A woman waits for information about her family member in front of the coal mine in Handlova, central Slovakia, Monday, Aug. 10, 2009. Twenty workers were trapped underground after a fire and explosion hit the coal mine. AP photo.

Twenty miners were killed earlier this week in an explosion at a coal mine in central Slovakia, according to this report from the BBC.   The Prague Daily Monitor explained that 9 miners and 11 rescuers were underground trying to put out a fire at the time of the blast.

I’m a week behind on this one, but I wanted to point out a really interesting story from the fine folks at Living on Earth,  that explores the positive and negative of coal development on Cheyenne land in Montana. As Daniel Kraker reports:

… Over the past four decades the Cheyenne fought powerful energy interests and the federal government to keep the tribe’s vast coal deposits from being mined. They’ve adopted some of the country’s strictest air and water quality standards. But they’ve had less success dealing with chronic unemployment and substance abuse. Now a new tribal president is pushing coal as a way out of poverty.

I also stumbled onto this story from The Homer Tribune about the history of coal in Alaska.

And coverage continued this week of the scandal surrounding the coal industry’s forgery of letters opposing the American Clean Energy and Security Act, with a Greenwire/New York Times story about how environmental groups hope to  use the fraud to help their push for Senate passage of the legislation.

Greenwire/The Times also had a very interesting story about environmental groups being somewhat timid in their use of the Endangered Species Act to go after mountaintop removal coal mining:

Environmental groups say the practice is horribly destructive to the region’s water, land and wildlife — but they have been reluctant to use a powerful weapon, the Endangered Species Act, in fighting it.

The few national groups that have tried have run up against a special species review process for coal mining, and most have avoided it entirely for fear of upsetting a fragile partnership with their regional blue-collar allies.

As a result, the Appalachians have become something of a “national sacrifice area” to meet coal needs, said Tierra Curry, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Of course, the backdrop for the court ruling this week blocking the Obama administration’s efforts to reinstate the stream buffer zone rule was a lawsuit by the National Parks and Conservation Association alleging the Bush Interior Department ignored the Endangered Species Act when it rewrote that key strip-mining rule last year.

I noticed the report that business writer Tim Huber over at The Associated Press bureau put out on this court ruling. In particular, I was puzzled by this bit of background stuff:

Groups such as the Sierra Club want the practice banned, claiming it destroys mountaintops and pollutes water, among other things.

Claiming? It made me wonder if the AP ought to take a closer look at the government’s vast study of mountaintop removal which concluded, among other things:

– More than 700 miles of Appalachian streams were buried by coal-mining valley fills between 1985 and 2001. Another 475 miles of streams were “directly impacted” by coal removal areas, valley fills, roads and ponds.

–  Nobody knows for sure how many acres of Appalachia have already been damaged by mountaintop removal. But without tougher regulation and better reclamation, future mountaintop removal is expected to wipe out nearly 230,000 acres of ecologically diverse hills and hollows. But when projected future timbering is included, the total forest area in the region that could be seriously damaged in the future reaches nearly 1 million acres.

– If mountaintop removal is not dramatically curbed, many more miles of additional streams will be buried by valley fills. Streams that aren’t buried could be seriously polluted. Wildlife, songbirds and fish in a rare, ecologically diverse area will likely be lost. “All of these changes suggest that the biological integrity of the study area may be jeopardized.”

Or, maybe AP ought to read some of the latest science coming out on the issue, available right here on Coal Tattoo,  including these findings from recent EPA research:

The Study estimates that 595 square miles (380,547 acres) of the forest environment (vegetation and soils) in the study area will be cleared due surface coal mining during this 11-year period. This represents 3.4 percent of the forest area that existed in 1992. Based on a 2003 analysis, the impacts to forest and forest soils have subsequently been projected over the next 10 years. For the entire 22-year period from 1992 to 2013, the estimated forest clearing in the study area would be 1,189 square miles (761,000 acres) or 6.8 percent of the forest that existed in 1992. Should these forest not be restored, invaluable water quality and ecological services will be lost.

In other coal news this week, Debra McCown at the Bristol Herald-Courier had this story about Congressman Rick Boucher saying he plans to continue defending the coal industry — including pushing for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to continue approving strip mines through a streamlined permitting review. The story quoted Boucher’s speech to an industry group:

This campaign against surface mining is new, it is led by the more extreme environmental organizations, they clearly have targeted the Appalachian states, and unfortunately, the administration has responded to that to some extent, I think, inappropriately and … wrongly, and we’re going to do something about it.

Interestingly, Boucher was also in the position of defending his work to insert pro-coal language into the climate change bill, since the industry continues to oppose doing anything about global warming:

At the end of this process we’re going to develop a bill with which the coal industry is comfortable. We’re going to do it to your satisfaction.

And here are some more stories that caught my eye this week:

– The Wyoming Supreme Court heard arguments over a new coal-fired power plant proposed for Campbell County, according to The Associated Press.

– The West Virginia Coal Association re-elected Jim Bunn as its chairman.

– Earthjustice explained on its Web site that the Highwood Coal Plant project in Montana is officially dead.

– Interior Secretary Ken Salazar this week rasied serious concerns about a coal mining proposal that could damage Glacier National Park. Reports are here and here.

– The TVA announced it is moving toward dry storage for all of its coal-ash disposal sites.

– My buddy Don Hopey at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on the opening of a new mine rescue facility in Pennsylvania.

– Aug. 6 and Aug. 16 marked the anniversaries of the two “bumps” that killed a total six miners and three rescuers at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. Reports here and here.

– A former Kentucky mine inspector admitted to falsifying reports and failing to perform other duties.

Finally, if you haven’t seen it, here’s the video of the protest at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection office earlier this week:

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14, 2009 at 10:42 am and is filed under Media coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.