A photo of the Brushy Fork impoundment, by Vivian Stockman, with flight services provided by SouthWings.

Southern West Virginia Citizen groups have been after the state Department of Environmental Protection for a long time to address concerns they have about Massey Energy’s Brushy Fork impoundment in Raleigh County.

So, it certainly got my attention when a WVDEP news release showed up in my Inbox just a little bit ago with the headline, “WVDEP Issues Notice of Violation to Massey Energy’s Marfork Coal Subsidiary.” The release announced:

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has issued a notice of violation to Massey Energy’s Marfork Coal subsidiary for failure of an upstream expansion of its Brushy Fork Impoundment to meet the engineering factor of safety of 1.5 required for coal dams.

And, it assured the public:

The violation is limited to the area of the upstream expansion on the pool side of the dam. The existing structure at Brushy Fork, including the downstream face of the dam, complies with the required factor of safety.  There is no risk to the community downstream of the impoundment.

But the most interesting part to me (so far, that is, I’m still looking into this story and will probably have more to report later) was this:

The DEP received a 10-day notice from the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement, which notified the agency that it was aware of the safety factor issue and will take action against Massey if the DEP does not take its own action.

Does this means that WVDEP discovered this violation only after federal OSMRE inspectors brought it to their attention?

Remember that the Obama administration is trying to gear up OSMRE’s  oversight of state agencies, including starting federal inspections that are not announced to state regulators. Coal state political leaders and the mining industry, of course, are opposing these reforms.

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In this Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010, photo, retired Centralia Postmaster Tom Dempsey is photographed with in an empty Centralia, Pa., as steam rises from the ground behind him. The steam is caused by a fire that burns underground. The fire began in 1962 at the town dump and ignited an exposed coal vein, eventually forcing an exodus of more than 1,000 people, nearly the entire population of this mountain town. Almost every house was demolished. After years of delay, state officials are trying to finish their demolition work in Centralia, a borough in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania that all but ceased to exist in the 1980s after a mine fire spread beneath homes and businesses. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Here’s an interesting story by Michael Rubinkam of The Associated Press

CENTRALIA, Pa.  — Standing before the wreckage of his bulldozed home, John Lokitis Jr. felt sick to his stomach, certain that a terrible mistake had been made.He’d fought for years to stay in the house. It was one of the few left standing in the moonscape of Centralia, a once-proud coal town whose population fled an underground mine fire that began in 1962 and continues to burn.

But the state had ordered Lokitis to vacate, leaving the fourth-generation Centralian little choice but to say goodbye — to the house, and to what’s left of the town he loved.

“I never had any desire to move,” said Lokitis, 39. “It was my home.”

After years of delay, state officials are now trying to complete the demolition of Centralia, a borough in the mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania that all but ceased to exist in the 1980s after the mine fire spread beneath homes and businesses, threatening residents with poisonous gases and dangerous sinkholes.

More than 1,000 people moved out, and 500 structures were razed under a $42 million federal relocation program.

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A year ago today, I wrote a post headlined, “Welcome to Coal Tattoo … “

This is my 981st post, and so far we’ve received more than 6,100 comments. When I told my wife last night that today was Coal Tattoo’s first birthday, she responded, “Huh. It seems like it’s been longer.” My long-suffering wife — a much more creative person than I — actually named the blog. And she and my son deserve much thanks for putting up with me blogging at all hours of the day and night as I struggled to figure out this new project.

Thanks also to the management of the Gazette and to my editors who have been very patient with me doing less for the daily print paper while I blogged away on Coal Tattoo.

And especially, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and to comment, and especially to point out where I was wrong, needed to rethink something, or wasn’t being as fair as I’d like to be. This blog has been far, far more work than I ever thought it would be. But it’s also been very rewarding.

I’ve learned a lot from my readers and I hope the blog has made some contribution to a reasonable public discussion of the issues facing the coalfields.

Not much else to post today … I’m hoping this will be an open thread where folks will jump in and point out what they liked, disliked, would like to see more of, and think maybe Coal Tattoo could do without.

Thanks again for reading and commenting …

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin told home-state reporters yesterday that he was the only governor who took handouts for President Obama and his staff to the big White House energy policy meeting.

And Gov. Manchin went to great lengths to make sure we reporters got these handouts, reminding his very patient communications director, Matt Turner, several times to send them out as soon as the conference call was over.

So, I figured Coal Tattoo readers out to get a look at these documents too. Here they are:

–  Gov. Manchin’s letter to President Obama.

– Powering America’s Future, a W.Va. Division of Energy flyer.

– Gov. Manchin’s “talking points” memo about EPA mining permit reviews.

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MSHA chief Joe Main today urged coal-mine operators to support a “cultural change” in the industry, with the goal being to reach zero injuries, illnesses and deaths in the nation’s mines.

In a talk to the annual West Virginia Coal Symposium, Main told mine operators:

We should be starting a cultural change, that you have a right to go and work your entire career in a mine and come out as health and free of illness as anybody else.

A miner has the same right to that that anybody who goes to work down the street in an office or at an insurance company does.

Main discussed MSHA’s campaign to end black lung disease and talked a little bit about  the agency’s new “Rules to Live By” program for targeted enforcement of safety rules that most often are found to have been broken in mining deaths. One of two kick-off events for that project, by the way, is scheduled for next Friday here in Charleston.

Among the more interesting things Main discussed was the fact that last year, more coal miners died at U.S. surface mines than at underground mines.

Main also reminded me of a pretty remarkable statistic, given the history of death in the mines: In late 2008 and early 2009, the U.S. coal industry went for more than eight months without an underground miner being killed on the job.  The industry was just four months short of going an entire year without an underground death, Main said.

That is an amazing feat. It’s a testament to how far we’ve come. If we can make it eight months, we can make it those other four.

Tom Witt of WVU, right, and Cal Kent of Marshall University discuss the coal industry economic impact study they performed for the West Virginia Coal Association. The study was released this afternoon at the annual Coal Symposium, an industry meeting in Charleston, W.Va.

A while back, the West Virginia Coal Association retained business research centers at West Virginia University and Marshall University to “provide an economic impact analysis of the coal industry in West Virginia.”

Today, Tom Witt of WVU and Cal Kent of Marshall released the product of their work during the annual Coal Symposium, a coal association meeting here in Charleston. Here’s how the report (available online here) describes itself:

The purpose of the study is to provide the public and policy makers an unbiased and reliable determination of how important the coal industry is to West Virginia.

OK … It might have been nice — especially since Witt and Kent promote themselves as academics — if they had made it a little more clear what they weren’t going to do. Because this study is pretty one-sided, looking only at positive impacts of coal — jobs, tax revenues, etc. — and totally ignoring any potential economic costs of this major industry. It’s hardly a cost-benefit analysis and it most certainly is not what Kent called it — the “definitive study on the coal economy in West Virginia.”

More on that in a moment … first, here’s the summary of what Witt and Kent report:

– Coal provides more than 63,000 direct and indirect jobs

– Coal provides a total business volume of $25.53 billion

– Total employee compensation from coal was nearly $3.6 billion

– Total value added was $7.6 billion.

Bottom line?

Preliminary estimates released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicates that for 2008 mining, which includes coal mining, oil and gas extraction and support activities for coal, accounted for $5.7 billion or 9.2 percent of GDP in West Virginia.

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Here’s a release from U.S. EPA that may be of interest to Coal Tattoo readers:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released action plans developed by 22 electric utility facilities with coal ash impoundments, describing the measures the facilities are taking to make their impoundments safer.  The action plans are a response to EPA’s assessment reports on the structural integrity of these impoundments that the agency made public last September.  Coal ash was brought prominently to national attention in 2008 when an impoundment holding disposed ash waste generated by the Tennessee Valley Authority broke open, creating a massive spill in Kingston, TN, that covered millions of cubic yards of land and river and is regarded as one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in history. Shortly afterwards, EPA began overseeing the cleanup, as well as investigating the structural integrity of impoundments where ash waste is stored.

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Word in this morning from Beckley, where U.S. District Judge Irene Berger was scheduled to hold a hearing on Massey Energy’s request for a longer-term injunction against anti-mountaintop removal protesters.

The hearing was continued, and the temporary restraining order, which was set to expire on Feb. 10, has been extended for 14 days.

Also, the protesters have filed a motion to dismiss, and I’ve posted a copy of that here.

As of right now, no new hearing date has been set. Stay tuned …

While the rest of us were focused on President Obama’s big meeting with West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and other energy state governors, U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver issued a pretty significant ruling in a water pollution case against a Fayette County coal operation.

The ruling, which I’ve posted here, again supports the notion that private deals the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection works out with coal companies to resolve water pollution violations do not prevent citizen groups from filing their own Clean Water Act lawsuits to try to force companies to stop violating permit limits.

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House Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall today issued a letter in which he harshly criticized the Obama administration’s proposed cuts in the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s budget.

Interestingly, the West Virginia Democrat — who has long complained that OSMRE doesn’t do a very good job — did not object that the funding cuts might keep the agency from carrying out the increased enforcement and oversight Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has promised. Instead, Rahall worried that it would be unfair for states to raise coal taxes to make up for federal enforcement grants that Obama proposed to reduce.

Here’s the text of Chairman Rahall’s letter to Rep. Norm Dicks, chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee that handles the Interior Department budget:

            I am writing to register my vehement opposition to the Administration’s proposed reduction in State and Tribal regulatory grants under the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s (OSMRE) Regulation and Technology appropriation.

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