The ring from a bell means so much during Week in Washington...it means that another legislator has stood up to big coal and decided to co-sponsor the Clean Water Protection Act

We just got another co-sponsor !  We are now up to 166!

Week in Washington Bell Ringing from Kentuckians For The Commonwealth on Vimeo.

More than 20 KFTC members and staff have traveled to Washington, D.C. to participate in the End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington sponsored by Appalachian Voices and the Alliance For Appalachia.  In D.C. we are joined with more than 200 other community activists and coalfield residents representing 27 different states.

We traveled to Washington to lobby for H.R. 1310, the Clean Water Protection Act and S.696, the Appalachia Restoration Act. Starting today through Thursday, March 11 we will be meeting with Representatives and Senators to help educate them about both pieces of legislation, and to also gain as many more cosponsors as possible. 

Just partially through day one we have already gained two new cosponsors.

Members will continue to meet and lobby with legislators and different governmental agencies over the next few days.

Members from KFTC and other member groups in the Alliance for Appalachia lobbying in DC this week

We need your help to bring an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. Join us today as part of a national day of action to end mountaintop removal coal mining.

This week, nearly 200 citizens from Appalachia and across the US are gathering in our nation's capital as part of the 5th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington – and hundreds more will show support by making a simple phone call.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is one of the most egregious environmental and social justice disasters in America today -- more than 500 mountains and 1.5 million acres of land have already been destroyed by this practice. Residents and supporters from across the US are asking for an end to mountaintop removal and an investment in sustainable economic alternatives for Appalachia.

This issue is urgent and the coal industry is working overtime to block the passage of this bill. That's why we need people like you to take a stand for the mountains.

Please take a moment to visit www.ilovemountains.org/call-your-rep -- we have a special call-in tool there that will allow you to make a phone call to your Representative - if you've never called your Congressperson before - this is the easiest way to do it! We'll walk you through the steps and help you know exactly what to say.

Thanks for taking action - because of people like you, we're as close as we ever have been to ending mountaintop removal.

The Northern KY KFTC group had it's second meeting last week, and got a good start on planning local actions. 

The group broke into functional issue workteams focusing on tax justice, voting rights, and mining issues, planning local events including a letter-writing day and a Budget Bake Sale on NKU's campus. 

Since the meeting, the group held its first fundraiser at Joe Gallenstein's home - a Euchre for Justice tournament.  That same day, they held their first Chapter Development Workteam meeting to plan out next month's big meeting and to better spread out leadership roles in the organization.

Nine KFTC members sat in a semicircle with a four-foot scroll in front of them. They had come to Frankfort Thursday to declare the need for real political leadership.

One by one, they read paragraphs from “The Unified Declaration of Members in Good Standing of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.” Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the statement included the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” and went on to state:

We believe that embedded within these rights that have defined our nation are additional rights to be respected and preserved, that among these are the right to breathe clean air and drink safe water, the opportunity of a basic education for our children and safe employment. We believe everyone should enjoy the opportunity to worship freely and the right to speak openly without fearing for their jobs or attack from their neighbor.

The Declaration included specific grievances about the legislature’s dominance by the coal industry and its eagerness to please powerful energy interests while ignoring the needs of its constituents. Members called on Governor Steve Beshear and House leaders Greg Stumbo and Rocky Adkins to:

• Invite a genuine, open conversation among all stakeholders leading to a new vision and ideas for a more prosperous, healthy and sustainable economy in Kentucky, and especially in our Appalachian counties.
• Call for an immediate end to extreme and sometimes violent speech that is being aimed at citizens who are working to protect Kentucky’s land, air and water.
• Oppose legislation that puts the interest of the coal industry ahead of the public interest.
• And vigorously support clean energy legislation and the Stream Saver Bill.

Members also asked that a new chair and members of the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee, who are not among the legislature’s strongest pro-coal and anti-environment members, be appointed.

“It is not an accident that the committee has a preponderance of coal interests on it,” said Doug Doerrfeld. “All that we are asking is that they be representative of all the people.”

In written documentation of the grievances, they cited a remark by committee vice-chair Rep. Keith Hall, sponsor of numerous pro-coal/anti-people bills, regarding his appointment by House leaders as co-chair of an interim energy committee: “I don’t think I got that position by accident.”

Kentucky author Wendell Berry and retired miner Carl Shoupe

Following the reading, members answered questions from the press. That included explaining the difference between supporting coal miners and supporting the coal industry. They provided oral and written examples of how miners are disrespected and harassed, by legislators and the industry, just as those fighting against mountaintop removal are.

KFTC and people in eastern Kentucky are not supporting “coal, the industry, but coal, the worker, which is different than supporting everything the industry perpetuates on a community,” explained Beverly May.

Asked about electing better leaders, Patty Wallace replied: “We’d love to send somebody else, but our hands are tied by the coal industry.”

Member Carl Shoupe agreed. “Coal has such a stranglehold in Eastern Kentucky. People dislike mountaintop removal. People dislike strip mining.”  But he explained that almost no family in his community is not tied to coal in some way, through a direct or indirect job of family member – and they feel that threat.

While the Kentucky legislature has generally ignored the economic and environmental consequences of coal, it did get a few minutes today to consider the effects on human health when the House Committee on Health and Welfare gave KFTC 20 minutes on its agenda.

Our three panelists made those 20 minutes count, focusing on the dangers not only to coal miners but to the health of whole communities in the coalfields.

KFTC member Beverly May, a nurse practitioner who works in Perry County, said she sees miners who have contracted lung diseases from exposure to coal dust and silica dust. “At home in Floyd County, I have friends in Hueysville, David and Allen that are plagued by dust from both nearby strip mines and from coal trucks passing by their homes. This is the same sandstone dust which causes silicosis in the workers, so I have to wonder, what does it do to children with asthma or elders or anyone who breathes it every day?”

She described the headwaters of Raccoon Creek, which are now polluted from nearby mining. “So I have to wonder, is the public water supply safe?”

Beverly May

Dr. Michael Hendryx

“The coal industry isn’t answering these questions because they don’t have to,” said May. “This body and the federal government have not held them fully accountable.”

Dr. Michael Hendryx, director of the West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and an associate professor at West Virginia University, said his research has revealed higher rates of chronic heart, chronic lung and renal failure mortality rates in coal-producing areas than in the rest of Appalachia or the nation, even after the rates have been adjusted for other factors such as smoking, age and education.

“We have some evidence that the effects become stronger as the level of mining increases,” Dr. Hendryx said. He attributed this to “significant impairment of air and water quality near mines.”  He also noted that poverty and economic disadvantage are major predictors of public health and that mining areas have the highest poverty rates.

A couple of Dr. Hendryx's reports can be found here and here.

Nancy Reinhart read a statement from Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Among other findings, Epstein stated that 19 of the known chemicals used and generated in processing coal are known cancer-causing agents, 24 are linked to lung and heart damage, and several remain untested as to their health effects.

The oral testimony was supplemented with dozens of pages of documentation and medical research given to committee members.

Bill Bissett, president of Kentucky Coal Association, asked to rebut and was given a couple of minutes. He did not say burning coal or dumping toxic mining wastes in streams improved anyone’s health or offer any refuting evidence, but did say the coal industry offers some scholarships to eastern Kentucky students to go to medical school.

Here's a video of the 21-minute hearing.

Hay bales were placed in the creek to help "clean" it

This morning KFTC member Mickey McCoy, a resident of Martin County, discovered that a stream near his home, the Coldwater Fork, was running gray and black from a slurry spill at a coal processing facility owned by Massey Energy.  These types of spills threaten the health of nearby residents and wildlife populations and are all too frequently a fact of life for people who live downstream from slurry impoundments.

After investigating the spill for himself, Mickey spoke with an Appalshop filmmaker on the phone about the spill.  You can listen to an edited version of their conversation here.

This spill is nowhere near the scale of the Martin Co. coal sludge flood of 2000, but it is a continuation of an ongoing pattern of clean water violations by Massey Energy despite Massey's $20 million settlement with the EPA for Clean Water Act violations two years ago.  Ken Ward Jr. reported last month on his blog, the Coal Tatoo:

Between April 1, 2008, and March 31, 2009, Massey violated its effluent limits at its various operations at least 971 times, and accrued 12,977 days of violation during that 12-month period. The U.S. government’s lawsuit against Massey, which resulted in the $20 million settlement, alleged more than 60,000 days of violations over a six-year period, or about 10,000 days of violations per year.

What is it going to take to get Massey to obey the law?  Why are they allowed to continue operating when they show a consistent disregard for the health and safety of the communities they reside in?

The Louisville Courier Journal has a stunning story by James Carroll today detailing how the coal industry in Kentucky and around the country appears to be systematically challenging federal safety violations in order to avoid or delay paying fines for serious violations.

A hearing will be held today in the US House Education and Labor Committee, whose chairman Rep. George Miller was quoted in the article saying, "These appeals are clogging the system and putting miners in danger."

According to the article:

In Kentucky, 80 percent of 536 high-dollar fines for the “significant and substantial” safety violations — the most serious kind — are being contested by the mine operators, according to federal Mine Safety and Health Administration records.

The story goes on to point out that mining companies aren't just challenging the most serious cases, but are appealing less serious citations, and they are challenging repeated violations for the same offense at the same mine. While coal operators are supposed to correct violations as soon as they receive a citation, they can avoid paying financial penalties until challenges are resolved. 

The problem has grown much worse in recent years. According to the story, the industry appealed an average of 2,307 cases per year between 2000 and 2005. That number quadrupled to 9,230 last year, contributing to an agency backlog of more than 15,000 unsettled cases.

The spike in challenges to mine safety violations apparently began under the previous administration. The Courier-Journal story quotes from a letter written by Solicitor of Labor under President George Bush, Gregory Jacob, to the National Mining Association in June of 2008. He stated that there is “a concerted effort to impede the statutory enforcement and penalty assessment process.”

The entire article is recommended reading.

The Decline of Appalachian Coal Data compiled by Downstream Strategies in Morgantown, West Virginia, found that coal employment in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia has dropped by about half since 1983.

The Daily Yonder writers looked at actual employment data for Wise County, VA, which was the focus of the Washington Post article. Although Wise County is located in the heart of Virginia's coal fields, mining jobs provided just 11.5% of county employment there in 2004, fewer than the jobs in retail (14.1%) or government (21.7%).

As Bishop and Marema write,

"Coal has been a declining part of the Appalachian employment picture for more than half a century. As the industry mechanized, it needed fewer miners. When more coal was mined from the surface, beginning in the early 1960s, the industry needed fewer miners still...In the last generation, the total coal employment has fallen by half. In the 30 years before that, the decline was steeper."

Their piece ends with a challenge to the popular notion that the coal jobs are falling due to environmental regulations.

"Coal is losing employees in the eastern mountains, but not because of any war. Coal is a shrinking part of the economy in Appalachia, both because the industry is efficient and because reserves are falling. Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the (Washington) Post’s story portraying coal’s economic importance in Appalachia fits neatly with the coal industry’s desire to fight regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and mountaintop removal mining."

Rick Handshoe

The movement to end mountaintop removal mining is featured this week in a cover story of the LEO, a free weekly newspaper in Louisville. The article, written by Jonathan Meador, can be found here.

The story features Floyd County KFTC member Rick Handshoe.

“I go down in (that valley) to hunt, and there’s nothing there,” says Handshoe, adding that because of the contaminated runoff generated by local mountaintop removal mining operations, the water line had to be dismantled, and water is now piped in from elsewhere at a greater overall cost. “Some of the people here, they call people from Louisville and Lexington ‘outsiders,’” he says. “But you’ve got a stake in this too. You guys are drinking the water that’s coming from here."

Citizens marching to the Capitol in support of the Stream Saver Bill

It also focuses on the close relationship that Rep. Jim Gooch, chairperson of the House Natural Resources Committee, has to the coal industry, and places responsibility for inaction on the Stream Saver Bill at the feet of Governor Beshear.

"If you wonder why someone in Gooch’s position is allowed to repeatedly kill the routinely unsuccessful Stream Saver Bill — which would significantly reduce the toxic pollution created by surface mining — every time the bill lands in his committee, you don’t have to look much farther than the governor’s mansion."

State Senator Kathy Stein, a key sponsor of the Stream Saver Bill (SB 139), is also quoted:

“They (coalfield legislators) continue to support the coal industry and everything that they say — that coal’s so good for the economy — but if you look at the poverty rates in some of these counties with coal producers, you find it’s not the case. If you’re so damn good for eastern Kentucky, then why does eastern Kentucky end up perpetually one of the poorest regions in the nation?”

Rep. Yarmuth meeting with coalfield resident and member McKinley Sumner

And the story gives a nod to U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, a primary co-sponsor of the Clean Water Protection Act. He refers to a recent study by Downstream Strategies which notes that coal production in central Appalachia is expected to "decrease by as much as 50% over the next decade while becoming increasingly expensive to mine."

“The report kind of validates what a lot of us have already known,” says U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3. “What peripheral evidence has shown is that coal is something any economy cannot depend on. A third of the number of people in coal mining are employed now (compared to) the peak of production.”