West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin has scheduled what sounds like an “all-hands-on-deck” meeting of his coal industry friends for next week … Among the list of those invited and apparently likely to attend:

– Massey Energy President Don Blankenship, CONSOL Energy CEO Brett Harvey, International Coal Group President Ben Hatfield, top officials from a dozen other coal companies, and various lobbyists from the West Virginia Coal Association.

– U.S. Reps. Nick Rahall and Shelley Moore Capito, along with representatives of Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockefeller.

[Read more →]

There’s an incredible story out today in the Miami Herald about the boy pictured above, and other residents of a small Dominican Republic town where toxic coal ash was dumped. Here’s the lead, by reporter Frances Robles:

ARROYO BARRIL, Dominican Republic — Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms.

“When I was pregnant, I was dizzy, vomiting and could barely walk,” said Maximiliano’s mother, Anajai Calcaño, 20. “My tooth cracked and fell out. Then my baby was born like that, without arms. Nothing like that had ever happened here before.”

By “before,” Calcaño means before a U.S. power company’s coal ash arrived at a nearby port, sitting there for more than two years.

She lives in a small wooden house with no indoor plumbing in a rural village in northern Dominican Republic, not far from where coal ash generated by Virginia-based AES Corp. wound up at the edge of the sea. More than 50,000 tons of coal ash laden with heavy metals was left at a port abutting local homes for years while the company, politicians, prosecutors, environmental activists and bureaucrats argued — and residents got sick.

The story goes on:

It has been six years since a contractor from Delray Beach brought the black dusty residue to the province of Samaná, and three years since the ash was cleaned up. Several civil lawsuits and criminal cases later, just when everyone thought it was over, the other shoe has dropped.

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.”

The Miami Herald site also has video and you can read documents in the lawsuit and see more photos (like the one below, of the dump site) at this site, set up by a PR firm working with lawyers for the residents.

Photos by PRforLAW LLC

[Read more →]

I’ve just learned that the U.S. Senate today confirmed Joe Pizarchik to serve as director of the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement.

The approval came through unanimous consent, meaning that whichever senator had placed an anonymous hold on Pizarchik’s nomination was somehow convinced to drop that hold.

Last month, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources approved Pizarchik’s nomination, moving it to the full Senate for a vote. But two committee members — Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Independent Bernard Sanders of Vermont — voted against Pizarchik.

Coalfield citizen groups have raised a variety of concerns about Pizarchik and have opposed his confirmation. See previous posts here, here,  here, here and here.

[Read more →]

The last we checked in on the largest mountaintop removal mining permit in West Virginia history, U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers had suspended court proceedings on the permit until this past Tuesday.

Chambers was giving Arch Coal Inc. more time to talk with U.S. EPA and the Corps of Engineers about its Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W.Va. Three weeks ago, EPA had begun proceedings to veto the Corps’ effort to approve this nearly 2,300-acre mine that would bury more than 7 miles of streams.

In an order issued yesterday, Judge Chambers extended his stay of proceedings concerning the Spruce Mine for another month, until Dec. 4.

Department of Justice lawyers had sought the extension, saying EPA wanted more time for “consultations” with the Corps and the company before deciding whether to move forward in blocking the permit.

[Read more →]

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., back to camera, presides over the committee’s vote on a climate bill. Senate Democrats sidestepped a Republican boycott, empty seats at right. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg)

Senate Democrats moved the climate change bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, despite a boycott of committee meetings by the panel’s Republican members.

But there are at least six committees with possible jurisdiction, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has promised to do a full analysis of the bill … so it’s not clear exactly what is going to happen next.

[Read more →]

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has just issued a new report outlining the findings of a review of the state’s coal-ash impoundments.

The entire report is posted here on WVDEP’s Web site. I’m still reading, but here are a couple of highlights:

– WVDEP concluded that most impoundments met the state’s dam safety rule requirements for stability.

– At least one major site, the Conner Run Dam in Marshall County (see graphic above) “has the unusual issue of major seepage from the reservoir through a hillside abutment.”

– Through this review, WVDEP discovered two American Electric Power dams in Mason County (called the Little Broad Run dams) that are not designed or constructed to comply with state dam safety rules.

– Based on National Inventory of Dams criteria, of the 20 fly-ash dams in West Virginia, eight are in satisfactory condition, seven are in fair condition, three are in poor condition and two are in unsatisfactory condition.

[Read more →]

We had a little item in the Gazette today, based on a press release from West Virginia’s delegation, about a congressional resolution to create a National Miner’s Day. But the article and the press release both left out the most interesting part: The resolution calls for the National Miner’s Day to be Dec. 6, the anniversary of the Monongah Mine Disaster, the worst coal-mining disaster in U.S. history.

Here’s the text of the congressional resolution:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

November 4, 2009

Mr. RAHALL (for himself, Mr. MOLLOHAN, and Mrs. CAPITO) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Education and Labor

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

Supporting the goals and ideals of a National Miner’s Day to celebrate and honor the contributions of miners and encouraging the people of the United States to participate in local and national activities celebrating and honoring the contributions of miners.

Whereas miners daily risk life and limb in their labors;

Whereas the foundations of civilization are constructed from, advanced by, and sustained with, the materials procured with miner’s sweat and blood;

[Read more →]

Big news out over at the West Virginia Public Service Commission, where the folks promoting the PATH power line have just asked for a 217-day delay in the proceedings.

The new filing by American Electric Power and Allegheny Power is available here.  It comes on the heels of last week’s motion by the WVPSC staff that the commission either throw out of delay consideration of the PATH application.

If approved by the WVPSC, the PATH proposal would push back formal hearings on the $1.8 billion project from February 2010 to late September 2010. The legal deadline for a ruling would be pushed back from June 2010 until January 2011.

We’ll have more details in the Gazette tomorrow.

To hear folks from the coal industry — and their politician friends — talk, you’d think that the Obama administration’s move to more closely review mountaintop removal permits has brought coal production across Appalachia to a halt — or at least driven mine operators to the brink of thousands of layoffs and economic ruin.

Take state Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin, D-Mingo, who told a statewide radio audience in West Virginia yesterday:

We’re going to see layoffs like you’ve never seen before real soon.

Or state Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin, D-Logan,  who warned the U.S. EPA in a letter last month:

It is of the utmost importance that this situation be resolved not in a matter of weeks, but days.

Such statements make local political leaders sound pretty tough — slapping around some bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., is always an easy thing for these guys to do.

These comments also fuel fear among hard-working coal miners and their families. They put pressure on regulatory agencies to back down, or make much quicker — and perhaps less thoughtful — decisions than a calmer, more reasoned debate might produce. They’ve helped the coal industry get out huge numbers of people at public meetings, and generated an atmosphere that is hardly healthy for a real discussion of mountaintop removal’s future.

But are these statements true? Is there a mountaintop removal permit crisis? Not if you believe what executives from the region’s largest publicly traded coal producers are telling industry analysts and corporate shareholders.

Over the last two weeks, coal company officials have repeatedly told stock analysts and their shareholders that they’re in pretty good shape for another year, maybe two … seems like plenty of time for everyone to sit down and come up with a workable solution without scaring workers and threatening environmental activists.

Take Massey Energy President Don Blankenship, for instance. During a conference call last week with coal industry stock analysts, Blankenship was asked about the impact of U.S. EPA’s permit reviews on Massey Energy operations:

They are very safe in detail in ‘10. In ‘11 if we had a issue with permitting on a surface mine, we would go to more deep mines …  We will be and keep ourselves in a position to make those volumes or more irregardless of which way the permitting issue evolves.

But certainly if we get a lot of pressure from the permitting side that continues on into ‘11 we will begin to get restricted to some extent and we’ll probably see a little bit higher cost on surface mining because of the placement of the material and perhaps move a little bit more to deep mining.

[Read more →]

There can be no electricity without coal.

– Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

The thought that Sen. Jay Rockefeller would somehow try to block, stonewall or mess with health-care reform to get the Obama administration to back off its increased scrutiny of mountaintop removal permits seemed a little over the top to me yesterday.

But … we haven’t heard back from Rockefeller’s office. No denials. No comments at all in response to state Senate Majority Leader Truman Chafin’s suggest that Rockefeller use health-care reform as a bargaining chip to help mountaintop removal mine operators out.

So who knows what Sen. Rockefeller is up to. But the whole thing did prompt me to go back through my notes and look at a couple of things he said on Friday at the dedication of AEP’s carbon capture project over in Mason County.

[Read more →]