Most local readers have probably seen the billboards proclaiming that Appalachia is the Obama adminisration’s “No Job Zone,” citing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to curb the damage being done by mountaintop removal, reduce toxic air emissions from coal-fired power plants, and save the global climate from greenhouse gas pollution.  Of course, those signs are brought to us by one of the coal industry’s many front groups, this one called the “Foundation for American Coal, Energy and Security,” or “FACES of Coal.”

FACES of Coal is organized, at least in part, by Brown Communications, a Charleston-based public relations firm operated by former West Virginia Commerce Commissioner (and Gazette wine blogger) John Brown and his son, Bryan.

Now, we’ve written before here on Coal Tattoo about this series of meetings next week being held by the taxpayer funded Coal Forum to “discuss EPA’s War on Coal.” Meetings are planned in Charleston, Beckley and Wheeling where members of the state’s congressional delegation and United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts are scheduled to attack President Obama and EPA, and outline their plans for trying to defeat the president’s agenda on coal-related issues (and who knows — perhaps discuss the coal industry’s plans to defeat the president’s re-election bid).

But yesterday, I found out — through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Tomblin administration — who the state has hired to plan and promote these meetings … and guess who it is:

That’s right … Brown Communications. The same folks who are promoting the anti-Obama campaign of the coal industry are being paid by state taxpayers to, well, do the same thing. If you missed it, as I wrote earlier this week, the Coal Forum is a state effort set up by statute to, among other things, conduct “coal advocacy programs.”  Over the last two years, state lawmakers have specifically earmarked about $60,000 for the Coal Forum. The group is co-chaired by Chris Hamilton, a vice president and lobbyist for the West Virginia Coal Association, and Fred Tucker of the United Mine Workers union, so the group has always billed itself as an industry-labor effort. In the past, the Coal Forum may have worked on educational events about important mine safety issues. But the “events” section of its Website shows it has increasingly been putting resources into attacking the Obama administration and EPA.

When I checked in with Chris Hamilton yesterday, he told me that the Coal Forum’s relationship with Brown Communications was nothing new:

The Coal Forum has had a relationship with Brown Communications for probably 15 years. it’s helped with logistics and setup work for various educational events such as the ones next week.

Read the rest of this entry »

Folks in West Virginia may have heard about a series of upcoming events aimed at attacking President Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to reduce the coal industry’s impacts on the environment, public health and the global climate system.

A group called “The Coal Forum” is sponsoring the events, which include meetings next week in Charleston, Wheeling and Beckley. Listed speakers include Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, Congressman Nick Joe Rahall, Congressman David McKinley and UMWA President Cecil Roberts. Next week’s meetings are described on the Coal Forum’s website as events:

… To discuss EPA’s War on Coal and, specifically, the agency’s greenhouse gas and Utility MACT proposed rules.

These rules will significantly affect West Virginia jobs, and in fact, have already resulted in the announced premature closure of several state power plants. The purpose of the Coal Forum events are to increase awareness of the harmful impacts these rules will have on the economy of Appalachia and to discuss strategies for reversing them.

What you may not realize is that these events are sponsored and paid for by West Virginia taxpayers.

You see, the Coal Forum is kind of a creature of state statute. Check out W.Va. Code 22A-6-7. Generally, this is a section of law concerning state mine safety boards and technical committees related to those boards. But it includes a little bit of language that charges the State Coal Mine Safety and Technical Review Committee with this duty:

Provide a forum for the resolution of technical issues encountered by the board, safety education and coal advocacy programs.

Over the last two years, the state Legislature (and the governor) have specifically earmarked nearly $60,000 for the “Coal Forum” (see here and here).

The Coal Forum’s promotional materials for next week’s events say:

Stakeholders in West Virginia’s mining economy – industry leaders, mining personnel, association representatives, local legislators and policy leaders – are encouraged to attend.

There’s no mention of having any public health professionals, environmental quality experts, or anyone else who might dare to question the standard industry line about Obama’s “war on coal.” Remember, those are your tax dollars at work.

President Barack Obama walks across the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, May 8, 2012, as he arrives from a day trip to from Albany, N.Y. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As you can see from today’s Gazette story, Mining causing widespread water damage, judge told, I spent West Virginia’s primary election day in federal court down in Huntington. The testimony of one of the top scientific experts on mountaintop removal’s impacts on water quality was worth the trip:

Emily Bernhardt, a Duke University aquatic ecologist, detailed what she said are the conclusions of numerous scientific studies about mountaintop removal’s impacts on the region’s important headwater streams.

“It’s an enormous change in the chemistry of streams compared to what we see before mining,” Bernhardt told U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers.

Bernhardt said the science is clear that mountaintop removal not only buries streams with valley fill waste piles, but also sends harmful levels of various pollution runoff into stream reaches beyond those fills.

There was more:

Bernhardt walked Chambers through a list of previous scientific papers that have shown impaired aquatic life — measured through reduced diversity of insects — downstream from mining and valley fill sites. Bernhardt said studies have clearly shown this impairment related to high levels of electrical conductivity, caused by sulfates and other mining pollutants.

“The weight of the evidence is very strong,” Bernhardt said.

… [Citizen group attorney Joe] Lovett asked if any peer-reviewed scientific papers have been published that contradict this conclusion. “Not that I’m aware of,” Bernhardt said.

As best I could tell, I was the only member of the West Virginia media to attend the hearing. The solid scientific consensus about mountaintop removal’s damage to our environment — not to mention the growing evidence of its impacts on public health – doesn’t get a lot of traction with local media, where if the story is told at all, it’s generally told with false balance that presents coal company public relations statements on equal level with the weight of the scientific evidence.

It was election day, though — so most reporters and editors spent the day in hurry-up-and-wait mode, preparing to push out numbers when the returns came in last night. If only as much effort were put into really informing the public about the hard issues facing our state’s coalfields as is put into churning out those returns, speculating or “calling” races, and — thanks to modern social networking — “tweeting” about either the results.

Because when you think about it, what was going on in federal court yesterday not only said a lot about one of the most covered, and yet poorly covered, issues in West Virginia, but it also showed perfectly what’s so often wrong with the way our political and media establishment here ensures that some of the more important, but also more uncomfortable, challenges we face as a state aren’t really discussed in a way that would help us move forward.

In the courtroom, Alpha Natural Resources — the “new ownership in Southern West Virginia“, as Rep. Nick Rahall likes to call them, attempting to paint Alpha a better than Massey Energy — is doing all it can to limit what can be talked about in this lawsuit before Judge Chambers. Oddly, so is the Obama administration. And so is Judge Chambers. Alpha argues the judge has little ability to consider whether the Army Corps of Engineers was right or wrong in issuing the permit that’s being challenge.  Obama lawyers contend citizen groups have no right to put on new evidence, such as the science the Corps ignored when it approved the permit. And Judge Chambers wanted no part of any discussion of those WVU studies linking mountaintop removal to serious public health damage in the coalfields.

And in the media, the big story today is going to be Keith Judd, the Texas inmate who has apparently scored more than 40 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic party primary for president. Larry Messina’s AP story provides the conventional outlook on what this all means:

Obama’s energy policies and the Environmental Protection Agency’s handling of mining-related permits have incurred the wrath of West Virginia’s coal industry. With the state the nation’s second-biggest producer of this fossil fuel, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and Sen. Joe Manchin -both Democrats have championed the industry – have declined to say whether they will support Obama in November.

Unfortunately, the more important part of all of this doesn’t fit neatly into a quick-hit political story churned out late on election night. I’m not knocking Larry here. But the way the media covers elections, with the focus on the horse race, the advertising war, and the soundbites, doesn’t lend itself to a broader perspective.

The conventional narrative, championed by Gov. Tomblin and Sen. Manchin is this: President Obama and his people have some ingrained, unreasonable hatred of the coal industry (or maybe all fossil fuels), and their “war on coal” is killing our state’s economy. The unavoidable conclusion from this narrative is that if we could just get Obama and his EPA off our backs, West Virginia would boom again — we could have 100,000 coal miners working again, and places like McDowell County would have three movie theaters and instead of being a string of ghost towns.

Tricia Christensen wears a mask during a rally Monday, May 7, 2012, in Portland, Ore.  Columbia Riverkeeper, the Sierra Club, Climate Solutions and Greenpeace sponsored the rally to fight a half-dozen proposals to ship coal from Montana and Wyoming to Asia through Northwest ports. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Ignored in this popular narrative, though, are some important points:

– There are plenty of reasons to be worried about the coal industry’s impacts on environment and public health. There’s the clear science showing mountaintop removal’s pervasive and irreversible impacts on the region’s environment. There’s the growing evidence linking mountaintop removal to serious health problems, including cancer and birth defects. And there’s the overwhelming evidence tying the burning of coal to a variety of other serious health problems and premature deaths.

– While coal provides good-paying jobs to a fortunate, but ever-declining few in Appalachia, the last decade has seen the return of coal mining disasters at Sago, Aracoma, Kentucky Darby, Crandall Canyon and Upper Big Branch. And far, far more miners die — 10,000 in a recent decade — from black lung, a deadly disease that’s on the rise again in our region.

– Coal is a major contributor to global warming pollution, a matter that most scientists consider a grave threat to humanity.  The only way to keep using coal and combat climate change at the same time is to deploy carbon capture and storage technology broadly on power plants around the world.  Experts agree that won’t happen unless there are binding emissions reductions — something the Obama administration has proposed for new power plants in a rule that’s the latest step by EPA to prompt ridiculous rhetoric from folks in the industry.

– In Central Appalachian — meaning Southern West Virginia — coal production is in the midst of a serious decline that’s likely to see output cut in half by the end of this decade.  This trend will hit the region hard, but just try to get Sen. Manchin or Gov. Tomblin on the record about it or about their plans for seeing the state and its residents safely through this turmoil. As has been well documented, this trend has little to do with government regulations, but you won’t hear that from our political leaders.

Read the rest of this entry »