Red State Ramblers: Groundhog from Kentuckians For The Commonwealth on Vimeo.

Performances for the evening were provided by The Wild Boogers, Rich and the Po Folks, Clack Mountain String Band, and the Red State Ramblers. Additionally, Kentucky author Erik Reece and Kentucky poet Eric Sutherland read from the stage. Central Kentucky member Tanya Turner spoke from the stage encouraging folks to attend I Love Mountains Day on February 11.

Long-time KFTC member and establishment owner Josh Miller mentioned how exciting the event is every year and how much he looks forward to opening up the Bar for such a good cause.

Numerous KFTC members volunteered their time and creative skill to make the event such a huge success and one that folks in Lexington look forward to every year. 

Thanks to Jordan Panning, Mason Colby, Erin Cutler, Josh Saxton, and everyone else who helped working the door and the merch table.  Special thanks to Brian and Sara Turner of Cricket Press (www.cricket-press.com) for producing yet another wonderful poster.  Posters are still available for $10 each. Email Tim@KFTC.org if you are interested in purchasing one.

By Roy Silver, Harlan County chapter member

"The biggest thing is our water resource.  Our water is really good now. What’s more important the water or the coal?  This is the best place in the world to live. You're not just taking out the coal, you're destroying generations of people who could live here and raise their families here.”  Bennie Massey, Lynch City Council

Harlan Development/A & G wants to strip mine Black Mountain above Lynch.  It would drain into Looney Creek, which feeds the Lynch Reservoir.

The discharge is a violation of the Kentucky Five-Mile Policy.  It “prohibits discharges into a stream within five miles upstream from any public water supply intake. Looney Creek feeds the head waters of the Cumberland River.  The strip mine could also impact downstream communities. 

This strip mine would place 18 new sediment ponds above the community, set off blasts near homes and historic buildings.

It will encroach on the upper elevations of Black Mountain.  Harlan Counties. The Kentucky Resources Council, KFTC and many others protected in 1999.

  To strip mine this area, the company must get a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers US EPA.  It will mine through and create a sediment pond at the headwaters of Long Rock Branch, (Magazine Hollow).  This feeds the Lynch Reservoir.  This strip mine could damage four other headwater streams.  

A&G’s Ison Rock Ridge strip mine in Wise County, Va. has been suspended.   It had history of federal violations.  Owners of Harlan Development Corporation owed over $1.5 million in mine safety violations.  Lynch residents are asking that this permit be denied.  They are also asking for a public hearing from the US Army Corps of Engineers. 

Send an email to the US Army Corps of Engineers and EPA asking officials to respect the concerns of Lynch residents, protect their water and community resources.

Submit comments by 4pm on Monday, February 1st.
Click here to go to the KFTC Action Page to send your letter.

Comments will be accepted after the deadline. For more information, contact colleen@kftc.org.

You can also send a letter by fax to:
Nashville District Corps of Engineers, Regulatory Branch
(Attention: Marty Tyree)
3701 Bell Road, Nashville, TN 37214
Fax 615-369-7501

Sad news, the first coal mine fatality in Kentucky in 2010 happened today.

Travis G. Brock, 29, an underground miner, died from what the news report are calling a "rib roll."

According to news reports, a rib roll is when a coal support pillar, divided by a rock seam, collapses . This sounds a lot like... a roof fall to me.

He was killed at 9:15 AM today. He operated a continuous miner, which is a machine with carbide teeth that digs the coal at the face of the deep mine. He worked for a coal company owned by Bledsoe Coal Co., and Bledsoe Coal is owned by Richmond, VA based James River Coal Co. The mine was in Leslie County at Abner Branch.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.

Downstream Strategies, an environmental consulting firm, recently released a report that urges Appalachian states to invest in developing their renewable energy infrastructure. According to an ABC News story the report:

predicts production in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee will fall nearly 50 percent within a decade and urges those states to adopt laws, low-interest loan programs and other measures to support the development of renewable energy sources.

The report goes on to say that this decline will be in part due to competition from cleaner burning natural gas but it also points to a dramatic decrease in easy to recover coal and increasing environmental controls.

Studies have shown that local ownership of renewable energy projects generates greater jobs and local revenues than corporate-owned projects. Therefore, support for local ownership of energy development will help to maximize the potential economic benefit of developing renewables.

Improvements and investment in energy efficiency can also generate new jobs and revenue, while saving businesses and residents money on energy consumption. Supporting measures include: energy efficiency resource standards, expanded demand response initiatives, building energy codes, low-income efficiency programs, and research and development support.

Finally, policy attention must be focused on developing workforce programs that will provide the skills and knowledge required for emerging and potential renewable energy industries, and should be coupled with energy-and investment-related policies aimed at spurring project development. 

According the the Energy Information Administration web site, power plants reduced their coal consumption by ten percent last year and the projections are for demand to continue to be low in 2010.

As Senator Byrd said late last year, "West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it. The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose." (Byrd, 2009)

You can download the report here. And a link to the ABC News story about the release of the report is here.

We need your help!

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) is charged with enforcing the law on mountaintop removal. Unfortunately, decades of rollbacks and giving in to coal industry corruption have left coalfield communities virtually undefended. Exceptions to the surface mine law have become the rule, and problems with dust, blasting, toxic water and giant wastelands remaining unreclaimed are impacting the lives of thousands across the coalfields.

The OSMRE is asking for advice on how to enforce the law - and we need you to offer it. Comments are due by January 19th - please click here to send  in sample comments or offer your own. Many of you have had personal experiences with the OSMRE - and we encourage you to write about them.

When the OSMRE doesn’t hear from citizens, they assume you have nothing to say - please let them know we are paying attention and we expect the laws to be enforced.

Thanks for your help!

202-224-3954

(The following text is an opinion piece U.S. Senator Robert Byrd issued on Thursday.  It appears below in its entirety.) Click here if you want to list to the audio version from Senator Byrd.

For more than 100 years, coal has been the backbone of the Appalachian economy. Even today, the economies of more than 20 states depend to some degree on the mining of coal. About half of all the electricity generated in America and about one quarter of all the energy consumed globally is generated by coal.

Change is no stranger to the coal industry.  Think of the huge changes which came with the onset of the Machine Age in the late 1800’s.  Mechanization has increased coal production and revenues, but also has eliminated jobs, hurting the economies of coal communities. In 1979, there were 62,500 coal miners in the Mountain State. Today there are about 22,000. In recent years, West Virginia has seen record high coal production and record low coal employment.

And change is undeniably upon the coal industry again.  The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields. 

These are real problems. They affect real people. And West Virginia’s elected officials are rightly concerned about jobs and the economic impact on local communities.  I share those concerns.  But the time has come to have an open and honest dialogue about coal’s future in West Virginia.

Let’s speak the truth. The most important factor in maintaining coal-related jobs is demand for coal. Scapegoating and stoking fear among workers over the permitting process is counter-productive.

Coal companies want a large stockpile of permits in their back pockets because that implies stability to potential investors. But when coal industry representatives stir up public anger toward federal regulatory agencies, it can damage the state’s ability to work with those agencies to West Virginia’s benefit. This, in turn, may create the perception of ineffectiveness within the industry, which can drive potential investors away.

Let’s speak a little more truth here. No deliberate effort to do away with the coal industry could ever succeed in Washington because there is no available alternative energy supply that could immediately supplant the use of coal for base load power generation in America. That is a stubborn fact that vexes some in the environmental community, but it is reality.

It is also a reality that the practice of mountaintop removal mining has a diminishing constituency in Washington. It is not a widespread method of mining, with its use confined to only three states.  Most members of Congress, like most Americans, oppose the practice, and we may not yet fully understand the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the health of our citizens. West Virginians may demonstrate anger toward the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over mountaintop removal mining, but we risk the very probable consequence of shouting ourselves out of any productive dialogue with EPA and our adversaries in the Congress.

Some have even suggested that coal state representatives in Washington should block any advancement of national health care reform legislation until the coal industry’s demands are met by the EPA. I believe that the notion of holding the health care of over 300 million Americans hostage in exchange for a handful of coal permits is beyond foolish; it is morally indefensible.  It is a non-starter, and puts the entire state of West Virginia and the coal industry in a terrible light.

To be part of any solution, one must first acknowledge a problem. To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say “deal me out.” West Virginia would be much smarter to stay at the table.

 The 20 coal-producing states together hold some powerful political cards. We can have a part in shaping energy policy, but we must be honest brokers if we have any prayer of influencing coal policy on looming issues important to the future of coal like hazardous air pollutants, climate change, and federal dollars for investments in clean coal technology.

Most people understand that America cannot meet its current energy needs without coal, but there is strong bi-partisan opposition in Congress to the mountaintop removal method of mining it. We have our work cut out for us in finding a prudent and profitable middle ground – but we will not reach it by using fear mongering, grandstanding and outrage as a strategy. As your United States Senator, I must represent the opinions and the best interests of the entire Mountain State, not just those of coal operators and southern coalfield residents who may be strident supporters of mountaintop removal mining.

I have spent the past six months working with a group of coal state Democrats in the Senate, led by West Virginia native Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), drafting provisions to assist the coal industry in more easily transitioning to a lower-carbon economy. These include increasing funding for clean coal projects and easing emission standards and timelines, setting aside billions of dollars for coal plants that install new technology and continue using coal. These are among the achievable ways coal can continue its major role in our national energy portfolio. It is the best way to step up to the challenge and help lead change.

The truth is that some form of climate legislation will likely become public policy because most American voters want a healthier environment.  Major coal-fired power plants and coal operators operating in West Virginia have wisely already embraced this reality, and are making significant investments to prepare.

The future of coal and indeed of our total energy picture lies in change and innovation. In fact, the future of American industrial power and our economic ability to compete globally depends on our ability to advance energy technology.

The greatest threats to the future of coal do not come from possible constraints on mountaintop removal mining or other environmental regulations, but rather from rigid mindsets, depleting coal reserves, and the declining demand for coal as more power plants begin shifting to biomass and natural gas as a way to reduce emissions.

Fortunately, West Virginia has a running head-start as an innovator. Low-carbon and renewable energy projects are already under development in West Virginia, including:  America’s first integrated carbon capture and sequestration project on a conventional coal-fired power plant in Mason County; the largest wind power facility in the eastern United States; a bio-fuel refinery in Nitro; three large wood pellet plants in Fayette, Randolph, and Gilmer Counties; and major dams capable of generating substantial electricity.

Change has been a constant throughout the history of our coal industry. West Virginians can choose to anticipate change and adapt to it, or resist and be overrun by it.  One thing is clear.  The time has arrived for the people of the Mountain State to think long and hard about which course they want to choose.

Today, Monday November 30^th, the Federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) took a first step to clarify how they will improve their protection of streams and also clarify the rules around returning a mined area to it’s Approximate Original Contour (AOC).  This first step is really just OSMRE gathering public opinions around how OSM should improve their protection of streams and the rules around returning mined areas back to AOC. So to be clear, this is not the OSM requesting comments on a proposed change to either the Stream Buffer Zone rule or the Approximate Original Contour rule. This is OSM collecting comments from the public on how OSM might change these rules and to the extent possible OSM would like the comments to incorporate scientific evidence to support the suggested changes.

You can download the federal notice here.

All of these changes are building off of the Memorandum of Understanding developed on June 11^th of this year between the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior (which administers OSM) and the Army Corps of Engineers. This Memorandum of Understanding is a road map for how these three government agencies will relate to each other as they improve their communication when evaluating and issuing coal mining permits.

Part of the Memorandum of Understanding said that the Obama Administration would through the legal system have the 2008 Bush Administration changes to the Stream Buffer Zone rule thrown out. However, this summer the courts rules against the Obama administrations efforts and said that if the Obama administration wanted to change the 2008 Bush administration’s Stream Buffer Zone rule change then they needed to go back through the long administrative process for such rule changes.

You can get a more detailed history of the Stream Buffer Zone rule by reading the history section of the Federal Registry, but essentially the 1983 Stream Buffer Zone rule said the coal companies were not allowed to mine within 100 feet of a perennial or intermittent stream unless they could show that their mining “would not violate State or Federal water quality standards and would not adversely affect the water quantity, quality or other environmental resources of the stream.”

The 2008 Bush administration changes did require coal companies, to the extent possible, to minimize the damage to streams when mining within the 100 foot Buffer Zone, but they also exempted certain activities from the Buffer Zone requirements such as if a stream will cease to exist in its original location as a result of the mining activity. These activities include “stream-channel diversions, construction of stream crossings, construction of sedimentation pond embankments, and construction of excess spoil fills and coal mine waste disposal facilities.”

As for the requirement that coal companies return the land to it’s Approximate Original Contour as a part of the surface mining reclamation, this has never been clearly defined. Just how much of the mine waste dirt and rock needs to be put back onto the mine site? And in Kentucky AOC does not take into consideration elevation. So a coal company can take a mountain down 300 or 500 feet but as long as the original angle from the streambed to the top of the mountain, or slope of the side of the mountain, is “approximately” maintained then for reclamation purposes the mine has achieved their AOC requirements. Meanwhile the mountain is 300 or 500 feet lower.

In 1999 OSM did a study on AOC here in Kentucky, you can read about their findings here.

If more of the waste rock and dirt were required to be placed back on the mine site and if the coal company were required to match the original elevation then less of the waste dirt and rock would be dumped over the side of the hills and into the streams below.

Here is what the federal register says about submitting comments:

DATES: To ensure consideration, we must receive your comments on or before December 30, 2009.

ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any of the following methods, although we request that you use the Federal e-rulemaking portal if possible:

• Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. The document has been assigned Docket ID: OSM–2009–0009. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments.

• Mail, hand-delivery, or courier to: Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Administrative Record, Room 252–SIB, 1951 Constitution Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20240. Please include the Docket ID (OSM–2009–0009) with your comment.

At 1:30 on Friday November 6, the U.S. Senate approved the nomination of Joe Pizarchik to be the next director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

The confirmation of Mr. Pizarchik had been stalled by an anonymous hold by a senator. However, on Friday his nomination was approved with unanimous consent so apparently the concerns of the senator who imposed the hold were alleviated.

Many coalfield community groups from across the country had expressed concerns with Pizarchik's nomination, you can read about those concerns in Ken Ward Jr. Blog, here, here, here, here and here.

The following is taken from a press release from the Citizens Coal Council, an alliance that KFTC belongs to of community organizations from across the country.

 
Washington, PA – The Citizens Coal Council (CCC), representing citizen groups and community leaders in every part of the United States where irresponsible coal mining companies create severe health, safety and environmental problems, vowed today that Senate confirmation of the Obama administration’s choice to head the federal Office of Surface Mining Regulation and Environment (OSM) will make citizens work even harder to demand genuine reform in the industry-captured Interior Department agency. 

CCC Coordinator Aimee Erickson stated, "Those in the Senate who allowed this nomination to go through are helping the Obama administration continue to enable the worst coal mining practices in this country."

Bill Price, from the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice Program, stated, “Except for the first two years, the OSM has been a dysfunctional agency. The citizens groups in Appalachia and their allies across the country are expecting increased scrutiny of the OSM by Secretary Salazar. If Mr. Pizarchik tries to run the OSM in the same manner that he ran the Bureau of Mining and Reclamation in the Pennsylvania DEP, the world will know.”

Kentucky Resource Council Director Tom Fitzgerald added, "The pressure is now really on Interior Secretary Salazar to personally see to it that genuine reform comes to Interior Department enforcement of the laws that are supposed to protect Americans against harm caused by the coal industry.  We are grateful that the Secretary is at least considering whether to start honestly enforcing mountaintop removal laws again – but in every part of America where the coal industry operates, people are losing their homes and communities, their streams and their prairie and pasturelands, because OSM simply fails to enforce the federal law regulating how the coal industry is supposed to mine and reclaim the land."

You can read the Department of the Interior's press release, here.

Students from NKU visiting a reclaimed mine site near Montgomery Creek in Perry County

The Lexington Herald-Leader published an interesting article this weekend citing evidence that very few surface mining sites actually get developed once all the coal has left the ground.  Data from this article flies in the face of the coal industry's propaganda that Eastern KY has an insatiable need for the flat land that comes from large surface mining and mountaintop removal sites.

Bill Estep reports:

For those of you who were not able to attend Tuesday's hearing in Pikeville, we've pulled together a video of some footage from inside the expo center arena of members giving comments about the Nationwide Permit 21.  Some of the audio may be difficult to hear due to the acoustics of the arena and the noise from the crowd, but it ought to give you a pretty good sense of what it was like to be there.

And for those of you who were unable to attend, you can still submit comments electronically.  We are encouraging all of our members and allies to take a moment to submit comments in support of the Army Corps' proposed rule change on valley fill permitting.  We have an action page on this issue set up where you can learn more about the issue, read talking points and submit your comment.  You have until October 26th to submit your comments.

Additionally, we have created some pages with the text of some of our members' comments and other interesting quotes from the hearing.  Follow the links below to read them:

• Read KFTC's statement given by Doug Doerrfeld
• Read statements given by other KFTC members
• Read other quotes from the hearing.