The Front Porch Blog « Appalachian Voices

EPA’s Benefits Greatly Outweigh Costs, According to OMB Report

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013 | Posted by Davis Wax

A new report shows the EPA's rules, especially on air pollution, are saving money and lives.

During their push to abolish, obstruct and stymie the Environmental Protection Agency over the past few years, House Republicans have beleaguered the agency for regulatory measures they consider “job-killing” or “anti-industry,” hoping to revert federal environmental regulation to state control or make protections obsolete altogether.

Those in favor of federal rules have argued that national standards allow for the most effective and consistent protections and, as a result, will lead to reduced costs in health care directly associated with air and water pollution.

A new report from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget makes a clear case for why the country needs the EPA. The report includes an analysis of the costs and benefits of a number of federal regulations over the past decade and shows EPA rules, especially those pertaining to air protection, to be the most costly among all the rules evaluated but also the most beneficial.

The budget office estimates that the EPA’s rules account for 58 to 80 percent of the monetized benefits of all federal rules, but 44 to 54 percent of the total costs. Out of these benefits, close to 99 percent come from rules that seek to improve air quality. The report claims that the large estimated benefits of the EPA rules following the arrival of the Clean Air Act stem mostly from the reduction of a single air pollutant: fine particulate matter.

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Stop Brushing off the Bad Stuff

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell

However complex the causes of the ongoing health crisis in Appalachia, denial accomplishes nothing but the perpetuation of the status quo. Yet every time claims that could negatively impact the coal industry surface, Appalachian legislators throw up a black sheet.

West Virginia University professor and public health researcher Dr. Michael Hendryx’s latest article, “Personal and Family Health in Rural Areas of Kentucky With and Without Mountaintop Coal Mining,” appeared in the online Journal of Rural Health a couple of days ago. The study immediately gained the attention of Kentucky media, and supporters of the coal industry have been quick to write off Hendryx’s methods and conclusions — they just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

Hendryx has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. He’s the director of the West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and after receiving a Ph.D. in psychology, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Methodology at the University of Chicago. Little of that seems to matter, however, because much of his research is concentrated on poor health in Appalachian coal-mining communities, especially those where mountaintop removal takes place.

Like other studies Hendryx has conducted, the eastern Kentucky-focused article relies on comparing data gathered in counties with mountaintop removal to data from counties without it. More than 900 residents of Rowan and Elliott counties (no mountaintop removal) and Floyd County (mountaintop removal) were asked similar questions about their family health history and incidents of cancer to those that the U.S. Center for Disease Control uses in gathering data.

After ruling out factors including tobacco use, income, education and obesity, the study found that residents of Floyd County suffer a 54 percent higher rate of death from cancer, and dramatically higher incidences of pulmonary and respiratory diseases over the past five years than residents of Elliott and Rowan counties.

These results should surprise no one, least of all the families in Floyd County that participated in the study. Yet somehow, supporters of the widespread use of mountaintop removal still refuse to consider that blowing up mountains might impact human health.

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Canvassing Against Coal Ash

Friday, March 15th, 2013 | Posted by Matt Grimley

The Red, White & Water team hit the streets near Belmont, N.C., to speak with residents who live near Duke Energy's G.G. Allen Steam Station about the threats of coal ash pollution.

Last Saturday, the Red, White and Water team traveled to Belmont, N.C., to the G.G. Allen Steam Station for a day of canvassing. Walking door-to-door, we asked residents of the communities near the coal-fired power plant if they had been impacted by water pollution.

I met Archie Dixon, who was featured in the Gaston Gazette a few months ago. Dixon had complained to Duke Energy, which owns the power plant, about coal ash staining his property and getting into his drinking water. I spoke with him while he and his grandson (also named Archie, or “Lil’ Arch”) waited for a plumber for a broken pipe on their property. In his garage sat a waist-high stack of bottled water. Mr. Dixon said that he still refuses to drink his own home’s water.

The pollution near the plant happens in two ways. One is through coal ash ponds. Coal ash is the waste byproduct from burning coal and it contains contaminants such as arsenic, mercury and chromium. Because the one active coal ash pond at G.G. Allen is an unlined impoundment, these toxics can seep into groundwater. Tests near the plant have revealed exceedances in manganese, iron and nickel in the groundwater.

Effluent is the other form of pollution at G.G. Allen — the plant wastewater that discharges directly into the surface waters of nearby Lake Wylie. Under the Clean Water Act, permits are issued for each of the plant’s discharge points. These permits, however, only set limits for traditional pollutants, including oil and grease, “total suspended solids” and pH. They rarely limit pollutants such as mercury, selenium, and arsenic. And with a lack of federal guidelines, many states don’t set their own permit limits for these toxic chemicals.

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Lesson Learned: The Buffalo Creek Flood

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 | Posted by Brian Sewell

Inspecting the Aftermath: Residents of Buffalo creek worried constantly about the stability of the slurry dams upstream. Nothing was done. Photo courtesy of West Virginia State Archives.

I woke up this morning to a frozen world. Fog and ice descended on the hills above Boone, N.C., last night and are still waiting around for the thaw. It was silent other than the periodic crack of a branch and the following echo that bounced around the hills. Stepping outside after reading Ken Ward Jr.’s remembrance of the Buffalo Creek Flood, I wondered if this stillness was similar to what the residents of communities in Logan County, W.Va., felt that morning 41 years ago today.

To contain the refuse of a coal preparation plant operated by Buffalo Mining Co., a series of three dams were built upstream from the communities along Buffalo Creek in the 1950s and 60s, as Logan County continued to grow into one of southern West Virginia’s prolific coal-producing counties. Dam No. 3, the largest, stood 60 feet above the pond and downstream dams below. When it gave way on the cold morning of Feb. 26, 1972, the others collapsed instantly.

The poor construction and regulation of coal waste impoundments that precipitated the Buffalo Creek Flood intensified during boom times when coal preparation plants used more water and produced more slurry just to keep up with coal production. As Jack Spadaro, a former superintendent at MSHA’s Mine Health and Safety Academy, told me for a story last year, “All along, as these dams were being built, they weren’t really constructed using any engineering methods. They were simply dumped, filled across the valley.”

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Virginia Transportation Board OKs Coalfields Expressway Project

Thursday, February 21st, 2013 | Posted by Nathan Jenkins

Approved on Wednesday by the Commonwealth Transportation Board, the redrawn route prioritizes Alpha Natural Resources' access to coal, not travelers' access to local communities. Click to view the full-size map.

Yesterday, Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board approved a four-lane divided highway that will flatten steep mountain ridges in southwest Virginia along a route proposed by Alpha Natural Resources — the largest coal company operating in Appalachia today.

The proposed 26-mile Coalfields Expressway is only a few miles off of several less destructive routes studied by the Virginia Department of Transportation in 2001 when it conducted a detailed environmental review of the area. The difference is that VDOT looked for a suitable place to build a highway. Alpha and other coal companies such as Rapoca Energy, on the other hand, selected the most profitable route for surface mining, using the highway as justification for the environmental toll they would inflict along the way.

This difference in purpose of the proposed routes is apparent when you look at the estimated impacts. The route VDOT selected in 2001 would have a 750-foot right of way that would disturb about 1,100 acres of land, four miles of streams and 720 acres of forest. Those impacts alone are daunting, but they pale in comparison to the redrawn route. Alpha’s path of destruction, with its 2,200-foot right of way, would flatten more than 2,100 acres, bury 12 miles of streams and clear-cut more than 2,000 acres of forest — not to mention destroy two churches and three cemeteries.

Nevertheless, VDOT sees this “coal-synergy” project as beneficial because it will cost taxpayers $2.8 billion to build, as opposed to the projected $5.1 billion without collaboration from the coal industry. The savings are disputable, however, and do not factor in the environmental cost of the road’s relocation. VDOT’s rush to make this project a reality has led them to disregard recommendations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — all of which are asking for a full environmental review of the new route.

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“I’m Here Because I Love Mountains:” Watch a speech by Appalachian Voices’ JW Randolph

Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 | Posted by

On Feb. 8, Appalachian Voices Tennessee Director, JW Randolph, spoke to members of the state legislature, the media and the environmental community. Below is a video and the transcript of his speech in support of the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act, a bill to protect the state’s virgin ridgelines from mountaintop removal coal mining.

Hello, my name is JW Randolph, and I’m proud to serve as the Tennessee Director for Appalachian Voices. I’m here to speak with you for a few minutes about efforts to protect Tennessee’s mountains, but first I want to thank the members that have joined us here this morning. Chairman Southerland and Representative Gilmore have both supported the Scenic Vistas Protection Act, and we’re happy you’re here. We’re thankful to you both and look forward to continuing to work with you to pass this important legislation. I would also like to thank those in attendance for engaging in the democratic process, and finally I’d like to thank the Tennessee Environmental Council, Gretchen Hagle, John McFadden and your team. You guys are great leaders in this movement here in Tennessee and for us here on Capitol Hill, we all appreciate you and the work you do.

I’m here because I love mountains. I grew up in a log cabin my father built in the woods, on the banks of the Tennessee River. And like many of you, I got to know my family, my place, and our history through walking the beautiful woods and waters of middle Tennessee, fishing, hiking, and 4-wheeling. The time spent in these mountains taught me about freedom, responsibility and self-reliance. This was where I learned the best of home, the best of our state, and the best of what our country has to offer. As I got older, I learned that not too far away, near our ancestral land, coal companies were blasting apart the mountains, and poisoning the streams that we ran through.

My daughter will turn two years old this month. When I was her age, there were 500 mountains across Appalachia that are no longer there. Since then there have been 2000 miles of streams buried by mining waste, and 125-square miles of The Cumberland Plateau that has been altered irrevocably. That is why its important that Tennesseans join the effort to pass the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act.

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Duke CEO Could Be New Energy Guru || N.C. Round-Up

Friday, February 8th, 2013 | Posted by Davis Wax

Over the past few weeks there has been a spurt of environmental and energy news in North Carolina and its capital, Raleigh. The developing issues include departing Charlotte-based Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers being considered for the President’s cabinet, a new bill looking to end state environmental and health rules, and the governor’s endorsement of offshore wind power.

Jim Rogers in Energy Spotlight, Mixed Record and All

With Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu officially resigned, who will become the DOE’s new chief? The business world has speculated that Jim Rogers, the outgoing CEO of Duke Energy, is a likely candidate.

Duke Energy, the company Rogers is leaving, opened three new N.C. plants in December.

GreenTech Media cited his experience with coal, gas and nuclear industries and Bloomberg Businessweek highlighted his solar and wind experience as well as his potential to bring an energy policy that “sharply reduces carbon emissions”. Rogers’ role in bringing the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte last year may also improve his chances of becoming President Obama’s head adviser on energy.

While Rogers has repeatedly stated his disinterest in joining the president’s cabinet, John Downey at the Charlotte Business Journal has pointed to Rogers’ recent Bloomberg Television interview as a sign that the out-the-door CEO has considered what he would do in such a position. When asked what he would bring to the DOE job, writes Downey, Rogers cited his years of experience in the energy sector and being able to get “the balance right between cheap, affordable energy and meeting our environmental goals.”

Under Rogers, however, Duke Energy has had a mixed reputation in supporting renewable energy in North Carolina. The company is still a paying member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which creates model state laws that frequently roll back health and environmental protections in favor of promoting industry.

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Despite Positive PR for Duke Energy, Our Water is Still at Risk

Friday, February 1st, 2013 | Posted by Sandra Diaz

Duke Energy announced it would retire the Riverbend Power Plant in April, two years ahead of schedule. A good headline, but water is still being put at risk.

Don’t like what people are saying about you? Change the conversation!

Duke Energy has gotten a ton of mileage for their decision to retire or convert some of their older, more inefficient power plants in the Tarheel State. It’s environmentally-friendly after all – recycling news stories!

And you can create a whole new news story by moving your timeline. Duke Energy announced today they will be retiring their octogenarian coal plants, Riverbend in Gaston County and Buck in Rowan County this April, nearly two years ahead of schedule.

And while we are happy that Mountain Island Lake and the Yadkin River will be suffering from less pollution from toxic heavy metals like arsenic, selenium, chromium and so on, could it be that Duke Energy is trying to distract from the PR crisis they are currently facing around their leaking coal ash impoundments?

Like the fact that Western North Carolina Alliance intends to pursue legal action against Progress Energy for not complying with the Clean Water Act and allowing illegal discharges into the French Broad River. Or that the Catawba Riverkeeper has documented seeps into Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s drinking water supply, and Lake Wylie. Or how about that the Cape Fear Riverkeeper is reporting high arsenic levels in groundwater near well water supplies at the Sutton plant in Wilmington.

On top of that, Duke University scientists publishing reports that seem to back up many of these claims. So while Duke’s announcement is indeed good news for water, we need to continue to hold Duke and Progress accountable. There is more to be done.

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Answer Me These Post-Coal Questions Three

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012 | Posted by Matt Grimley

A new blog for YES! Magazine asks, “How do we get over coal?”

That’s the question many are asking in Appalachia, where coal’s contribution to the economy is wearing thin. Already, coal is less and less abundant and more and more expensive to extract. And because it harms the environment and destroys local communities, “How do we get over coal?” is a question for Appalachia’s future.

You’ll have to read “3 Lessons for Appalachia’s Post-Coal Economy” to find the “how” out for yourself, but the gist is this: Appalachia is full of organizations that are promoting sustainable business models. That means business should benefit local residents. That means looking out for the long run. That means creating an interconnected network of new industries that will avoid the problems of leaning on only one resource.

Check it out! Appalachia’s future depends on it.

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A Physician’s Take on Coal Pollution

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

"I look at the attacks on EPA as a war on health … The Environmental Protection Agency is working mightily and against increasing odds to really make important public health decisions that are protective of human health and benefit everyone." - Dr. Alan Lockwood in an interview with Earthjustice.

A few weeks after releasing our report, The Human Cost of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining, and helping launch the No More Excuses campaign through iLoveMountains.org, I was turned on to a interview about the impacts to human health during various stages of the coal use cycle.

On Earthjustice’s Down to Earth podcast, Jessica Knoblauch spoke with Dr. Alan Lockwood, the co-chair of the Physicians for Social Responsibility’s Environment and Health Committee and the author of the new book, The Silent Epidemic: Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health.

For its short length, the interview does a great job of touching on coal’s impacts, the importance of regulations that protect human health, and why Lockwood feels it is his responsibility as a physician to educate others in the medical community, legislators and the general public about the true cost of coal. Listen to the full interview below, or read the transcript here.

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Sustaining Healthy Appalachian Communities

Friday, November 16th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

Editor’s Note: Wendy Johnston is a sixth generation West Virginian from Mercer County and the granddaughter and great granddaughter of coal miners. Her post is the second in a series of guest blogs coinciding with our “No More Excuses” campaign on iLoveMountains.org, where we ask impacted Appalachians why President Obama should make ending mountaintop removal a priority in his second term. We’re happy to feature her story here.

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"Our plea is this: please quit pitting neighbor against neighbor in a fabricated war against a finite resource, support our sustainable business ventures, invest in the future of our children so that they can stay in healthy Appalachian communities."

“Oh the West Virginia hills how majestic and how grand, with their summits bathed in glory like our Prince Emmanuel’s land. Is it any wonder then that my heart with rapture fills, as I stand once more with loved ones on those West Virginia hills?”

That is a verse from the state song of West Virginia. As a child I can remember feeling so proud every time I sang this song. As a college student living away from my family this song made me feel closer to the hills that seemed so very far away, and as a young mother just moving home after a long absence I could not wait to teach my children the song that would be their state song. Little did I know that one day the words to this song may not be true, that our majestic mountain summits would someday be destroyed and that even our loved ones gone on before us would have their resting places disturbed.

Mountaintop removal has put in jeopardy more than just those mountain summits though. This form of mining has destroyed entire communities, poisoned water systems, polluted our air and caused one of the largest health emergencies in our nation’s history.

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Moving Appalachia Forward!

Thursday, November 8th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

Editor’s Note: As part of the launch of the “No More Excuses” campaign on iLoveMountains.org, we asked people whose lives have been directly impacted by mountaintop removal coal mining to contribute their thoughts on why President Obama should make ending mountaintop removal a priority in his second term.

The first in the series is a reflection by Nick Mullins, who was born and raised in southwestern Virginia and, until recently, worked at an underground coal mine there. Nick is now studying at Berea College in eastern Kentucky and blogs on the web site he created, The Thoughtful Coal Miner.

What are the Appalachian Mountains? Are they simply huge mounds of dirt and rock covered by forests? Are they containers for vast resources of energy and wealth? To my family — who have called the Appalachian Mountains home for ten generations — the mountains are much, much more. The mountains are our life, our heritage and our happiness. They are our shelters, our providers of clean water. They are a place where community and being a neighbor is more than just living beside someone.

Unfortunately, there are also those who see our mountains only as a source of wealth, rather than as part of our homes and our culture. They see them as obstacles to profit, and the people of Appalachia as the labor resource to harvest it.

Every day more blasts are detonated and more miles of freshwater streams are destroyed by mountaintop removal mining operations in the mountains where I was raised. The clean water that families once depended upon is now and forever stained and polluted.

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Showing Faith in Appalachia’s Future

Friday, November 2nd, 2012 | Posted by Nathan Jenkins

Last Saturday, the Office of Justice & Peace of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and Hollins University in Roanoke, Va., hosted an “Eco-Evening” to discuss how environmental issues in Virginia influence poverty and human health.

I was invited to relate the devastation caused by mountaintop removal coal mining. Many attendees were seeing photos of the desecrated mountains and sludge ponds in their state and other parts of Appalachia for the first time. Groans filled the room when I said that over 25 percent of Wise County, Va. has already been leveled.

Proponents of mountaintop removal have long promised that the practice would bring economic development to the region. Instead, we’ve been left with flattening mountains, polluted air and water. Fewer than 11 percent of abandoned mountaintop removal mines sites have been developed, and many that have been are publicly funded projects such as jails and community colleges. Occasionally a Wal-Mart or strip mall take root on the rocky soil.

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A Chance to Learn and Share at Weekend in Wise

Thursday, October 18th, 2012 | Posted by Nathan Jenkins

The annual Weekend in Wise County event, hosted by the Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards, is more than an opportunity for people to witness mountaintop removal coal mining and what it leaves behind for the people of Appalachia. It is an opportunity to meet an amazing community trying to raise their families in an environment where the land and water are under attack from the very industry that claims to sustain them.

Coal is a fact of life in southwestern Virginia and it has been for more than a century. The problem now is that the industry is taking far more than they are giving back. The coal industry has found a cheaper way to mine coal: use giant machinery, employ fewer miners and leave behind more problems.

Members of the artists group, the Beehive Collective, presented their intricate portrait of "The True Cost of Coal"

The whole issue – the past, present, and future of coal – was presented in an intricate piece of art from the Beehive Collective. The artists collected people’s stories from all over Appalachia to capture this struggle. Weekend in Wise is just one of many events where the artists present the “True Cost of Coal” and tell the story behind the work.

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Welcome to Virginia’s Energy Conference, with your host King Coal

Thursday, October 11th, 2012 | Posted by Nathan Jenkins

Last week, Appalachian Voices and members of the Wise Energy for Virginia Coalition attended the Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s Energy Conference. Looking at the agenda, we were prepared for what would surely be a biased conference. But we didn’t know it would be this bad.

At every stage of the conference, the coal companies and electric utilities that survive on dirty energy completely suppressed the arguments for investment in energy efficiency and renewable generation. The state’s largest utilities, Dominion Virginia Power and Appalachian Energy, along with mountaintop removal giant Alpha Natural Resources, were the conferences top sponsors. Those sponsorships influenced the agenda, just as they influence in the Virginia General Assembly.

Virginia's energy policy is so concerned with how to keep coal relevant, Gov. McDonnell might as well wear his sponsors on his sleeve.

Dominion spent more than $5.5 million during the last decade in exchange for a hand in writing the laws under which it is regulated. That investment has proven worthwhile considering that Dominion stands to take in a $76 million bonus for spending less than $8 million on “clean” energy from other states, while building no new wind or solar in Virginia. This is just one of examples of corporate influence on energy policy reported in a white paper written by Appalachian Voices, the Sierra Club, and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Use of coal for electricity generation is declining in the Southeast, largely due to market forces. While there is a lot of natural gas coming out of some of our neighbor states, we do not have much in Virginia. What we do have is a vast potential for energy efficiency and renewable generation, yet this conference refused to acknowledge this or take the rapidly growing wind and solar industries seriously.

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Revealing the True Cost of Coal by Taking the “Con” Out of Economics

Friday, September 28th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

When it comes to revealing external costs, the true cost of coal on the environment and our health must come first.

At the Democratic National Convention, Appalachian Voices’ staff attended and participated in several panel discussions and events relevant to our work. Perhaps the most engaging forum that I was fortunate enough to attend was the “Summit for a Sustainable Economy,” hosted by the American Sustainable Business Council.

Shortly after I arrived, flipped through the materials and familiarized myself with the panelists, I began to hear things from the front of the room that piqued my curiosity, things like “Not everything with a price has value, not everything with value has a price.” It didn’t take long to realize that these were folks who understand not only the moral reasons why people must come before profit, but that it’s also just good business.

Lew Daly, director of the Sustainable Progress Initiative and a senior fellow at Demos, did not speak this priceless phrase as a spontaneous thought, but as if it were a chief operating principle that should be accepted by businesses of all sizes, publicly and privately owned.

During the transition from a manufacturing-based to service-based economy, analysts began calling it a shift to the new economy. But that period of high growth soon stalled, and eventually the bubble burst. We’ve become disillusioned with the new economy and now thousands of businesses and groups like the ASBC are revealing the true economy. They know that calculating the true cost of coal — carbon pollution, environmental degradation and its many other external costs — imposed on the local and global environment will be essential in achieving this goal.

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DNC Dispatch: Key political players attend App Voices party

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

Greetings from the DNC!

We had an absolutely fantastic evening at our “Bourbon, Bluegrass and a Better Future for Appalachia” reception in the heart of the convention area in uptown Charlotte yesterday. A full house joined us to celebrate our work protecting the environment and communities of Appalachia.

Van Jones speaks to a crowd of attendees at the App Voices reception Monday night

Van Jones delivered a powerful testimonial on the theme of “America the beautiful” in calling for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining and preserving the region’s outstanding scenic beauty. Van, a renowned environmental activist and former advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, applauded Appalachian Voices as strong defenders of the basic patriotic principles of ensuring clean air, clean water and justice for all.

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Ten Years In, the Clean Smokestacks Act Continues to Benefit Us All

Saturday, September 1st, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

Right now, members of Congress are at home hearing from their constituents about the issues they most care about. In this spirit, we joined residents of North Carolina working on water issues to visit the Charlotte office Sen. Kay Hagan. It was exciting to be in the Queen City, as it gears up for the Democratic National Convention, which Appalachian Voices will participate in next week.

On the issues important to us, Senator Hagan has voted on the side of clean air and water. She opposed a Senate Joint Resolution to overturn the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule, which will greatly reduce the amount of mercury that coal-fired power plants contribute to that air, water and fish. Hagan also opposed overturning the Cross-State Air Pollution rule which unfortunately has been having some trouble in the courts.

We took advantage of the opportunity to thank her for these votes, and encouraged her to remain strong on these issues, as we suspect these attacks will continue into the new Congress. The 112th Congress has been rated as one of the most anti-environmental Congresses ever, with 31 votes to undermine Clean Water Act protections and a total of 247 anti-environmental votes since January of 2011.

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A One-Two Punch in the Fight for Clean Water

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012 | Posted by Brian Sewell

It has been a week of good news in the fight for stronger protections against coal ash pollution. A court settlement in South Carolina and a major decision regarding the 2008 TVA Kingston coal ash spill make for a one-two punch against the poorly regulated toxic waste.

A federal court found that the Tennessee Valley Authority is ultimately liable for the December 2008 coal ash spill. The failed pond at TVA's Kingston Plant released more than one billion gallons of toxic coal ash and covered 300 acres.

This morning, a federal court ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority is liable for the massive coal ash spill at its Kingston Plant in December 2008. In his written opinion, U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan ruled that the spill resulted ultimately from TVA’s “negligent nondiscretionary conduct” — far from the unpredictable geologic event that TVA lawyers claimed was the cause during the trial.

In fact, we know more than ever just how preventable the catastrophic spill was. In the months following the event, an engineering firm hired by TVA issued a report that identified the unstable layer of soil beneath the coal ash which had gone undetected for decades as TVA continued to pile on larger amounts of the toxic waste. Subsequent reports revealed internal agency memos that contained warnings that could have prevented the spill. And in his ruling, Varlan was sure to mention that had TVA investigated and addressed the unstable pond, the spill might have been avoided.

Shorty after the coal ash pond failed, it became clear that the Kingston spill would become the worst environmental disaster of its kind in American history. TVA initially estimated that 1.7 million cubic yards burst from the pond and into the Emory and Clinch Rivers. They later had to revise that estimate to more than 5.4 million cubic yards — more than a billion gallons and 100 times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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Study Shows Extensive Downstream Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Friday, July 27th, 2012 | Posted by Emily Yu

A new scientific study has confirmed what most Appalachians have known all along: the damaging impacts of mountaintop removal mining extend far beyond the destructive sites themselves.

Photo by Matt Wasson, Appalachian Voices, 2010

Polluted stream in Magoffin County, KY

Researchers from Duke and Baylor Universities have found that a decade of mountaintop removal mining has destroyed the aquatic biodiversity of over 1,700 miles of streams in southern West Virginia. Dr. Emily Bernhardt, the study’s lead author, explains that while previous research has analyzed the nature of mountaintop removal’s ecological impacts, this is the first to look into exactly how far-reaching these impacts may be. And the results are not pretty:

After analyzing ten years of maps of a 7,500 square mile area, researchers were able to conclude that when 5% of the land was converted to mountaintop removal mining sites, the resulting mineral and heavy metal pollution was enough to kill so many sensitive aquatic species that 22% of the area’s streams would be considered biologically impaired under West Virginia criteria.

The study also estimates that while valley fills in the area have buried 480 miles of streams, ultimately, the pollution runoff may stretch to around 4 to 6 times as far. Given that previous research has demonstrated the impacts of mountaintop mining pollution on human health, think about what this might also mean for the people living farther downstream.

This is only the latest of many peer-reviewed, published scientific studies that have concluded that mountaintop removal mining damages Appalachia. How much longer can the coal industry and our legislators continue to bury their heads in the sand and blatantly ignore the science?

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