This year at I Love Mountains day we are using homemade pinwheels to share our message of calling for an end to mountaintop removal and transitioning to a clean energy economy.  We are asking everyone coming to I Love Mountains day to bring one pinwheel. 

Then we will deliver each of our pinwheels to Governor Beshear at I Love Mountains.  With 1,2000 of us estimated to attend, each pinwheel will represent 50 people living with cancer that has been linked to the pollution from mountaintop removal mining.   Click here to learn about the study that came out in July that found that 60,000 people living in Central Appalachia have cancer because of mountaintop removal.  So, 1,200 pinwheels x 50 = 60,000. 

But the pinwheels are also a beautiful way to visually demonstrate the hope that we all have for transitioning to a new, clean energy economy that can bring good jobs and cleaner air and water to our state!  What better way to share our message and help the Governor understand what is at stake! 

Will you join us by making and bringing a homemade pinwheel with you at I Love Mountains day?  We hope you will!  Here is a link to some super simple instructions!  And if you do, leave us a comment here to let us know how it goes!  But also don't worry if you can't make a pinwheel, we will have a few extras to share that day!

An editorial in today’s Lexington Herald-Leader urges Governor Steve Beshear to consider the homes and health of people in Benham and Lynch before allowing destructive surface mining there.

According to the article, two coal operators and their associates spent more than $500,000 to get Beshear re-elected last fall – the largest private-sector donors to Beshear’s campaign.

One donor, James C. Justice II of A&G Coal, plans to mine near Benham and Lynch, threatening the community’s water supply and quality of life. The Beshear administration has given preliminary approval. From the editorial:

With coal money talking so loudly and directly into his ear, the governor should try extra hard to hear average Kentuckians whose homes, health and future are imperiled by the coal industry’s most destructive practices.

The ridges that cradle Lynch — and are at risk of being destroyed — are part of Black Mountain, Kentucky's highest point, which school children fought to save from strip-mining in the late 1990s.

You can’t put a price tag on the history and possibilities that will be lost if Beshear sacrifices this little corner of Kentucky.

The other donor, James Booth of Cambrian Coal, has a permit to mine in Pike County that a judge attempted to block before Beshear’s Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters overruled him and allowed the permit to go through.

Cambrian’s plan to chop 400 feet off a mountain near Elkhorn City in Pike County will pollute tributaries of the Russell Fork that were already seriously degraded by earlier mining.

The editorial follows an analysis of campaign contributions in The Courier-Journal by Tom Loftus. To read that article, click here.

To read the full Lexington Herald-Leader editorial, click here.

To learn more about Benham and Lynch residents’ efforts to protect their community, click here.

According to an article by reporter John Cheeves in the 1/29/2012 edition of the Lexington Herald Leader, Senate President David Williams recently suggested that a 78-year old man protesting mountaintop removal mining in Governor Beshear's office should kill himself.

Richard Beliles is a long-time advocate for honest and transparent government in Kentucky and chairman of the Kentucky chapter of Common Cause, a national organization that advocates for fair elections and limits on the role of money in politics. Since early January, he has taken a weekly shift as part of persistent, peaceful vigil against mountaintop removal mining in the state Capitol. In today's article, Beliles described a chilling interaction he had with Senator David Williams while protesting.

"He said, 'Are you occupying the office?' I said yes. He said, 'Well, why don't you set yourself on fire? Why don't you immolate yourself?' And then he left," said Beliles, who is recovering from cancer treatment. "It was a strange thing for David to say. It sort of shook me up."

Williams's spokesperson said the Senator was "clearly joking." But there is nothing humorous about statements like this, especially from a person in public office who holds a position of significant power.

When activists  occupied the Kentucky Capitol for four days last February, they called on  Governor Beshear to "call for an end to extreme and violent speech aimed at citizens who are working to protect Kentucky's land, air and water." To date the governor has made no such declaration. Kentuckians are still waiting. Richard Beliles, and all of us, deserve far better.

Here is a great example of what New Power looks like in Kentucky!

that makes energy efficiency upgrades affordable and doable for customers of rural electric co-ops in eastern Kentucky. The video describes how the Big Sandy Rural Electric Cooperative is helping its customers in Floyd and Johnson counties save money by saving energy.

How$martKY - Energy Efficiency for Everyone from Appalshop CMI on Vimeo.

How$mart is an innovative way to finance energy efficiency upgrades. Designed by the good folks at the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED), it is a currently in a two-year pilot phase. Participating rural electric cooperatives include Grayson Rural Electric, Big Sandy Rural Electric, Fleming-Mason Electric, and Jackson Energy. 

If you live in a county served by one of these co-ops, give them a call today to ask for your home to be evaluated for energy savings through How$mart!

KFTC members have long urged utilities in Kentucky, especially our rural electric co-ops, to invest more in energy efficiency programs. Our members are helping to spread the word about this promising approach, and continue to nudge and encourage the co-ops to do everything they can to make this program successful in the pilot stage so it can expand in the future.

If you like this video, be sure to check out other similar stories produced by Appalshop and shared on a new website called Making Connections News. There you will find a growing collection of videos and radio stories about efforts to "build a healthy future for Appalachia's land and people."

An important new study released today strengthens the case for passing the Clean Energy Opportunity Act (HB 167) in Kentucky.

Under legislation offered by Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, electric utilities in Kentucky would gradually increase the share of their electricity that comes from energy efficiency programs and renewable energy over the next ten years. The bill requires utilities to get 12.5 percent of their electricity from renewable energy and achieve 10.25 percent cumulative savings from energy efficiency efforts by 2022.

Today's study by Synapse Energy Economics, Inc. estimates that those requirements could create 28,000 net new jobs and reduce average electric bills by 8-10% over the next ten years, compared to a "do-nothing" scenario.

The study was released by the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED). Below are some key quotes from MACED's press release:

“This study confirms that legislation to diversify our electricity portfolio would be economically beneficial to Kentucky,” said Justin Maxson, President of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development. “The bill would allow the state to hedge against increasing rates by making homes and businesses more energy efficient. And it would spur the creation of clean energy jobs installing renewable energy projects and making energy efficiency upgrades.

“Efficiency and renewables are already the emerging trend in construction in the Commonwealth,” said Kentucky solar entrepreneur Matt Partymiller of Solar Energy Solutions in Lexington. “This report by Synapse captures what Kentucky engineers and contractors already know and what other states have already seen. Legislation like the Clean Energy Opportunity Act will provide the tools necessary for Kentucky builders to create jobs while ensuring Kentucky energy costs stay low.”

The report predicts that electricity rates in KY will rise and the percentage of our electricity that comes from burning coal will decline under either a do-nothing scenario or passage of the Clean Energy Opportunity Act. Natural gas is expected to displace some of the electricity that is now produced by coal under either scenario.

Synapse carried out the study for the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development, a Berea based economic development organization, and the Kentucky Sustainable Energy Alliance, a coalition of over 50 businesses, affordable housing advocates, non-profit organizations and faith based groups.

Despite a growing body of evidence that links coal mining – and particularly mountaintop removal – with lower life expectancy, higher rates of cancer and other life-threatening diseases and increased birth defects, coal companies and their supporters – from Gov. Beshear to local legislators and our Congressional delegation – continue to be silent and even work to suppress this research.

The same thing happens in other coal-impacted communities across the region. Alpha Natural Resources, facing a legal challenge to one of its new mining permits in West Virginia, is trying to keep important health impacts studies out of the courtroom.

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition has asked a judge to include West Virginia University studies linking mountaintop removal to birth defects and cancer among residents in its lawsuit challenging the permit for a 235-acre mine proposed by an Alpha subsidiary.

But Alpha lawyers argue the studies should not be considered. From The Charleston Gazette:

Alpha lawyer Bob McLusky argues in a court filing that the environmental groups waited too long to raise the studies, that the health impacts cited have nothing to do with the water pollution permit at issue in the case, and that general health studies shouldn't be used in a case over a specific mining permit.

To read the full story, click here.

Dr. Michael Hendryx, a co-author of the three studies in question, testified before a legislative committee on the health impacts of mining during the 2010 Kentucky General Assembly. To read that story, click here.

To learn more and take action:

• Join KFTC for a webinar on the health impacts of mining at 7 p.m. February 6. For details, click here.
• Come to I Love Mountains Day on February 14 in Frankfort. To register, click here.
• Write letters to the editor of your local or state newspaper and say you care about the impacts of mining on human health. For tips on writing letters, click here.

Document

KFTC and several of our allies are challenging an agreement the Beshear administration negotiated in secret with Nally & Hamilton coal company to resolve thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act.

“There are so many loopholes in this secretly crafted document, it becomes strikingly offensive to anyone the least bit familiar with Clean Water Act rules” said KFTC member Suzanne Tallichet. “This Agreed Order represents business as usual between cabinet officials and a scofflaw coal company, literally at the expense of citizens’ lives and well-being,"

The case involves incomplete and false water pollution reports Nally & Hamilton filed with the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet over a two-and-a-half-year period. These reports were literally collecting dust in state offices before they were exposed by Appalachian Voices. In March, KFTC, Appalachian Voices, Kentucky Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance informed Nally & Hamilton of their intent to sue in order to stop the violations and the related pollution of waterways in eastern Kentucky.

Cabinet officials, who had previously ignored these reports, in May filed an administrative enforcement action against the company, alleging 4,600 violations rather than the 12,000 originally cited. It seems that the cabinet did this in an effort to protect the company by trying to pre-empt a federal lawsuit the groups planned to file. The administrative action had no preemptive effect under the law, however, and the groups filed the federal suit anyway.

We also asked to intervene in the cabinet's administrative proceeding, and in July the hearing officer granted the groups intervenor status, as full parties in the case. However, cabinet officials ignored the hearing officer's strong encouragement to include intervenors in settlement negotiations and negotiated a settlement with Nally & Hamilton without notifying or involving the intervening parties.

"They ignored the hearing officer’s order giving us intervenor status and negotiated a secret agreement that does little to protect our people or prevent future violations,” said Pat Banks of Kentucky Riverkeeper in a press release issued by the groups. “Our people are shocked that the cabinet chooses to protect companies that are polluting our land and water and breaking the laws thousands of times rather than protect the health and well-being of Kentucky’s land and people.“

The petition filed Thursday in Franklin Circuit Court asks that the agreement between Nally & Hamilton Enterprises and the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet be vacated on the grounds that there is “no factual evidence in the record, much less substantial evidence, [that] supports a finding that the Agreed Order is a fair resolution of Nally’s thousands of [Clean Water Act] violations, or that it will be an effective deterrent of future violations.”

Nally & Hamilton Enterprises, based in Bardstown, is one of the largest producers of strip mined coal in Kentucky. Several principal officers and employees of Nally & Hamilton and their spouses contributed $6,000 to Beshear’s re-election campaign on July 21, just two weeks after the citizens groups were allowed to intervene in the case, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.

"Citizens living in coal-impacted communities deserve much better from a taxpayer supported state agency that is supposed to be diligently protecting people over corporate profits,”said Tallichet.

MEDIA COVERAGE

• Ronnie Ellis: Environmental coalition wants agreement vacated
• Lexington Herald-Leader: Environmentalists contest coal company settlement
• Erica Peterson, WFPL-FM: Environmental Groups Petition to Overturn “Inadequate” Coal Settlement
  

Energy Cabinet Secretary Len Peters may soon name a replacement for Carl Campbell, the Natural Resources commissioner he fired on Tuesday. Who gets that job will tell us a lot about what to expect from Steve Beshear in his second term.

If Gov. Beshear wants to leave a legacy, he could start with Clean Water. In counties where coal is produced, that means enforcing the law – including the way coal mining is permitted and disturbed land is reclaimed. The Natural Resources commissioner oversees both these programs, as well as forestry, conservation, mine safety, oil and gas drilling and abandoned mine lands.

The Clean Water Act and the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act recognize – and so should Beshear, Peters and whoever they name – the important role that citizens play in monitoring environmental quality in their communities, and reporting violations.  It hits pretty close to home for many KFTC members, when their foundations crack, communities flood and wells fill with methane gas as a result of out-of-control coal companies.

It should go without saying that the new commissioner should be someone committed to enforce the law, which means improving the cabinet’s performance of recent years. It should be a person genuinely interested in regular dialogue with residents affected by mining practices. It should be someone who demands and inspires their inspectors to do a good job, and then has their backs when they take the proper enforcement actions.

The coal industry is lobbying for Allen Luttrell, the current mine permits director. That support alone should tell KFTC members all we need to know about his qualifications.

The new commissioner will not have an easy job. There resides in the cabinet a culture of non-enforcement. It will take a determined individual, allowed to do their job, if this is to change in Gov. Beshear’s second term.

Take Action

Please contact Gov. Steve Beshear’s office to let him know you want someone committed to and allowed to do their job as the next natural resources commssioner.

Message:  Gov. Beshear, Kentuckians are sick and dying because our environmental and public health laws are poorly enforced. Please see to it that the new natural resources commissioner is committed to working with all Kentuckians to protect our health and our land, air and water by enforcing the law.

There are several ways to convey this message to Gov. Beshear:

1. Call his office and leave a message – 502-564-2611
2. Fax him a letter – 502-564-2517
3. Use his online comment form

Thank you for taking action!

As was widely reported in the media yesterday, Energy and Environment Cabinet Secretary Len Peters, with the blessing of Gov. Steve Beshear, fired cabinet employee Carl Campbell, without explanation. Campbell was a 25-year cabinet employee, most recently serving as commissioner of the Department for Natural Resources within the cabinet, with responsibilities for surface mine reclamation and mine safety programs.

KFTC members knew Campbell pretty well, in part because of his long service in the cabinet mostly dealing with coal mining. But also because he met regularly with KFTC members, both in Frankfort and in the coalfields where residents deal daily with the consequences of coal mining. The next meeting was scheduled in two weeks, in Hazard.

Sometimes KFTC members butted heads with Campbell, but also found him to be one of more honorable and accountable persons in the cabinet. We had a good working relationship with him. He took the time to get to know our members, and he produced answers to their questions and results when he could.

Campbell's performance raises questions about why he was the one dismissed and not others within the cabinet. Bruce Scott is the commissioner of the Department for Environmental Protection, which includes divisions of air, water and enforcement. KFTC members have gotten to know him better lately, as it was his agencies that failed to properly monitor and catch thousands of admitted violations of the Clean Water Act by several coal companies over the last five years. One might think that would be reason to dismiss an employee.

But it gets worse. Scott and Peters then went on to try to shelter the coal companies from legal action by KFTC and allies, secretly negotiated a settlement agreement that ignored a judge’s order to include third-party intervenors, and have spent considerable cabinet resources to challenge the interests of coalfield residents to be a party to enforcement actions (losing at every level, so far). They let their views be known when they called the intervention of regular Kentuckians in the public actions of the cabinet an “unwarranted burden.”

It’s reasonable to expect that Steve Beshear may want some personnel changes in his second term. But it’s not a good sign that the cabinet employee open to meeting with coalfield residents on a regular basis and addressing their problems is the one now gone, and the ones who see the public as a nuisance and focus considerable resources defending polluters are still running the show.

Who Gov. Beshear and Len Peters name to replace Carl Campbell will be as telling as Campbell’s firing. There are names of some cabinet employees among the speculation whose appointment would represent the continued downward spiral of enforcement under the Beshear administration.

It should go without saying that the appointee should be committed to enforcing the law. Most cabinet employees are. But it’s disturbing that the two very public firings of cabinet officials (Ron Mills being the other, two years ago) were ones who seemed to have a strong sense of this duty.

A good replacement must be someone with an understanding of the role of environmental laws, and cabinet in enforcing those, to protect the health of all Kentuckians and safeguard our land, water and air. One must understand the cabinet as more than just a permitting agency, and know that including Kentuckians in the monitoring and enforcement of the law is a necessary part of doing a good job.