Friday roundup, Nov. 13, 2009
This undated photo provided by the Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance shows coal dust coming from the stacker reclaimer as workers watch at the Alaska Railroad’s Seward Coal Loading Facility in Seward, Alaska. Plumes of coal dust rise off the conveyor belt as the coal is scooped and loaded settling on boats, homes and the water. (AP Photo/Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance, Russ Maddox)
(I’m posting this week’s roundup of news and commentary early, as I’ll be away from my computer much of the day on Friday. Have a good weekend, folks. Ken)
This week, Associated Press writer Mary Pemberton reported this story from Anchorage, Alaska:
When the north wind blows in Seward, dust flies off a large pile of coal and covers the town’s scenic boat harbor in black grit.
“It is just very, very, very dirty. It piles up against homes. I get reports of it in windowsills, inside locked cars, inside boats. Folks come back after the winter and find piles of it inside their locked up boats,” said Russ Maddox with the Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance.
That local group has tried for years to fix the problem, and now three conservation groups are threatening to file a lawsuit against Alaska Railroad Corp. and Aurora Energy Services LLC, alleging they are discharging coal without a permit into Resurrection Bay - a popular destination for summer tourists.
Coal dust covers snow on a boat in storage at Major Marine Tours’ in Seward, Alaska.
Trustees for Alaska, a public interest law firm representing the Alaska Center for the Environment, Alaska Community on Toxics and the Alaska chapter of the Sierra Club late last month issued a 60-day notice of intent to sue.
From China, the week brings more bad news, with reports that eight miners were killed and 11 injured in an explosion in a mine in Shizuishan City, northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In a separate accident, six miners were missing after an outburst of coal and gas at the Majiagou coal mine in Tangshan City, north China’s Hebei Province. News of both accidents comes from the Xinhua news agency.
In Australia, the opposition party is arguing that “clean coal” has left that country behind, and probably will never work.
View of the area of Barendrecht near the filling station where plans for underground storage of CO2 in Barendrecht, Netherlands,
The AP moved a very interesting story out of the Netherlands, about a small Dutch town that is opposing a local carbon sequestration project:
The people of this small Dutch town are not against pumping tons of carbon dioxide into the ground to fight global warming.
They just wish it wasn’t right beneath their houses. “Who wants to live in Barendrecht if one of these CO2 things is built?” said retiree Marianne van Heugten.
The carbon dioxide storage experiment by Royal Dutch Shell and the Dutch government is only one of a dozen such projects across Europe to test a technology that could potentially slash emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by storing it underground.
That would allow countries that have lots of coal, such as China and the United States, to cut emissions while using the cheap but polluting fossil fuel. Carbon dioxide from the burning of such fuels is considered the chief cause of global warming.
But questions remain about the technology and its costs and risks even as the EU prepares to spend billions on it.
Out in Indiana, a wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against a mining company by the spouse of a Wyoming man who fell approximately 550 feet to his death in a coal mine air shaft. The lawsuit is alleging negligence on the part of Frontier-Kemper Constructors Inc. because they did not provide proper safety measures to 66-year-old Daniel McFadden. In addition to McFadden, Todd Richardson, 38, and Jarred Ashmore, 23, also fell to their deaths. The men were taking an August 2007 tour of the mining shaft when they all fell from the construction bucket that was holding them.
In England, as reported by the Wall Street Journal’s Environmental Capital blog, “government dithering” is being blamed for the lack of advances in “clean coal” technology.
Scientific American had a story on the big AEP CCS project at the Mountaineer Power Plant in Mason County, W.Va.
From the Rural Blog, an item I meant to mention last week: Warren Buffet’s purchase of Burlington Northern Sante Fe Corp. And another leftover item, the Courier-Journal of Louisville reports on additional mine safety inspectors hired by the state of Kentucky.
In the New Yorker, the great Elizabeth Kolbert had a fantastic review of the book, “SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.”
My buddy Osha Gray Davidson at the Phoenix Sun did an interesting report called Dirty Pictures, Courtesy of Big Coal.
Down in Tennessee, residents near the TVA coal ash disaster at Kingston are still grappling with its persistent effects, from health woes to real estate worries. One of them is Mary Helen Nichols, shown in the AP photo above, who spoke at a “citizens press conference” outside of a TVA outreach office in Kingston. Also this week, Earthjustice announced it would challenge a new permit for the Kingston plant.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Renner at Environmental Science and Technology, did a piece about the death of Dunkard Creek up in northern West Virginia.
And in North Dakota, regulators voted to drop a complaint against Falkirk Mining Co. for illegally removing topsoil to build a road in an area where the company plans to begin digging coal.
Finally, there’s a new companion of songs out to go with the movie, Coal Country. Jeff Biggers wrote about it on The Huffington Post, and here’s what he had to say:
Any CD album that begins with a haunting Uzbek-influenced trumpet and percussion backup on Ralph Stanley’s gospel classic, “Keys to the Kingdom,” and ends with Willie Nelson strumming a stunningly unaffected and heartfelt acoustic version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” goes straight to platinum on my charts.
And, the AP had an item about country singers banding together to oppose mountaintop removal. The list included Emmylou Harris, Randy Travis, Big Kenny Alphin, Dierks Bentley, Delbert McClinton, Kid Rock and J.D. Souther.
My friend Kathy Mattea wasn’t on that particular list … but here’s a great video of her singing, “Black Lung” –