NATIONAL PBS BROADCAST/ INDEPENDENT LENS

We've just learned that Deep Down, funded by the Independent Television Service (ITVS), has been selected for the 2010-2011 slate of Independent Lens, a national Emmy-award winning PBS documentary series, whose episodes average ONE MILLION VIEWERS weekly. The show airs nationally Tuesday nights at 10:00pm on PBS. We 'll send another update when an actual air date has been set, which should be in July. The series runs from October through June each year, so we know it'll be at some point during that window.

Deep Down's broadcast premiere will be on the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day at 10:00pm on April 22nd on Kentucky Educational Television (KET). Founded in 1951, KET has broadcast media throughout Appalachia for 60 years on PBS. Typical viewership is 20,000 households in the state at this time, so we hope Deep Down will reach many households where it can make a difference. Receiving such a prime spot during PBS' Earth Day programming is a great honor, a huge vote confidence for the film for the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and a major step towards opening up the dialogue around mountaintop removal in Kentucky and beyond.

LOUISVILLE SCREENING

This Friday, March 19, the Jefferson County Chapter will host a Kentucky Premier of "DEEP DOWN: A Story From The Heart Of Coal Country." There will be a panel discussion following the film. Included in the panel will be Beverly May from the film, filmmaker Sally Rubin, and Kentucky author Silas House.

When: Friday, March 19th, 2010
Where: Clifton Center
Time: 7:30pm
Cost: $5.00

For more information about Deep Down, please visit www.deepdownfilm.org

KFTC along with the Sierra Club, Public Justice and the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment asked the U.S. EPA today to rescind the state of Kentucky's authority to enforce the pollution discharge permitting program under the Clean Water Act.

The request was based on the state's widespread failure to protect the waters of the commonwealth, especially in coal mining areas.

“Citizens know when the companies violate the law here, but they’ve stopped reporting it because they know the agency won’t do anything to enforce the law,” said Rick Handshoe, a Floyd County resident and KFTC member. "It feels like the state has lost control of what happens here. It’s the coal companies that run the law of the land around here, not the Kentucky Division of Water (DOW)."

There is a growing preponderance of data that shows the poor quality of Kentucky's waterways:

• nearly 2,500 miles of streams already fail to meet water quality standards;
• coal mining is the identified or "suspected" pollution source for much of this;
• numerous additional miles of streams are being polluted as a result of DOW’s lax or sometimes non-existent water standards and pollution permit requirements;
• the DOW has regularly issued permits that fail to address key pollutants associated with coal mining and known to be harmful. such as toxic selenium and aluminum. In most cases DOW requires almost no water testing to actually determine whether or not the water is being contaminated.
• The cumulative pollution level in a stream is currently not considered when setting limits for specific mining operations. As a result the toxicity of downstream waters in recent testing was between 3 and 55 times higher than state standards.

“The problem is much more widespread and more serious than the state admits. We found high conductivity downstream from almost every mine site we tested," said Tim Guilfoile, deputy director of the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels program, which has done extensive water testing in Kentucky. High conductivity is an indicator of badly polluted water. Water with elevated conductivity may not support aquatic life.

The state also is giving inadequate emphasis to water quality programs, as evidenced by the chronic underfunding of the Division of Water. For example, only four permit writers develop and review more than 2,300 permits.

The petition asks the EPA to take over primary responsibility for enforcing the permitting program, known as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The state currently has authority, granted to it by EPA, for enforcing this program – one of the key components of the federal Clean Water Act. But Kentucky’s water program has completely failed to prevent the widespread contamination of state waters by coal mining.

A copy of the petition is here.

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.

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.

The Charleston Gazette ran an AP story today about a bill in the Kentucky General Assembly to "encourage" coal companies to plant nectar and pollen-producing trees and plants on strip-mined mountains.

The hope, according to bee-researcher Tammy Horn, is to reduce the harmful impact of mining on state's honey bees. While KFTC has not taken a formal position on the bill, several individual KFTC members have been vocal about the issue.

Clay County KFTC member (and bee-keeper) Randy Wilson told the House committee yesterday:

"You don't have to blow up mountains to have bees. This bill is just window-dressing for the industry."

The story explained the issue this way:

"In mountaintop removal mining, forests are cleared and rock is blasted apart to get to coal buried underneath. The leftover dirt, rock and rubble is dumped into nearby valleys, sometimes covering streams. The practice has for years been a source of contention between coal operators, who say it is the most effective way to get at the coal, and environmentalists, who say it has irreversibly harmed the mountains and streams. Coal companies usually plant grasses on mined land -- not the native sourwoods, tulip poplars, goldenrods, asters and other blooming trees and plants that bees need."

The bill passed unanimously through the committee after its sponsor, Rep. Fitz Steele (D-Hazard) told members that coal companies would not be required to comply with any new rules.

Harlan County KFTC member Carl Shoupe, was also quoted in the AP story. He told the reporter that coal mining hurts creatures large and small and that the mountains would have ample blooming plants for bees if coal companies didn't destroy them. Shoupe said:

"That's what we've been trying to tell everybody. This mountaintop removal is just devastating the whole ecosystem, and no one wants to listen.''

The whole article, written by AP reporter Roger Alford, is a good read. It's too bad that Kentuckians have to go to West Virginia to find a paper willing to cover the story!

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.”

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.

You can find links to watch the debate live here or you can listen to it live on WV Public Radio.

The Canary Project will also try to do some live streaming video interviews with members of the audience. You will be able to watch these interviews by clicking this Ustream link.

If you have suggested questions you would like asked please post them in the comment section for this blog post.