How Environmental Protection Really Works

Anyone who thinks that Environmental Protection agencies will really protect us as citizens should read Ken Ward Jr.'s most recent post on the Bee Tree public hearing: Does WVDEP listen to coalfield citizens about mountaintop removal mining?

Ward is an outstanding journalist and tell things like they are, not like you may want to hear them.

Dianne Bady with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition was asking O’Brien about whether the pillars holding up the roof in underground mines beneath the impoundment basin were strong enough — or whether they might crumble and damage the basin.

“You need to get your facts right,” O’Brien told Bady, shaking his head at her.

I was kind of surprised by O’Brien’s response, so I asked him: Are the pillars strong enough? What’s been done to test them? How are they being monitored?

Turns out that O’Brien, who works in WVDEP’s Office of Explosives and Blasting, was the one who didn’t have his facts right. He didn’t know the answers to my questions, even though he’d just chastised a citizen and environmental activist for asking those same questions.

This is just one more example of how the agencies that are supposed to regulate industry end up regulating the public perception of the industry instead. It is not always easy because everyone want to make sure that they get heard and so tend to speak louder. Ward notes:

Public hearings are a challenge, especially on issues that appear as divisive as mountaintop removal and when both sides are often gearing up to use the hearing more to get their message out to a larger media audience and less to actually provide meaningful input on the permit decision at hand.

You might ask what this has to do with California? Just follow any of the meetings, hearing on CA Water and you get the same effects. In both cases, we need more citizen involvement, let's call it grassroots democracy, not less.

Removing Mountain Top Removal

Readers of California Greening should know that I have been very critical of Mountaintop Removal Mining, of House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall, and very supportive of the efforts of the Green Party affiliated Mountain Party of West Virginia's efforts to stop that practice.

Ken Ward's Coal Tatoo post today provides a very good run down on what Rahall could be doing about the problems of the coal industry... but isn't.

As I’ve written before, Rahall is in quite a fix on mountaintop removal, and his position on it is certainly in conflict with his great leadership on so many other environmental and conservation measures:

Ward goes on to list the things that are not being done, the leadership that is not being shown.

And Rahall isn’t doing many of the things that he could … as chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Rahall has jurisdiction over the Department of Interior and he could use that position and that committee to hold some interesting hearings and push some tough legislation. I often wonder why he doesn’t do things like:

• Call in Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and OSMRE Director Joe Pizarchik for a committee hearing, and demand to know why they haven’t yet started writing a tougher and more clear definition of the approximate original contour reclamation standard. And if the Obama administration won’t take on the task, Rahall and his committee could put forward legislation to do it themselves.
• Haul some coal executives — maybe he could start with Blankenship — before his committee and ask them to explain why so few flattened mountaintop removal sites are being developed for new businesses or other community assets.
• Schedule another hearing with Salazar and Pizarchik, and demand to know how in the heck OSMRE is going to accomplish the tougher enforcement oversight it has promised given the budget cuts proposed for the agency by President Obama.

This is just one more example of the failures of Washington to match action to rhetoric and the result can only be a growing cynicism about the ability of Washington to do anything that has a time horizon beyond the next election. Even those Senators who appear to be bulletproof, like California's very senior Senator Feinstein, seem almost to go out of their way to kowtow to entrenched corporate interests, leaving most of the public to wonder who is running whom.

Coal's war on America.

We know that one of the major sources of the greenhouse gasses that are driving climate change is the coal the we burn to generate electricity. If nothing is done to change that, the all of the other stuff we might do would not be enough to reign in our warming climate... making 650 ppm CO2 much more likely than 350.

One would think that it might be easy for Democrats to pass some sort of climate change legislation. Well, it would if they didn't need the votes of two Senators from West Virginia, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, to stop what ever delaying tactics that Oklahoma's Sen. Inhofe has planned... and Inhofe has promised to block any attempt to address climate change.

We all know that Robert Byrd is the last of the old Southern Democrats and maybe the only one not to have changed parties. In fact, Byrd is older than sliced bread or band aids and even voted against the Civil Rights Act in 1964. That is the kind of Democrat he is.

This connection of West Virginia and coal and the political power they have makes a very long story and one that points to a lot that is wrong in this country in these times. Perhaps no one documents this better than Ken Ward Jr., a reporter for the Charleston WV Gazette and the owner of their Coal Tatoo blog. I have been following @kenwardjr on twitter and two tweets today are very interesting, worth everyone's attention even if your previous view of West Virginia ended with John Denver's Country Roads.

Click Read more! below for the real dirt and slag.


The first was a bit of a surprise. WV's coal interests are pretty well protected in the House of Representatives. Nick Rahall (WV-03 Dem.) is currently the Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resource and any mining regulations have to go through his committee. I will admit that Rahall is better than he predecessor, my own ex-Congressman Richard Pombo. But he has still been described as a "whore for coal."

Then I was surprised when one of Ward's tweets pointed me to a story on a primary opponent for Rahall.

Delegate Ralph Rodighiero of Logan filed pre-candidacy papers Friday that allow him to raise money for a possible primary challenge in the state's 3rd Congressional district.

The 46-year-old legislator says coal industry figures approached him several months ago, encouraging him to run. They are upset with the Obama administration's handling of mining permits.

It appears that maybe the "whore for Coal" is taking the votes but not putting out.

The Obama Administration is beginning to challenge mining permits and even appears to be willing to have the EPA go to court over Clean Water Act violations from mining operations and Rahall has not been able to block it. This is what happens when you don't jump through the master's hoop.

We know how much coal, and especially Massey Energy controls WV politics. After all, there was a recent trial where the Chief Justice of the WV Supreme Court had to recuse himself after it was revealed that he had been wined and dined on the French Riviera by Massey Energy's CEO Don Blankenship.

The mention of Blankenship ties to the next item I picked up from Ward. It seems that Blankenship and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are scheduled to debate the future of coal at an energy forum sponsored the University of Charleston. We have seen the way Blankenship operates. This is what Kennedy thinks:

In a column in The Washington Post in March, Kennedy referred to mountaintop removal coal mining(MTR) as "the greatest environmental tragedy ever to befall our nation."

"This radical form of strip mining has already flattened the tops of 500 mountains, buried 2,000 miles of streams, devastated our country's oldest and most diverse temperate forests, and blighted landscapes famous for their history and beauty," he wrote.

It is the ability of Corporations like Massey Energy with CEO's like Blankenship, to manipulate the political process for their own gains... and of course to protect the jobs of all of their workers, as they will tell you... that makes the prospect for meaningful action against climate change so dim. Even the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce has called for Byrd and Rockefeller to block health care legislation over actions to clean up the coal industry. Unfortunately, Byrd and Rockefeller are in a position to do just that.

Obama promised us a change. We are beginning to see a little, with the EPA, for the first time, actually going to take a look at Massey Energy's latest MTR operation as Coal River Mountain. This would never have happened in a Bush administration. But, it is far too little and far too late.

We don't think a lot about coal out here in California. We had better start doing it, our children's lives may depend on it.

Coal runs America... into the ground.

If you know much at all about the political strength of the coal industry, this article in the Phoenix Sun will not surprise you, but is till worth the read to reinforce the knowledge that a blatant 19th Century Robber Baron mentality that is still at work in the US, wrapped in the American Flag.

If you have not paid any attention to this, then it is all the more reason for your to spend some time thinking about the ramifications of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship addressing a rally in his red, white and blue shirt and introducing pro-coal coloring books into the curriculum for West Virginia's elementary school children.

Several years ago, David Cobb wrote an OpEd for the Eureka Times Standard, commenting on a right wingnut speaker named Holly Swanson whose day job was going around the country railing at all things good and Green. I quote:

Approximately 60 folks attended to hear a diatribe that included an allegation that the Green Party was engaged in a concerted effort to “brainwash” children to respect the earth. Swanson went so far as to accuse the Greens of being just like the Nazi Party of fascist Germany.

Doesn't that sound just like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck today, or the tea bagger venting their wrath on Obama as their target of opportunity.

So, here is a big cheer to Dana Silvernail who actually may be Holly Swanson's worst nightmare, a Green who actually won a seat the board of the Northern Humboldt Union High School District. As I wrote in a congratulatory note to Dana, "All you need to do is have students who respect the truth."

The Phoenix Sun article concludes:
> If you want to stay up-to-date with news on the coal front, you’re in luck. Ken Ward, Jr., the dean of American coal reporters, writes a blog for the Charleston (WV) Gazette called The Coal Tattoo. Read it and weep. And then organize.
I keep up to date by following @Jenwardjr on Twitter.

We don't think much about coal in California. The mines we once had (Parkfield, for example) have long since been abandoned. But we do need to think about where this country is headed and how very effective Coal is at controlling what we do. For example, did you know the the Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, Nick Rahall, represents the 3rd District of West Virgina which is truly ground zero for mountain top removal mining. You wonder why we can't get anything done?

You may also wonder why the Democrats are so hesitant to push for a climate change bill, or that the bill currently under consideration in the Senate - known as Kerry-Boxer - has so much provision for the future use of coal? Well, both of the Senators from WV, Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, are Dems and taking away their votes would make sure that an Republican filibuster, already promised by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, would be sustained.

I agree with the Phoenix Sun, Read this and weep. Weep for the mountains that will never be again. Weep for the citizens of Rahall's district who have no other options, whose one last public opportunity to change Coal River Mountain from a toxic cleanup site into a jobs and energy producing windcatcher has been blasted away. Then organize. If you can do nothing else, the next time you feel like a cup of coffee or a soft drink, take the money you would have spent and donate it to the West Virginia Mountain Party.