FACES Updates
Lack of Public Hearing Frustrates Coal Supporter
Jul 28 – The Office of Surface Mining’s “open house” format has drawn the ire of coal supporters that say it prevents a full demonstration of support for coal across the Appalachian region. “We need to demand a public hearing just like we are entitled to,” says Sate Senator Brandon Smith of Hazard, echoing the frustration of many coal supporters. “As a senator I am concerned that they are trying to pull this sort of slip-shuck approach about something so important.” Coal is of vital importance for all of Appalachia and in Kentucky, coal provides direct or indirect jobs for 84,000 people and $10 billion for the state’s economy. “Coal is our lifeline and coal is America’s ace in the hole, whether the Obama administration wants to realize it or not,” says State Representative Fitz Steele. “There are no party lines; it’s either you’re pro-coal or you’re anti-coal mining.” Read more in The Hazard Herald.
Op-Ed: Encourage Two-Year Restriction of EPA
Jul 26 – “The death – at least for now – of cap and trade means Obama’s administration will move forward with plans to cripple the coal industry through Environmental Protection Agency mandates,” says an op-ed in the Wheeling Intelligencer. The piece encourages Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) to push for legislation that would place a two-year hold on the EPA’s ability to create new restrictions and seek the support of fellow lawmakers for the effort. The ongoing anti-coal actions of the activist EPA – indefinitely holding needed mining permits, releasing new crippling regulatory guidance – combine to threaten thousands of jobs and the regional economy. “Reid, Pelosi and Obama will not be happy about their defeat in the Senate. They will push the EPA to accelerate its anti-coal campaign. Only a bill such as Rockefeller’s can stop it,” says the op-ed. Read more in the Wheeling Intelligencer.
NMA Files Suit Challenging Obama Administration on Mining Permits
Jul 23 – The National Mining Association filed suit against the Obama administration and EPA’s arbitrary mining regulations that threaten the future of Appalachian coal. “The agencies’ [EPA] continued abuse of the law to impose arbitrary standards on mining operations, state agencies and other federal regulatory bodies threatens the entire [Appalachian] region with further economic misery and stagnant employment,” says National Mining Association President Hal Quinn. The EPA’s April 1st, 2010 guidance imposed severe regulatory limits on mountaintop mining permits which could cause thousands to lose their jobs and impact communities across Appalachia. “Members’ efforts to navigate this unlawful process and obtain reasonable and predictable permit terms have been unsuccessful, leaving us no choice but to challenge the EPA and Corps policy in court,” says Quinn. Read more in U.S. News & World Report.
“They Don’t Care About West Virginia”
Jul 20 – “Coal is [West Virginia's] economic engine,” says WV Coal Association President Bill Raney. “Whether you like it or not, before you ask to take a person’s job, a coal miner’s job, please sit down and have a conversation about it. Don’t take a surface miner’s job based on policy. They want to mine coal and they’re good at it. They’re good people.” Raney met with Martinsburg-Berkeley County Chamber of Commerce to talk about the importance coal to the state and the frustration with an administration that is currently putting policy in front of jobs, the economic vitality of the state and a commonsense approach to the nation’s energy needs. “We’re under attack by the Obama administration,” says Raney. “They don’t care about West Virginia – they don’t care about Appalachia.” Read more in the The Journal.
Auto Fair Draws Coal Supporters
Jul 19 –“We represent the [coal] industry on a national level and we heard what a great thing was going on here and wanted to be able to support all levels of activity for the mining industry, whether it’s state, local or regional,” says Moya Phelleps of the National Mining Association on the Friends of Coal Auto Fair. The fair, which brings together enthusiasts of classic cars and supporters of Appalachian coal, in a fun, summertime setting was a success in its seventh year running. “We have had many coal miners in our family and it has always been a part of our lives, so we come to show support…” says Jeanie Harnest of Daniels, WV, one of the many coal supporters that attended the show. Read more in the Beckley Register-Herald.
Coal Vital During High-Demand Summer Months
Jul 13 – A summer temperatures rise and the demand for electricity increases dramatically, coal provides the needed energy supply that prevents grid overloading and crippling blackouts. “Coal alone is supporting the PJM [Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland] base load demand. According to the West Virginia Division of Energy, our state ranks second in coal production, at 148 million tons per year. Additionally, the coal from West Virginia is a major source of energy for 32 states,” says Truman Chafin, Majority Leader in the West Virginia Senate. Coal helps prevent blackouts in your community and helps miners in Appalachian support their families through jobs and – yet, coal has been under attack by an EPA that offers no viable solutions that match coal for our nation’s energy supply needs. “There is no concrete solution to the war on coal, but the facts remain the same. Coal is the fuel for our nation. We need it,” says Chafin. Read more in West Virginia’s legal journal, The Record.
EPA’s Delay Tactics Endanger Appalachian Jobs
Jul 12 – “According to a recent study by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s minority staff, the Appalachian region could lose one-fourth of its coal-mining jobs if the EPA continues its delay tactics. Workers in the transportation, equipment manufacturing and utility industries will also see a reduction in demand if the coal industry is dismantled,” says Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) in a Politico opinion piece. Capito is frustrated with the regulatory authority that the EPA is wielding in a punitive manner – enacting regulations that only apply to six Appalachian states without regard for the region’s jobs, communities or impact on the nation’s energy supply. “With national unemployment still hovering around 10 percent, and no relief in sight, families can ill afford to lose these good-paying jobs,” says Capito. Read more in Politico.
EPA Mining Ban Will Wipe Out Thousands of Jobs
Jul 7 – “Although it cannot create jobs, government can retard job creation. An EPA ban on mountaintop mining will wipe out thousands of jobs in Appalachia, according to the National Mining Association,” says Jeffery Folks in an American Thinker piece. Folks goes on to list the variety of ways in which the Obama administration has failed to create jobs, while utilizing an activist EPA to create arbitrary and unreachable permitting standards that will force domestic energy businesses out of existence – without regard for the thousands jobs, billions for the nation’s economy that will be lost. “The EPA may issue a permit or may be overruled by other authorities, but its behavior is a good example of the way government works — or doesn’t work,” says Folks. Read more in the American Thinker.
“We Don’t Buy that Logic”
Jul 6 – “EPA may believe that the cost of tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and millions of dollars of tax revenue is worth it to save a small number of some genera of invertebrates [mayflies], but we don’t buy that logic,” says Rick Flesher president of the coal and environmental testing firm Standard Labs. Flesher, in a Charleston Daily Mail opinion piece, decries the “unbelievably severe” conductivity standard set by the EPA when “conductivity levels are affected by both man’s activities and nature’s processes” and in light of the healthy mayfly populations in West Virginia. Flesher highlights one of the underlying aspects of the new standards – the political agenda that seeks an end to mining: “Our EPA should balance a need to continually improve water quality with protecting jobs. Their efforts can only be explained as an attempt to accomplish a political agenda – that being the elimination of mining and other industries in Appalachia.” Read more in the Charleston Daily Mail.
Countering the “War on Coal”
Jul 1 – “[WVU professor Michael] Hendryx is following a political agenda, the logical result of which would be to decimate the economy of the coal-producing states and perhaps the nation,” says International Coal Group general counsel and senior vice president Roger Nicholson in a State Journal op-ed. The piece was in response to an earlier op-ed authored by Hendryx that – using “manipulate selective facts” – vilified coal as the source West Virginia’s ills. Nicholson counters with the many benefits coal provides: the health advantages of our nation’s electrification, an abundant domestic energy supply and the many jobs coal mining provides. Nicholson also calls out the EPA’s “war on coal” and the development of unreachable standards that threaten to take away the many advantages coal has provided to West Virginia and the nation. “As the Environmental Protection Agency has waged its unrelenting war on coal, it has been unable to prove that surface mining has created long-term harmful effects to aquatic and human life downstream. Indeed, in order to achieve its goals, it had to set conductivity standards that no developmental activity — not coal mining (surface or deep mining for that matter), not road-building or even Wal-Mart construction — can meet,” says Nicholson. Read more in The State Journal.
