Join KFTC's delegation to a conference and day of action focused on transition and the future of Appalachia. The events aim to advance the dialogue about current energy extraction practices, with a specific focus on ending mountaintop removal coal mining, and advocate for a renewable energy future for Appalachia on a national stage

"We envision a vibrant weekend during which thousands will learn about the challenges Appalachia faces and ways to build a movement to end the destruction and plant the seeds of a sustainable and prosperous Appalachia," said the organizers of the events.

The conference, entitled Voices from the Mountains, will be held on September 25-26, 2010. Organizers of the Voices from the Mountain conference are planning a space for regional participants to grow and connect through strategy sessions, workshops, learning, and cultural events. Topics will include both exploration of the issues facing the region and ways to move forward.

The day following the conference, September 27th, many people from the Appalachian region will gather with conference attendees for a day of mobilization and rallying on Capitol Hill. 2000 people, including movement leaders from the region, celebrities such as Ashley Judd and Silas House, and many Appalachian residents are expected to gather.

Click here to sign up or learn more.

By Randy Wilson, KFTC Member, Clay County

From July 19th-26th, a delegation of 5 from Kentucky - including Randy Wilson and two other KFTC members - participated in a Witness for Peace trip, which was focused on "The People Behind the Coal in Kentucky and Colombia." We spent the week learning about the impacts of the coal industry on communities in a northern coastal region called La Guajira.

    We got up @ 5:30 am and were on the bus by 6:00....another day on the road in the Guajira region of northern Colombia.  I don't think I saw more than 12 tourists the whole 7 days we were in that region....perfect for mining coal....nobody comes up there.  But we were there as a part of Witness for Peace observing what the mines were doing to the region.  Everywhere we went leadership said, "They promised prosperity and jobs...."and then the long list of economic, environmental, and health problems they had inherited from the coal companies.

Tabago Open Pit Operation at Cerrejon Mine

This day we had to leave the tour bus and take a four wheel van back into those villages directly effected by a coal pit the size of Long Island!   Thirty five miles long and five miles wide.  We pitched to and fro through rutted roads, crossed a swelling river once...then got caught in the rising river a second time.  Locals rustled up a long rope and a bus pulled us out to safety.  At one time all these villages were joined by a convenient trade route.  They traded tobacco, garden vegetables, goat and cattle.  They had no clear boundaries.  Their cattle ranged fair and wide.  Some indegenous tribes lived in the region before the European invasion in 1499.   But here was a different kind of invasion led by mining multinationals, supported by the US and Colombian governments, and strong armed by military and paramilitary thugs....displacing folks right and left in their path. 

Dancers in the Tamaquito Village

Some villagers were united.  Some were not.  The company picked off some, divided others.  All were in negotiations for removal.  One such village was Tomaquito, home of the indigenous Wyhuu people.  Once lord of thousands of hectares, now they were reduced to ten and bound within the confines of their village, dependant on food sources from town some 25 miles of treacherous road away.   They lived under a cool canopy of trees in mud huts with palm thatched roofs.  They performed for us a dance where the women covered from head to ankle in flaming red capes circled the open ground to the sound of a drum.  They told us of their life there.  "Once we fished, we hunted, we grew crops, we tended goats and cattle.  We had no boundaries.  We traded with nearby villages.   There was no need for electricity.   When the sun sets and night falls it is dark, but we know where we are.  We are not lost.  Once we lived in peace."

   Every year 132 million tons of Colombian coal goes to fire coal fired plants in places like Mobile,Ala, Tampa, Fla., and Salem, Ma.  These plants put us all at risk.  The very people who know how to live sustainably, who figured this out long, long ago, are being displaced by a society whose principles and policy don't have a clue.

By Teri Blanton

Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the signing of the surface mining control and reclamation act (SMCRA). This law was supposed to have brought some peace to Appalachia which had been mercilessly strip mined for decades. Unfortunately when the final deal was made, Appalachia wasn’t at the table. SMCRA represents not an effective law to protect the land but rather the best political compromise that could be reached in the heat of the moment.

You don’t have to spend much time in Eastern Kentucky to realize that the law has been a failure. Our mountains continue to be lost, streams buried and communities devastated. President Jimmy Carter almost prophesied this outcome when he expressed his disappointment in SMCRA to supporters at the Rose Garden signing ceremony. Carter knew, and we now realize, that the battle was not yet won. We carry the same signs, make the same arguments, and visit with the same parade of politicians, bureaucrats, and agencies that confronted our elders 40 to 50 years ago.

All things run in cycles, and we are now closer to ending mountaintop removal than we’ve been at any time since SMCRA was signed.  We have the attention of Congress and the Obama Administration. In the months ahead we need to commit ourselves to closing the deal that should have been made on August 3, 1977, and ending radical strip mining and mountaintop removal forever.

"Many social leaders refrain from publicly speaking out. As soon as they do, they'll become targets. They'll kill them. While telling you these stories puts the life of the person telling you at risk, it is important to get this information out. This can serve as a powerful denouncement of these activities in the U.S."

And maybe it can lead to change.

This from a human rights activist in a town called Cienaga just a few hours after our Witness for Peace delegation stepped off the plane in Colombia. In this meeting, we heard story after story of how a privately owned U.S. corporation named Drummond degrades the local community, abuses human rights and even has instructed its paramilitary forces to kill union leaders, according to community members. The message about the danger of speaking out would be echoed in nearly all the meetings we had with communities, unions and other local groups during the week.

Above (left to right): Cari Moore, John Capillo, Patty Tarquino, Nancy Reinhart, Randy Wilson

A delegation of 5 from Kentucky - including 3 KFTC members and 2 staff - participated in this Witness for Peace trip, which was focused on "The People Behind the Coal in Kentucky and Colombia." We spent the week learning about the impacts of the coal industry on communities in a northern coastal region called La Guajira.

Drummond Corporation, owned by Gary Drummond from Birmingham, AL, built a port in Cienaga about 20 years ago to ship the coal it mines to the U.S. and Europe. Drummond also purchased part of the Colombian national railroad, privatizing it to run coal.

Drummond Railway                     Drummond Port                           Barbed Wire Surrounding Port

The company now uses the railway to transport coal from its coal mine to its port, where long conveyor belts take the coal out into the sea and dump it onto barges. The port is guarded by a combination of private militia and national police and is surrounded by barbed wire. About 30 million tons of coal is exported from the port annually.

At the time of the port's construction, Drummond management promised the community that the port would yield prosperity for the people and employ local workers. Instead, community members say it is has polluted local waters with coal dust so fishing has become impossible, it has polluted the air with coal dust leading to many adults and children getting sick with rashes and respiratory problems, and it employs very few local people. The royalty monies that the mine pays are often stolen by corrupt politicians, leaving little of it invested in Cienaga community projects.

Randy Wilson, a Clay County KFTC member, responded to the stories he heard in this first meeting, saying, "It doesn't fit in my head how the U.S. – a country that preaches to the world about freedom – can step all over people here." He went on to draw parallels between the impacts of the coal industry on Colombian communities and workers and the industry's impacts in his home, eastern Kentucky.

A Cienega city representative and community activist mentioned his hopes for the future. "Our hope is in making the security situation better here so that we can organize. Our best hope is in community organizing."

Cari Moore, a Knott County KFTC member, left charged up to bring these stories back and affect change here in the U.S., in Kentucky and in Colombia.

"Injustice is everybody's business. It is so important that we show the connections [between Kentucky and Colombia], and show Colombians our reality. It is great to leave this on a note of hope, thinking about things we can do to help."

This is the first in a series of blog posts to come about the KFTC group's experience during this Witness for Peace tour in Colombia.

More than 30 years after it was temporarily exempted from national solid waste regulation laws, coal ash remains largely unregulated – but that is about to change. The U.S. EPA is soliciting public feedback on recently proposed coal ash standards and is expected to adopt some this year. If appropriately stringent controls are adopted, the industry will be forced to protect the public from exposure to coal ash toxins.

EPA  just posted the proposed rules on the federal register website and is soliciting public comments until early September. KFTC is requesting that a public hearing about these proposed regulations be held in Louisville.

To learn more about the issue, read here.

Further, Louisvillians are actively opposing a proposed 60-acre coal ash landfill currently under consideration right now for the LG&E Cane Run power plant. LG&E wants to get this expansion passed before new, more strict regulations are implemented. Eventually reaching a height of 14 stories, the proposed impoundment is located in the middle of south-end neighborhoods and is adjacent to many homes.

Learn more about the Jefferson County campaign here.

The BP/ Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a tough thing to fathom.  Although estimates of the size of the spill vary greatly and oil continues to gush into the gulf at a rate of millions of gallons per day, most credible recent estimates put the leak between 67 million and 153 million gallons of oil, covering and area that dwarfs the size of some US states.

If the oil rig explosion started in Bowling Green, the size of the spill would spread across Lexington, Louisville, Berea, Somerset, Paducah, and well into Tennessee and Indiana. 

Many of us remember the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which dumped 11 million gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.  The BP/ Deepwater Horizon spill has grown to 6 to 14 times that size since the leak began on April 20th.

It's so large, it can easily be seen from space, as evident by these June 19th images from NASA (click here for update NASA / Earth Observatory pictures and information)

It's the largest oil spill in the history of the United States and getting bigger every day.

As huge and profoundly damaging as the oil spill is to local fishing, the environment in the gulf, the lives of the 11 workers who died in the explosion, the economy, and damaging in so many ways we might not realize for years... there is one spill that is much larger and much less well-known,even in the state it happened in less than 10 years ago - Kentucky.

The Martin County Sludge Disaster happened in October of 2000 when a coal sludge impoundment owned by Massey Energy in Martin County, Kentucky gave way and exploded into nearby  waterways and communities, burying roads and houses and playgrounds.  

The Martin County spill was 306 million gallons of coal sludge, or almost exactly twice the current highest estimate of the BP/ Deepwater Horizon spill.

The much-deserved media attention, public scrutiny, and millions of dollars of fines to BP to mitigate the damages caused by their actions is a far cry from the quiet, behind-closed-doors investigation that lead to Massey energy's $5,600 fine and virtually no media attention in Martin County ten years ago. 

As different as the struggles in the Gulf and the struggles in Appalachia are, there are more similarities in terms of what we're up against.

The rest of the US bears some responsibility for what happened in Martin County, as our collective demand for "cheap" energy and the election of public officials who readily bow to the coal industry allowed Massey to cut corners, minimize safety, and get away with it all at the end of the day.  

And the rest of the US (including Kentucky) bears a measure of responsibility for what has happened in the Gulf for the same reasons. 

Some Eastern KY KFTC members say "Different holler, same story."

The Coal and Oil industries are profit maximizing machines.  They generally work for the highest profit margins, and along the way, they minimize everything else - worker pay, safety precautions, environmental protections, and they externalize costs any way they can to get communities and taxpayers to pay the costs of their business. 

And it's our job to stop them and hold them accountable - here at home where we live - and in solidarity with our neighbors in the Gulf when the problems are where they live.

KFTC has no official stance on the BP/ Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but as individuals we can all find a way to help make a difference - consume less, support government regulation of industries so these disasters happen less often, and help us put pressure on BP to spend every dime needed to clean up the spill and repair damages done to local industries and workers.

We're all in this together.

The proposed coal-burning Smith plant is refusing to die.

Your voice is needed to end it once and for all!

The coal-burning Smith plant proposed by the East Kentucky Power Cooperative is the living dead. 

It's taken hit after hit in recent weeks from the work of KFTC and our allies – we've had some good success. For example, EKPC has temporarily pulled its request for financing approval, a major audit said the plant is the "biggest risk" EKPC will face in many years, and the U.S. EPA has objections to the state-issued air permit .... yet, EKPC is marching on, seeking a permit to put millions of tons of coal ash from the plant into Kentucky's streams. It's time to tell EKPC and state officials to pull the plug and stop wasting taxpayer money. It's time for good, local, clean energy jobs instead.

You can help stop this coal zombie:

Attend the public hearing held by the Army Corps of Engineers next week, Tuesday, June 8, at 7 p.m. in Winchester. Stand with folks from all over the state to demand a clean alternative to the Smith plant. Help say it's time to end this toxic project once and for all. 

Click here if you're considering attending the hearing.

Background

This hearing is our time to make a public demonstration of our opposition to a federal permit that would allow EKPC to impact 14 miles of waterways, burying about half of them under hazardous coal ash. And, it's time to stand up once again in support of the clean and less-costly alternative of energy efficiency, weatherization and renewable energy. All Kentuckians, whether you receive your power from EKPC or not, are stakeholders in this process as the plant would contaminate the air we all breathe and the water we drink. Already, every waterway in Kentucky is already under a fish advisory warning due to mercury contamination from coal burning power plants. Click here to download a flyer with more information about the hearing and the impacts of the permit.

Now is the time to say, “Enough is enough!” The solution is simple and clear. Energy saving and renewable energy programs won’t need a permit because they won’t pollute our water. We must use this opportunity to speak out, letting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and EKPC know that this clean energy solution is the just and healthy choice, not only for EKPC ratepayers, but for all Kentuckians.

Share our Facebook event about the hearing.  If you are on Facebook you can invite your friends to the event.

This post was written by Jefferson County KFTC member and intern Beth Bissmeyer.

Hearing the stories of the devastation caused by Mountaintop Removal coal mining is what first got me involved in KFTC. A few years later, I continue to be outraged by what my friends in Eastern Kentucky deal with daily, but I now also find myself enthralled by what is happening in my hometown, Louisville, with coal ash.

Over the past few months, I've learned more about my connections to the cycle of coal beyond extraction through learning about coal ash, which is the stuff that's leftover in smokestacks and furnaces after coal is burned in power plants. In February, I first learned of E.ON's plans to add a 60-acre coal-combustion waste (CCW) landfill adjacent to their Cane Run Rd. power plant in South Louisville, five miles away from the neighborhood I grew up in and from where I now live. Coal ash is a new issue to me and to many folks, but one thing's for sure, it's not the kind of stuff you want in your neighborhood or next to your city's water source. Coal ash contains concentrated amounts of heavy metals and other pollutants that have been found to cause cancer and other health problems in humans. A 2007 EPA report found that those living near coal ash dumps have a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer. There is already a coal ash impoundment at the Cane Run Rd. site that the EPA considers “high hazard,” meaning that a dam break is likely to cause significant damage, including loss of life.

Jefferson County KFTC members have started organizing on this issue, mobilizing people to submit comments on E.ON's Section 404 permit through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and on the 401 Water Quality Certification Permit through the Kentucky Division of Water. Members made the permits viral through email and Facebook, and some also phone-banked and made fliers. Even though there was a short window of time to organize, members helped generate more than 100 letters and emails on the 404 permit.

Last Tuesday, concerned citizens were given the opportunity to speak out at a public hearing held by the Kentucky Division of Waste Management. More than 125 people filed into the cafeteria at Conway Middle School, and while some were KFTC members, most of the people there were residents who live next to the proposed coal ash landfill site who organized on their own.

Several people who spoke at the hearing told of health problems they and their neighbors have ranging from high instances of asthma, learning disabilities, kidney disease, and multiple forms of cancer. Some noted that the area is polluted enough with not only the Cane Run Rd. power station, but also multiple chemical companies and an old toxic chemical dump. Monica Burkhead, a resident of Riverside Gardens who organized people in her neighborhood to come to the hearing by putting up fliers and going door-to-door, said of the already-standing coal ash landfill,

“You've got black soot everywhere; you buy a new car and within two years, your car's paint job is shot. You've got kids that have learning disabilities. There's excessive amounts of ADHD. There's excessive amounts of cancer, kidney disease. People are sick there constantly. They're dying. I'm just sick and tired of it. I've lived there for 35 years and all I do is watch people die.”

Terri Humphrey gave comment while she and Monica held photos of the proposed site and of the 2008 Kingston coal ash spill. She spoke to the dangers of coal ash and to the frustration of finding discrepancies in information on the proposed landfill from different agencies who have a say in the process. Many residents didn't even find out about the hearing until a day or two before.

One older woman who's lived in Riverside Gardens for decades, Rose Wilson, fought back tears as she told the room that she's raised so many kids, her own and the neighborhood's, and is so tired of seeing them all get sick.

While the room was filled with people who are justifiably upset about this proposal, there was also a strong sense of community and need to act. A second hearing was promised by the Kentucky Department of Waste Management official who moderated the hearing, and Metro Council representative Judy Green said she and neighboring council representative Rick Blackwell will introduce a resolution to try to halt the application process until the EPA makes a decision on how to regulate coal ash. Still, the greatest sense of urgency came from community members.

Adonna Williams, a resident of Riverside Gardens, said, “Everybody, they get upset and they want to slack off, but you've got to stand there, you've got to fight the fight. If you don't fight the fight, if you don't keep on, if you don't keep going, then they'll always win.”

Let's keep fighting the fight.

Take Action!

Stand with Adonna, Monica, and other residents of South Louisville and speak out against this proposed coal ash landfill. Comments may be submitted in writing by the close of business on June 18^th to:

Ronald D. Gruzesky, P.E.

Division of Waste Management

200 Fair Oaks

Frankfort, KY 40601-1190

Please reference AI # 2121 and Application APE200100001 on any correspondence.

Some media coverage of the hearing:

• WAVE 3
• FOX 41
• WHAS 11
• Courier-Journal

To learn more about this issue and how you can get involved, please contact beth@kftc.org.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled two options today to regulate waste from coal-burning power plants in order to better protect public health and drinking water sources. The two competing alternatives would provide varying levels of protection to the state water resources, and could take years to implement.

“The time has come for common-sense national protections to ensure the safe disposal of coal ash,” said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “We’re proposing strong steps to address the serious risk of groundwater contamination and threats to drinking water and we’re also putting in place stronger safeguards against structural failures of coal ash impoundments. The health and the environment of all communities must be protected.”

Coal ash, also known as coal combustion waste and coal combustion residue, contains toxic chemicals and heavy metals such as arsenic and lead — pollutants that cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive problems, damage to the nervous system and kidneys, and learning disabilities in children.  Kentucky coal-burning plants generate a total of 8.5 million tons of this waste every year, housed at 44 impoundments across the state. Of these impoundments, 7 have been labeled as imminent threats to human health and safety by the EPA. To learn more about it, click here.

One proposal option, the "Subtitle C" option, would designate coal ash as a hazardous waste. This type of waste already has a national regulation and permitting system in place under the federal "Resources Conservation and Recovery Act" (RCRA). Coal-burning power plants and state enforcement agencies would be expected to take steps over the next 5 years to ensure that existing and new impoundments meet these stricter guidelines. A plethora of scientific research has shown that coal ash meets the federal definition of "hazardous" and is also leaching into groundwater and drinking water sources near storage sites.

Under option 2, or non-hazardous regulation, the EPA would require wet coal ash impoundments to be retrofitted with a composite liner, rather than being phased out. If the disposal site chooses not to comply, the regulation would prohibit receiving additional coal ash, and require the closure of the unit within five years. The closure process and post-closure groundwater monitoring would be self-implemented, with no federal or state oversight. The EPA notes that this option would be much more difficult to monitor and enforce.

Both designations would leave in place the rule allowing coal ash to be recycled in so-called "beneficial uses" such as drywall, concrete and other construction materials. Many of these uses are virtually untested for their health effects or have little benefit in application. For example, at the proposed Smith plant, which would generate 520,000 tons of the waste annually, its coal ash would be buried with structural fill, which the company describes as a "beneficial re-use." Both options would also prohibit coal ash disposal in unlined landfills, although disposal in old mining sites would still be allowed.

Jefferson County chapter member Beth Bissmeyer supports the first option. "It's outrageous that storage and disposal of a substance that contains known cancer-causing pollutants has gone unregulated for so long. I live within five miles of the Cane Run Road coal-burning power plant and coal ash landfill and roughly 10 miles from the Mill Creek power station that also stores coal ash. The more I learn about the dangers of coal ash and its harmful effects on the health of people and the environment, the more sickened I become, knowing that the safety and health of my community is being neglected. Seeing the EPA finally take some steps toward coal ash regulation is great, but I hope they go far enough and declare coal ash a "hazardous waste." To do any less would be unjust and unreasonable."

The announcement comes after the EPA failed to meet self-imposed deadlines in the past concerning the designation of coal ash as a hazardous substance. The proposals will be turned over to the public for a 90-day comment period and one or more public and stakeholder hearings, after which the EPA will announce a decision.

“I would want communities to know that I believe, that EPA believes, it is very important to get on with this regulatory process,” said Jackson. “There has been lots of discussion already. We’ve heard from elected officials, from members of congress, from state governments, from private industries. I’d like to hear from public citizens about what they think is the most effective rule.”


In December of 2008, one billion gallons of toxic coal ash burst through a dam near a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in Kingston, Tenn., polluting the Clinch and Emory rivers and launching the safety of coal ash into the national environmental debate.

The public can make comments on the proposed coal ash regulations until the end of the year once the final rule is posted (check in the next couple of weeks). Make comments by typing in EPA–HQ–RCRA–2009–0640 in the search box at www.regulations.gov.

(Parts of this blog entry are copied from Appalachian Voices)

Locations of coal ash impoundments in Kentucky:

A new study finds that people living nearest to streams polluted by coal mining are more likely to die of various types of cancer, even after adjusting for other factors that could affect health outcomes such as smoking. The study, released last week, was focused on West Virginia, but scientists believe its findings likely apply to anywhere in the Central Appalachian region that coal mining takes place.

The study took three measures into consideration - levels of stream pollution from coal mining, cancer deaths amongst residents, and proximity of those who died to areas of high mining intensity. The scientists found that, for those living near lots of coal mining and thus near streams heavily polluted by mining activities, rates of death from the following types of cancer increase:

• Respiratory
• Digestive
  
• Urinary
  
• Breast

Dr. Michael Hendryx, who testified about the public health impacts of coal mining before the Kentucky General Assembly this year, co-authored the study. Click here to read more about Dr. Hendryx's testimony and to learn more about the public health impacts of coal.

The scientists concluded that the integrity of the environment in coal mining areas is significantly related how many people die of cancer. They also state that study results suggest that coal mining demonstrates important effects on public health in these communities.

To download a handout that details the public health costs of coal-based electricity, click here.

 (Quote at right reposted from this Coal Tattoo blog story about this study.)