Corps: MTR hearing ‘conducted in an orderly fashion’
Corps of Engineers officials, left to right, Deb Tabor, Robert Peterson, Ginger Mullins, and Meg Gaffney-Smith, ran last night’s public hearing on mountaintop removal. Gazette photo by Chris Dorst.
My buddy Ry Rivard at the Charleston Daily Mail (whose editors must not care about coal miners, since they buried his story inside their paper) reports this morning on some mountaintop removal opponents who couldn’t get into last night’s hearing and didn’t get much help from local police.
On The Huffington Post, Jeff Biggers recounts similar stories from coalfield activists.
The lead of The Associated Press story concluded that coal supporters “shouted down” those who disagreed with them, and Erica Peterson at West Virginia Public Broadcasting explained how some environmental group speakers lost some of their time at the microphone because the yelling and jeering drowned the out.
But when I asked Meg Gaffney-Smith, chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permitting program, about all of this, here’s what she said:
I believe that the hearing was conducted in an orderly fashion. It was conducted in an appropriate fashion.
Gaffney-Smith, who works in Washington but was in Charleston for last night’s hearing, continued:
I think it is difficult to manage the safety of all speakers and the intent was to ensure that the Corps could hear what was said and ensure the safety of all speakers.
Now during the hearing, Bill Price of the Sierra Club specifically asked Corps Col. Robert Peterson to have local police remove folks who were disrupting other speakers from the room.
Peterson refused, and Gaffney-Smith explained this decision to me by saying that Corps officials and local authorities were worried that removing some of the coal supporters could create a “safety problem” for Corps officials, police and other speakers in attendance. Instead, Gaffney-Smith said, the strategy was to try to “redirect” the situation so that the Corps could hear everybody who wanted to speak. She said:
My belief is that we were able to maintain order and receive comments from all of the speakers.
I don’t believe anyone was intimidated from speaking. We recognized that people were passionate and very vocal. They probably could have been more respectful.
And here’s some video of the scene outside the Civic Center:
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[…] Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette - » Corps: MTR hearing ‘conducted in an orderly fashion’ blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/10/14/corps-mtr-hearing-conducted-in-an-orderly-fashion – view page – cached Corps of Engineers officials, left to right, Deb Tabor, Robert Peterson, Ginger Mullins, and Meg Gaffney-Smith, ran last night’s public hearing on mountaintop removal. Gazette photo by Chris Dorst. — From the page […]
If the corps thinks that this hearing was conducted in an orderly fashion it is no wonder that what they are doing with the permits is such a mess. The EPA needs to oversee everything that they do in regard to the mining permits. This was joke from the beginning. I am thinking that the corps needs some people replaced and the whole agency needs a good cleaning out.
The Corp vastly underestimated the wrath of pro mtr folks. The Corp was advised beforehand that what actually happened would happen. No group, pro-mtr or anti-mtr can ever be allowed to disrupt a federal public hearing, intimidating people and police to the point that the people cannot even enter the hearing, therebydenying the people the right to participate and have their voices heard. Pure and simple, this was a blatant disregard of citizens rights and a subversion of democracy. The local police were either rendered ineffective or were simply not prepared to handle a hostile crowd. A re-hearing should now be demanded, but this time with federal mob control law enforcement. Those that attempt to disrupt a federal hearing should be taken to jail and charged, no matter which side they are on. Democracy trumps all other agendas.
The friends of coal are shooting themselves in the foot.
Right now Big Coal has hat in hand in front of Congress asking for a huge new regulatory structure required in order for carbon capture and storage to have any chance of success. To get that new regulatory structure enacted, Congress will need confidence that new enforcement mechanisms will favor long-term environmental concerns over short-term industry profit considerations. (CCS is a lot like nuclear waste… a toxic item to be stored forever.)
Pulling stunts like turning a deliberative public hearing into a political rally hurts their lobbying efforts. Proving that the Army Corp of Engineers is unable to do something as simple as run a public hearing does nothing to inspire confidence they can handle permitting processes.
Trying to out-shout, rather than reason with, people with valid concerns does little to prove the coal industry is ready to be a partner in providing oversight for a complex new technology like CCS.
Perhaps because they are there in D.C. negotiating on behalf of Big Coal, Rahall and Byrd seem to get this. The leaders here in W.Va. would do well to figure out this political calculus, too.
Well said Clem.
Clem,
I am very critical of CCS. The very notion of clean coal is an industry fiction. But I don’t think the CO2 is down there forever. I think often it will eventually mineralize. I suppose it depends a bit on the geology, but we aren’t talking the time frame associated with nuclear waste.
[…] THE VIDEO: Corps: Mountaintop Removal hearing ‘conducted in an orderly fashion’ (Coal […]
Red Desert — Interesting, I hadn’t heard that before. Does the risk of water contamination go away with mineralization?
The comparison to nuclear waste is not perfect, but the point is that stored CO2 needs to have a level of precision much closer to nuclear waste than what is in place today for, say, a typical coal ash impoundment.
[…] See original here: Blogs @ The Charleston Gazette - » Corps: MTR hearing 'conducted … […]
[…] Both the Charleston Daily Mail and the Charleston Gazette covered the event. According to a blog post by Ken Ward, the Corps claims that the hearing was “conducted in an orderly […]
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