warming. There are, however, advantages to fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are those fuels which come from the remains of ancient plants and animals. They include oil (petroleum), natural gas (such as methane and propane) and coal. Much has been said about how horrible fossil fuels are because they tend to produce large amounts of pollution and contribute massive amounts of greenhouse gases to the global warming problem. They are also non-renewable, which means that once we have used all of the fossil fuels that are stored within the Earth, the proverbial tank will be empty. Indeed, one can argue that control of fossil fuels will become the basis of many wars between countries. All of this being said, there are still advantages to fossil fuels.
The first of the advantages of fossil fuels is the availability of them at this time. Petroleum, or crude oil, is rather easy to find – there are many stores and reservoirs of the black stuff hidden below the Earth's crust. The same goes for natural gas, as the pockets of gas can be found and harvested just below the surface of the Earth. Coal is even easier to find – it can be mined (sometimes strip mined) from within caves or in shafts dug into the ground. Fossil fuels are also easily transported from place to place, meaning that you don't need to use them right where they are found. This is not so with other types of energy sources such as geothermal and hydropower which are restricted to the area in question and the length to which power lines can be run. Most of the availability advantage of fossil fuels exists because we have already perfected the harvesting and transport of it.
Other advantages of fossil fuels include ease of use. Since fossil fuels have been used as a combustible energy source for centuries, most of the machinery and engines that we use in everyday life have been developed to burn fossil fuels. Developing machines that use alternative energy sources can be much more difficult as is adapting existing machinery to use different power sources. Fossil fuel run power plants are also much easier to build and use – you can erect one almost anywhere, as long as you can get the fossil fuel to the plant. It is much harder to find a suitable location for a power plant that runs off of alternative energy sources, such as hydro power or wind power.
The advantages to fossil fuels really boil down to a timing element. At the current time, we have plenty of them. At the moment, all of our machinery from cars to power plants is designed to use them. At the moment, we have developed methods to use these fuels extremely efficiently whereas something like solar power is only 15 percent efficient. These advantages of fossil fuels lead to a relatively cost effective power source for civilization itself. http://www.solarcompanies.com/advantages_of_fossil_fuelsThe Advantages of Coal
* Coal is one of the most abundant sources of energy,... more
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It was another tough year for the coal industry. In the last 25 months not one coal-fired power plant broke ground for construction in the United States. In 2010 alone a total of 38 proposed plants were erased from the drawing board, the most ever recorded in a single year. Utilities also announced 12,000 MW in coal plant retirements -- or enough power to bring electricity to a whopping 12 million American households. And even Massey Energy's infamous henchman Don Blankenship is set to retire, effective next month.
Indeed coal executives got what they deserved in their stockings this holiday season -- big lumps of black coal. "I predict historians will point at 2010 as the year that coal's influence peaked and began declining," says Bruce Nilles, deputy conservation director of the Sierra Club, whose organization released a year-end report on coal in the U.S.
Nilles is correct; the coal boom out west looks to be over, as companies like Arch and Peabody scramble to figure out what to do with their vast reserves while U.S. markets begin to dwindle. The EPA has also not been as friendly to this portion of the energy sector as in years past, placing most coal permits for mountaintop removal on hold and even recommending a veto of the proposed Spruce Mine in West Virginia, which would be the largest of its kind in the country.
With the help of Rainforest Action Network and other grassroots activists, financing for new mining projects from the likes of PNC and UBS will prove difficult from now on. In 2010 both banks joined the growing number of lending institutions that are turning their backs on mountaintop removal ventures. During the first half of this year renewable energy projects also accounted for 93 percent of all proposed projects.
Back in 2001 the outlook for the coal trade looked much different. At the time, a total of 150 plants were proposed in the U.S. It was to kick off the coal rush of the millennium. But citizen opposition mounted in the form of legal battles, public education efforts, demonstrations and well-executed divestment campaigns all over country. From the streets of Washington to the rural outback of South Dakota people became outraged. Concern for public health and the awareness of coal's contribution to climate change increased dramatically. The result has been exceptional: a total of 149 of those 150 plant proposals have been halted outright.
Who said environmentalism is dead? When it comes to coal anyway, the movement is alive and well with dozens of victories under its belt in the last two years alone.
Nonetheless, it's just the beginning. According to Dr. James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, ending emissions from coal is "is 80 percent of the solution to the global warming crisis." Hansen says this is because of three straightforward reasons: 1) according to most estimates coal is much more plentiful than oil and gas; 2) coal is far more carbon intensive than any other fossil fuel; and 3) coal use is concentrated in the United States in around 600 power plants (dozens of which are already slated for closure), whereas other fuels are spread among an array of sources.
Climate scientists estimate that greenhouse gas levels have already passed the dangerous benchmark of 350 parts per million. However, in order to curb this dire trend, and bring down this number dramatically, Hansen and others say we must eliminate coal use in the United States by 2030.
Is it doable? It certainly looks to be.
cont.It was another tough year for the coal industry. In the last 25 months not one... more
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The Labor Department took an unprecedented step against a Kentucky coal mine Wednesday, asking that a federal judge shut it down immediately to protect the lives of those who work there.
In filing for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court, the government cites persistently dangerous conditions in Massey Energy's Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County. The action — the toughest enforcement action available to federal regulators — would shut down the mine until safety hazards are addressed and Massey Energy demonstrates it can operate the mine safely.
The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times this year alone.
The move is viewed by mine safety experts as one response to the deadly explosion in April at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. Twenty-nine mine workers died in that tragedy, which has triggered civil and criminal investigations.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130596700The Labor Department took an unprecedented step against a Kentucky coal mine... more
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For decades, coal has been an economic lifeline for the Navajos, even as mining and power plant emissions dulled the blue skies and sullied the waters of their sprawling reservation.
But today there are stirrings of rebellion. Seeking to reverse years of environmental degradation and return to their traditional values, many Navajos are calling for a future built instead on solar farms, ecotourism and microbusinesses.
“At some point we have to wean ourselves,” Earl Tulley, a Navajo housing official, said of coal as he sat on the dirt floor of his family’s hogan, a traditional circular dwelling.
Mr. Tulley, who is running for vice president of the Navajo Nation in the Nov. 2 election, represents a growing movement among Navajos that embraces environmental healing and greater reliance on the sun and wind, abundant resources on a 17 million-acre reservation spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
“We need to look at the bigger picture of sustainable development,” said Mr. Tulley, the first environmentalist to run on a Navajo presidential ticket.
With nearly 300,000 members, the Navajo Nation is the country’s largest tribe, according to Census Bureau estimates, and it has the biggest reservation. Coal mines and coal-fired power plants on the reservation and on lands shared with the Hopi provide about 1,500 jobs and more than a third of the tribe’s annual operating budget, the largest source of revenue after government grants and taxes.
At the grass-roots level, the internal movement advocating a retreat from coal is both a reaction to the environmental damage and the health consequences of mining — water loss and contamination, smog and soot pollution — and a reconsideration of centuries-old tenets.
In Navajo culture, some spiritual guides say, digging up the earth to retrieve resources like coal and uranium (which the reservation also produced until health issues led to a ban in 2005) is tantamount to cutting skin and represents a betrayal of a duty to protect the land.
“As medicine people, we don’t extract resources,” said Anthony Lee Sr., president of the Diné Hataalii Association, a group of about 100 healers known as medicine men and women.
But the shift is also prompted by economic realities. Tribal leaders say the Navajo Nation’s income from coal has dwindled 15 percent to 20 percent in recent years as federal and state pollution regulations have imposed costly restrictions and lessened the demand for mining.
Two coal mines on the reservation have shut down in the last five years. One of them, the Black Mesa mine, ceased operations because the owners of the power plant it fed in Laughlin, Nev., chose to close the plant in 2005 rather than spend $1.2 billion on retrofitting it to meet pollution controls required by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Early this month, the E.P.A. signaled that it would require an Arizona utility to install $717 million in emission controls at another site on the reservation, the Four Corners Power Plant in New Mexico, describing it as the highest emitter of nitrous oxide of any power plant in the nation. It is also weighing costly new rules for the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona.
And states that rely on Navajo coal, like California, are increasingly imposing greenhouse gas emissions standards and requiring renewable energy purchases, banning or restricting the use of coal for electricity.
So even as they seek higher royalties and new markets for their vast coal reserves, tribal officials say they are working to draft the tribe’s first comprehensive energy policy and are gradually turning to casinos, renewable energy projects and other sources for income.
This year the tribal government approved a wind farm to be built west of Flagstaff, Ariz., to power up to 20,000 homes in the region. Last year, the tribal legislative council also created a Navajo Green Economy Commission to promote environmentally friendly jobs and businesses.
“We need to create our own businesses and control our destiny,” said Ben Shelly, the Navajo Nation vice president, who is now running for president against Lynda Lovejoy, a state senator in New Mexico and Mr. Tulley’s running mate.
That message is gaining traction among Navajos who have reaped few benefits from coal or who feel that their health has suffered because of it.
cont.For decades, coal has been an economic lifeline for the Navajos, even as mining and... more
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"A West Virginia man wins a small victory, but not the war, against a mining company in the Coal River Valley.
Few homeowners in Appalachia dare to stand up to coal companies. But Bo Webb did, and achieved the unthinkable: He forced a company to move blasting on a mountaintop-removal strip mining site away from his hollow."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mining-20101003,0,5891396.story
I admire this man. This is an inspiring story and am only hoping more and more people will join this fight!
Join the Organic Movement:
http://current.com/groups/organicgreen/"A West Virginia man wins a small victory, but not the war, against a mining... more
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A new report by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental group, finds that pollution from coal-fired power plants will result in the premature death of more than 13,000 people this year. The report, which is an update from similar studies conducted in 2000 and 2004, says that emissions from coal plants, like sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), “continue to take a significant toll on the health and longevity of millions of Americans,” even though many of the emissions have decreased in recent years. The figures are significantly down from the 2004 study, which predicted nearly 24,000 deaths per year from coal pollutants.
In calculating the specific human impact that coal has on the country’s population, the report will almost certainly be used by environmentalists to argue for stronger regulations on coal-fired power plants.
According to the report:
[F]ine particle pollution from existing coal plants is expected to cause nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010.Additional impacts include an estimated 9,700 hospitalizations and morethan 20,000 heart attacks per year. The total monetized value of theseadverse health impacts adds up to more than $100 billion per year. Thisburden is not distributed evenly across the population. Adverse impacts areespecially severe for the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease.In addition, the poor, minority groups, and people who live in areasdownwind of multiple power plants are likely to be disproportionatelyexposed to the health risks and costs of fine particle pollution.A new report by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental group, finds that... more
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A new study by a coalition of environmental groups has documented 39 cases where waste from coal-fired power plants has poisoned the groundwater and drinking water in 21 states.
The August 26 study—by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and Sierra Club—found that 39 coal combustion waste disposal sites in 21 states had contaminated water with toxic metals and other pollutants. An earlier study released in February had documented similar environmental harm at 31 coal combustion waste sites in 14 states.
“The contamination of water supplies, threats to people, and damage to the environment documented in this report illustrate very real and dangerous harms that are prohibited by federal law but are going on in a largely unchecked fashion at today’s coal ash dump sites,” said Jeff Stant, director of the Coal Combustion Waste Initiative at the Environmental Integrity Project.
“The need for more direct EPA involvement is clear; leaving enforcement to the same states that have refused to do their jobs for the last 40 years is simply not a responsible course of action,” Stant said.
Coal ash, the common name for coal combustion residuals, are the waste products left over after coal is burned to generate electricity. It can contain hazardous chemicals including arsenic, benzene, cadmium, mercury and selenium.
As the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and Sierra Club noted in their February report, coal-fired power plants generate nearly 140 million tons of fly ash, scrubber sludge, and other combustion waste every year. The toxic metals contained in the waste can cause cancer and neurological damage in people and poison fish.
A catastrophic 2008 coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take a closer look at how the waste is stored, and hire contractors to conduct site assessments.
The spill resulted in a “tremendous” fish kill as it flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River, which provide drinking water for the city of Chattanooga and hundreds of downstream communities in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky, The Chattanoogan reported. The 5.4 million cubic yards of spilled material—or more than a billion gallons—raised levels of lead and thallium above safe drinking levels in river water near the spill and resulted in elevated iron and manganese levels several miles downstream, according to The New York Times.
The EPA is holding a nationwide series of public hearings on the coal ash issue as the agency considers whether to seek tighter regulations of the waste.
The environmental groups charge that tighter rules are needed since state regulations have failed to protect the groundwater and drinking water surrounding coal ash dump sites.A new study by a coalition of environmental groups has documented 39 cases where waste... more
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Yesterday, the AP reported that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of the 29 men killed in last week’s explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia, is suing Massey Energy, the owner of the mine. Griffith filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Raleigh County Circuit Court, arguing that Massey’s handling of work conditions at the mine plus its history of safety violations amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence. Marlene and here husband were to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary weeks after the deadly blast on April 5.
Indeed, as the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has reported, the mine where William Griffith worked had been cited for over 3,000 safety violations. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who has mocked safety regulators as being “as silly as global warming,” had gummed up the safety regulations process by filing endless appeals instead of paying fines and fixing safety problems.
Responding to the lawsuit, Nathan Coffey, the Public Affairs Coordinator of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), took to Twitter yesterday to mock Marlene Griffith. Coffey posted a link to the AP story about Marlene Griffith, sarcastically commenting that “Everyone wants free money!” View a screen shot of the comment (above):Yesterday, the AP reported that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of... more
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What caused last week's Massey Energy coal tragedy, West Virginia's worst disaster since 1968? A possible explanation seems to be emerging:
Federal safety inspectors cited the Raleigh County operation thousands of times for dangerous law violations, including buildup of explosive methane and coal dust. But Massey avoided closure of the profitable mine by snarling the U.S. bureaucracy with endless legal appeals. Lifesaving enforcement apparently was obstructed.
As reporter Ken Ward Jr. outlined Monday, stiffer federal fines were mandated after West Virginia's Sago mine tragedy in 2006. But various coal firms used their high-priced corporate lawyers to dispute two-thirds of new fines. Massey exceeded the industry average by appealing three-fourths of them. Thus many safety actions were stalled.
In February 2008, former mine safety chief Richard Stickler complained that coal owners were clogging the appeals process. In June 2008, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., protested in a Senate hearing that energy firms had dramatically increased their appeal rate. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., provided more money "to help shorten the amount of time to litigate these fines."
In June 2009, David Akrush of Public Citizen warned the White House: "Every day that these safety violations go unresolved, the chance that this nation will see another tragic mining accident grows." It was a prediction worthy of Nostradamus.
In February of this year, new U.S. mine safety director Joe Main told a House Labor Committee hearing that skyrocketing company appeals still blocked federal safety efforts.
Tangled federal regulations added to the obstruction. As reporter Ward pointed out, a complex "screening criteria" -- not required by U.S. law -- says closure action can't begin unless a mine has a "withdrawal order" forcing miners to be removed from a danger zone. The Raleigh mine had 16 withdrawal orders, but Massey lawyers disputed all 16, blocking closure.
A wave of U.S. and state investigations has begun. Months of hearings lie ahead. In the end, we hope safety laws are changed so that dangerous mines may be shut down immediately, despite owner appeals. Such a reform would have saved 29 lives in Raleigh County. If coal corporations want to challenge the findings, they can do so while gassy, dusty pits are idled, not full of workers whose lives are at stake.
Of course, the industry and many Appalachian politicians would complain that such tough enforcement is an "attack on coal." If the Raleigh mine had been closed until it was made safe, the temporary loss of its 200 jobs would have caused an outcry. Yet it's now abundantly clear that closure should have occurred.What caused last week's Massey Energy coal tragedy, West Virginia's worst... more
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The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week has reached a total of 29 miners, the worst coal disaster in 40 years. When the disaster occurred, Massey was contesting millions of dollars in major safety violations levied against the mine. At his Labor Day anti-union rally last year, Massey CEO Don Blankenship attacked the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), claiming it “seeks power over coal miners.” He mocked both “Washington politicians” and local elected officials who attempt to ensure miner safety, calling their efforts “as silly as global warming”:
"We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don’t need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming."
Don Blankenship — who uses his position on the boards of the National Mining Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote his conspiracy theories about global warming — said he spent one million dollars to put together the “Friends of America” right-wing rally and rock concert in Holden, WV on September 7, 2009, which starred Ted Nugent, Hank Williams, Jr., and Fox News host Sean Hannity. In 2009, Blankenship also complained that “politicians get emotional” about disasters and establish “nonsensical” safety rules.The death toll from Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine explosion last week... more
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A coalition of NGOs who say they are fighting against the influence of the US Chamber of Commerce has called for the arrest of Don Blankenship, the CEO responsible for the West Virginia mine where 29 workers lost their lives last week.
In a press release on Monday, StopTheChamber.com said Blankenship was "as criminally culpable as any mass murderer" for the disaster at the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, West Virginia, because he had systematically worked to avoid safety regulations.
“This was not an accident, but rather the result of deliberate and intentional decisions and actions of Don Blankenship, a director of the United States Chamber of Commerce," said Kevin Zeese, a founder of the liberal-oriented Velvet Revolution, which runs the StopTheChamber.com site.
"Blankenship, with the lobbying army of the Chamber to back him up, has thumbed his nose at the Mine Safety and Health Administration, ignoring or appealing every violation, including the scores that resulted in coal mine evacuations and the hundreds of other serious violations," Zeese said in a statement.
Zeese added, "As the Washington Post pointed out in a Saturday editorial, these 29 deaths would not have occurred absent this intentional conduct of Blankenship. He is just as criminally culpable as any mass murderer.”
more at link...A coalition of NGOs who say they are fighting against the influence of the US Chamber... more
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After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is facing long-overdue scrutiny for his record of putting coal profits over fundamental safety and health concerns. Blankenship, a right-wing activist millionaire who sits on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, used his company’s ties to the industry-dominated Bush administration to paper over Massey’s egregious environmental and health violations.
Massey rewarded Republicans with massive donations after the company avoided paying billions in fines for a 2000 coal slurry disaster in Martin County, three times bigger than the Exxon Valdez. After both mine inspectors and Massey employees got the same message that it was more important to “run coal” than to follow safety rules, a deadly fire broke out in the Aracoma Alma mine in 2006, burning two men alive. Brad Johnson has the full story of Blankenship’s reckless pursuit of profits over human safety in this TP repost.
Blankenship was abetted by former employees placed at the highest levels of the federal mine safety system. Massey COO Stanley Suboleski was named a commissioner of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in 2003 and was nominated in December 2007 to run the Energy Department’s Office of Fossil Energy. Suboleski is now back on the Massey board. After being rejected twice by the Senate, one-time Massey executive Dick Stickler was put in charge of the MSHA in a recess appointment in October 2006. In the 1990s, Stickler oversaw Massey subsidiary Performance Coal, the operator of the deadly Upper Big Branch Mine, after managing Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” Bush named Stickler acting secretary when the recess appointment expired in January 2008.
Below are further details of these two past incidents that foretold Blankenship’s latest disaster:
~THE FATAL ARACOMA MINE FIRE
Blankenship Branded Deadly Fire At Dangerous Aracoma Mine “Statistically Insignificant.” In the most egregious case of preventable death before the Upper Big Branch explosion, Massey’s Aracoma Coal Co. agreed to “plead guilty to 10 criminal charges, including one felony, and pay $2.5 million in criminal fines” after two workers died in a fire at the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine in Melville, West Virginia. Massey also paid $1.7 million in civil fines. The mine “had 25 violations of mandatory health and safety laws” before the fire on January 19, 2006, but Massey CEO Don Blankenship passed the deaths off as “statistically insignificant.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06; Charleston Gazette, 12/24/08]
Federal Mine Inspector Who Wanted To Shut Down Mine Told To “Back Off.” Days before fire broke out in the Aracoma mine, a federal mine inspector tried to close down that section of the mine, but “was told by his superior to back off and let them run coal, that there was too much demand for coal.” Massey failed to notify authorities of the fire until two hours after the disaster. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/23/06]
Blankenship Memo: “Coal Pays the Bills.” Three months before the Aracoma mine fire, Massey CEO Don Blankenship sent managers a memo saying, “If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal . . . you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills.” [Logan Banner, 9/1/06]
~THE MARTIN COUNTY COAL-SLURRY DISASTER
Martin County Slurry DisasterThree Times the Volume of the Exxon Valdez Spill. Massey Energy is the parent of Martin County Coal, responsible for the “nation’s largest man-made environmental disaster east of the Mississippi” until the 2008 Tennesee coal-ash spill In October 2000, a coal slurry impoundment broke through an underground mine shaft and spilled over 300 million gallons of black, toxic sludge into the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek,” in Martin County, KY. [Lost Mountain, p. 128]
Site Denied Superfund Status. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency “determined that the slurry spill was not a release of a hazardous substance” and thus ineligible for Superfund status. [KY EQC]
Sen. McConnell and Wife Stopped MSHA Investigation. U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), oversaw the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Chao “put on the brakes” on the MSHA investigation into the spill by placing a McConnell staffer in charge. In 2002 a $5,600 fine was levied. That September Massey gave $100,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chaired by McConnell. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 10/2/06, OpenSecrets]
$2.4 Billion Becomes $20 Million. In May 2007 the EPA filed suit for $2.4 billion against Massey for violating “Clean Water Act more than 4,500 times from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2006″ in West Virginia and Kentucky, including the Martin County spill. In January 2008 Massey agreed to pay $20 million to settle the case. [Lexington Herald-Leader, 1/18/08]
The New York Times reports that the families of coal miners have been registering their displeasure with Blankenship:
Some of these tensions boiled over around 2 a.m. Tuesday when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd, but people yelled at him for caring more about profits than miners’ lives.
Crooks & Liars recalls that Blankenship “spent over $1 million dollars along with other US Chamber buddies like Verizon to sponsor last year’s” right-wing Friends of America” rally in West Virginia.
Lorelei Scarbro, an activist who fights on behalf of miners’ rights, tells CNN: “Massey Energy’s record speaks for itself. With an enormous amount of violations and previous deaths at this mine, I will leave it to you to decide if this company puts profits before the safety of its workers or views its employees as a disposable commodity.” Scarbro’s husband was a coal miner who died of black lung.After the worst coal mining disaster in at least 25 years, Massey Energy CEO Don... more
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The West Virginia mine where at least 25 workers died Monday in an explosion was written up more than 50 times last month for safety violations. Twelve of the citations involved problems with ventilating the mine and preventing a buildup of deadly methane.
Federal regulators and members of Congress said they would examine the safety history of Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine south of Charleston, the site of the worst U.S. mining accident in a quarter-century. Meanwhile, rescue efforts were set to continue Wednesday to find four missing mineworkers.
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) said crews would drill thousand-foot boreholes to ventilate methane, the highly combustible gas that has built up in the mine since the explosion and forced rescue teams to suspend recovery operations. Manchin described the explosion as "horrific," and state and federal officials said it would be a "miracle" if anyone survived.
Massey Energy says on its Web site that the company's safety record has been better than the industry average for six consecutive years, with its workers losing less time on the job through work-site accidents than its competitors. But in seven of the past eight years, Upper Big Branch miners lost more time on the job through work-site accidents than did other miners nationally, federal records show.
Three miners have died there since 1998, and the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration cited Upper Big Branch for 1,342 safety violations from 2005 through Monday, proposing $1.89 million in fines, according to federal records.
That record "is a sign that they are not fixing their safety problems," said Celeste Monforton, a former senior official at the Mine Safety and Health Administration. It is not unusual for a mine to receive a substantial number of citations, she said, but the recent violations involving the mine's ventilation system "are a red flag. It's a signal that something is not right there, something is going wrong at that mine."
cont.The West Virginia mine where at least 25 workers died Monday in an explosion was... more
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The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States," says Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "Coal-Fired Power On the Way Out?" "Initially led by environmental groups, both national and local, it has since been joined by prominent national political leaders and many state governors. The principal reason for opposing coal plants is that they are changing the earth's climate. There is also the effect of mercury emissions on health and the 23,600 U.S. deaths each year from power plant air pollution."
Over the last few years the coal industry has suffered one setback after another. The Sierra Club, which has kept a tally of proposed coal-fired power plants and their fates since 2000, reports that 123 plants have been defeated, with another 51 facing opposition in the courts. Of the 231 plants being tracked, only 25 currently have a chance at gaining the permits necessary to begin construction and eventually come online. Building a coal plant may soon be impossible.
What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power quickly evolved into a national tidal wave of grassroots opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations. Despite a heavily funded ad campaign to promote so-called clean coal (one reminiscent of the tobacco industry's earlier efforts to convince people that cigarettes were not unhealthy), the American public is turning against coal.The past two years have witnessed the emergence of a powerful movement opposing the... more
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WASHINGTON Scientific evidence that mountaintop-removal coal mining destroys streams and threatens human health is so strong the government should stop granting new permits for it, a group of 12 environmental scientists report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
The consequences of this mining in eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and southwestern Virginia are "pervasive and irreversible," the article finds. Companies are required by law to take steps to reduce the damages, but their efforts don't compensate for lost streams nor do they prevent lasting water pollution, it says.
The article is a summary of recent scientific studies of the consequences of blasting the tops off mountains to obtain coal and dumping the excess rock into streams in valleys. The authors also studied new water-quality data from West Virginia streams and found that mining polluted them, reducing their biological health and diversity.
http://www.climate.noaa.gov/education/
Surprisingly little attention has been paid to this growing scientific evidence of the damages, they wrote, adding: "Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science."
New permits shouldn't be granted, they argued, "unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems."
The Science article cites a number of potential health risks from removing mountaintops and filling in valleys, including contaminated well water, toxic dust and fish that are tainted with the chemical selenium. It also looked at environmental damage to the mining and fill areas and to streams below them.
"The reason we're willing to make a policy recommendation is that the evidence is so clear-cut," said Margaret Palmer of the University of Maryland, the lead author of the Science study and a specialist on the ecology of streams. Palmer has personal ties to Appalachia. Her family is from western North Carolina, and she spent much of her childhood there.
The assessment came days after the Environmental Protection Agency approved a permit under the Clean Water Act for Patriot Coal Corp.'s mountaintop Hobet 45 mine in West Virginia. The EPA reached a deal with Patriot to change the original plans. Instead of burying six miles of streams, the company will bury three. The EPA said that other changes would reduce stream contamination and protect public health.
At the same time, the agency acknowledged the environmental costs.
Mountaintop-removal mining has destroyed roughly 2,040 square miles of land in Appalachia and buried more than 2,000 miles of streams, EPA spokeswoman Enesta Jones said in an e-mail.
In a news release about its approval of the Hobet 45 mine, the EPA said:
"Scientific studies have increasingly identified significant water quality problems below surface coal mining operations that can contaminate surface waters for hundreds of years. Data from coalfield communities also indicate that coal mining is responsible for causing fish kills and contaminating fish and wildlife."
The statement says that the EPA is "committed to use its Clean Water Act regulatory authorities to reduce environmental and water quality impacts associated with surface coal mining."
The EPA's approval of the Hobet 45 mine, announced Tuesday, was the first major mountaintop mining permit the agency has approved from a batch of 79 that it said raised concerns. The mine is expected to employ 460 unionized miners.
Environmental groups condemned the decision and said that even with the changes, the mine would destroy forests and streams.
The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act calls for balancing environmental protection with the nation's need for coal. Half the nation's electricity comes from burning coal. According to the Department of Energy, coal also contributes 36.5 percent of the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas that's accumulating in the atmosphere.WASHINGTON Scientific evidence that mountaintop-removal coal mining destroys streams... more
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