WeLoveMountains

DNR's Wonderful WV Promotion of Twisted Gun Golfcourse

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:16:07 GMT

My letter below was published recently in the Charleston Gazette

I was outraged to see that the April, 2008 article in Wonderful West Virginia, a Department of Natural Recources magazine, gave two whole color page photos to the Twisted Gun Golf Course in Mingo County. I have been there and it is devastation surrounded by devastation. Nary a tree in sight and all around a view of mountain top removal stripmining. The coal companies use that golf course in their propaganda as one of the ways they have "improved" our mountains, made them "better" than they were before. For Wonderful West Virginia to promote a coal industry ad campaign by including this hapless golf course is indeed sad. To wax poetic saying that the course is located on a "heathlike plateau" is a cruel joke.

There Is No Away

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:13:21 GMT

I sent this to the Charleston Gazette on June 4.

On Thursday I took the trash out and thought once again about what I was doing. My trash will end up in what was a beautiful West Virginia valley. When that valley is filled another will be sacrificed and then another and another. Recently the people who make money by dumping garbage wanted more McDowell County valleys for dumping out of state garbage. The idea had local support. The legislature wisely saved them from themselves. Claims were made that out of state garbage would bring jobs and of course jobs are most important no matter what the damage.

Way back in 1960 I was a young engineer working in Connecticut. A friend took me to Newport, Rhode Island. It was November and in those days there were no guards to protect the seasonally vacated Newport mansions that faced out on the ocean. My friend and I climbed a fence and explored the grounds. We walked out to the edge of the magnificent rock cliffs and there I looked upon the ocean for the first time. It was indeed an awesome experience to see the seemingly limitless water swelling and crashing against the cliffs.

The feeling that oceans are limitless has led us to dump into it all kinds of garbage, chemical and nuclear waste, human urine and feces, trash and oil from ships and who knows what else. I have read that ninety percent of all the plastic ever made is now in the oceans. We even have an expression that indicates how huge we imagine the ocean--something considered to have no impact is like urinating in the ocean.

There is no “away” to where stuff we don’t like can be sent. Air pollution doesn’t just blow “away,” it goes somewhere else. Take a look at the smoke stacks at John Amos power plant. The stacks are high so that the pollution will be blown “away.” Our “away” is someone else’s backyard. That yellow stuff coming out of the stacks is sulfur dioxide. It changes to sulfuric acid and rains down on your head, your baby’s head and heads of your fellow creatures and plants and the heads of the cabbage in your garden. Some of the sulfur dioxide is removed by reacting it with calcium carbonate (limestone). A student of mine once brought me a white substance that had been dumped on the dirt road that ran by his house. We analyzed it and found that it contained calcium and sulfate. I figured that it was calcium sulfate from a power plant scrubber. The calcium sulfate had been thrown “away.”

I remember TV preacher Pat Robertson praying a hurricane “away” from his hometown of Virginia Beach. The hurricane did not go “away” it hit people farther up the coast where the reverend didn’t live and where people must have been quite sinful.

And there was my upstream neighbor who laid his trash on the creek bank to await high water to wash it “away.” It went “away” all right, it ended up in the trees in front of my house. I could tell how high the creek got by where the plastic diapers were hanging. That same neighbor was talking with me one day while enjoying a soft drink. When he finished the drink he threw the can “away” into the weeds on the edge of my yard. I picked it up and told him the can would never go “away.” But my neighbor was no guiltier of littering than I am when I send my trash via a garbage truck to a once wild and wonderful valley.

Maybe we should be required to dispose of our waste where we live. Are homes surrounded by trash any worse than concentrating it out of sight in one irreplaceable valley after another? If we had to look at and smell our garbage maybe we would quit creating so much. Back in the sixties I knew of a large household in San Francisco that generated no waste and refused to pay the garbage pickup fee. They composted their food waste and reused everything else. It can be done.

Coal companies dump mountain top removal mine waste into nearby valleys. As more mountains are decapitated more valleys will be needed and then more valleys again. There is nothing to worry about since, as any fool can see; our mountains and valleys are, like the oceans, infinite. There will always be another mountain, another valley into which waste can be thrown “away.” And once the Gazette’s favored coal company billboard slogan “clean coal” rescues us from global warming we can destroy every mountain with coal in it and not worry because, as fools assume, the mountains are infinite, the valleys are forever.

A couple of years ago my wife and I went to Alaska with an Elderhostel group. One day we got a rare glimpse of Denali as some of the cloud cover drifted away. That glimpse of North America’s highest mountain led one of our group to look in awe and say that humans cannot have any significant impact on nature because it is so huge. He argued that we don’t have to change our ways, we can do anything we want to the earth, that the earth is just too massive, never ending, infinite for mere humans to have a significant impact. In his view we are simply arrogant to think we can move those Alaska mountains. Two days later our train passed a mountain that had been removed to get at the coal. The coal was shipped to Korea to meet our nations energy needs I suppose.

Our sewage and garbage is only going to increase with increased population and coal mine waste is increasing as you read this. The oceans are not infinite, neither are the mountains and valleys. This earth is finite, there is just so much and then no more. A place called “away” does not exist. We have to come up with ways to live without creating waste that requires the sacrifice of oceans, mountains, streams and clean air.

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Religion, Huckabee and Romney

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 01:17:03 GMT

In case there is anyone reading this stuff here is something that came in an email from a friend from back in our Peace Corps days(1961-63)

In 1961, I thought that all the nonsense with religion would be over by now. But CNN brings me the news that the preacher from the biggest organized hate group in the country is surging ahead of his rival from the wackiest sect in the race to represent the Republicans, most of whose candidates have said to have reaffirmed their belief that the earth is 5,000 years old. I hope that you heard Huckabee’s explanation of his jump in the polls --- surely the work of a higher power, said he. That took my breath away.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Tags: politics, religion

Coal to Liquids Editorial Response

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:05:34 GMT

This is a response to a Charleston Gazette op-ed that I submitted yesterday.

In his December 16 Gazette commentary Roger Nicholson, a senior vice-president of International Coal Group (Sago was theirs) said he wants his children to settle in this beautiful state. He figures that coal to liquid plants will make that possible. What he fails to mention is that those plants will increase the already massive mountain top removal strip mining. With that increase there may be no beautiful West Virginia left for Nicholson’s children to find jobs. The beauty will be gone with the disappearance of even more mountains and the burial of even more streams.

Jeff Goodell says, in his book Big Coal, that about three and a half barrels of water are consumed for every barrel of fuel made from coal. Nicholson backs Governor Manchin’s goal of producing 1.3 billion gallons of fuel from coal every year. That will take about 5 billion gallons of water per year, 14 million gallons a day. Boy that ought to dry up a bunch of streams, underground aquifers and water wells. Goodell also says that the carbon dioxide produced in coal to liquid plants can be 50 to 100 percent higher than refining petroleum. Nicholson sloughs off concerns of reputable scientists about the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a view held by global warming alarmists.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Nicholson tried to place negative labels on thousands of West Virginians who love the mountains just as they are. He called us extremists, alarmists, obstructive and a vocal minority. Nicholson becomes extreme, and alarmists himself in the act of trying to scapegoat people who love mountains more than they do coal and money. For the coal industry to call anyone else extreme is a knee slapper. It is hard to imagine what could be more extreme than the massive mountain top removal strip mining that will increase with coal to liquid plants.

Contrary to Nicholson’s mean spirited labels, the people I know who love the mountains just as they are more easily fit the labels of gentle, kind, aware and intelligent. They are folks who are indeed alarmed at the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of West Virginia mountains. They are extremely angered by the burying of over a thousand miles of West Virginia headwaters. And the only thing they want to obstruct is the wholesale destruction of the environment, a very worthy obstruction.

Thanks to the first amendment to our constitution we are all free to be vocal. We are not a minority as Nicholson claims, far from it. Even if we were a minority we would still have the right to be vocal, to express our opinions, to seek mercy from the courts. Vocal is good. Indeed for democracy to survive we must be vocal when we see crimes against man and nature..

Predictably Nicholson wraps himself in the flag. He uses the phrases “help our country”, “our nation’s energy needs”. We are called upon to be patriotic, to remain silent, to be a sacrifice zone for the rest of the country. Nicholson seems to be paraphrasing the infamous quote from the Vietnam war; we have to destroy the state to save it and the nation.

And jobs, they never leave out jobs, except at the mine site. When my dad was an underground miner there were over 100,000 miners in West Virginia. Now there are less than 20,000. As Larry Gibson says if that is job creation I hope they stop before they run clear out of jobs. Whenever it will save money coal miners will continue to be replaced with machines. No matter what smoke screens the coal companies put up it is money they care about.

At hearings on mountain top removal and other forms of strip mining permits it is always the same; Speakers for the permit stand to make money from the destruction of the mountains. Those who speak against the permit are not there for the money; they are there for the mountains. Those who want more mountains destroyed are in it for the money. Upton Sinclair said it best; "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Tags: mountain top removal, coal mining jobs, global warming

Coal To Liquid Cartoon

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:06:20 GMT

http://beyondoil.nrdc.org/news/gas-from-coal.php

Tags: Coal, Coal To Gas, Mountain Top Removal

Where Does Your Electricity Come From

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:35:03 GMT

"The Sierra Club has created a New Coal Plant Tracker, http://www.sierraclub.org/coal/ Find out where your electricity comes from.

West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:10:03 GMT

Join today at www.wvhighlands.org

Ansted Mountain Top Removal

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:07:33 GMT

http://www.riseupwestvirginia.blogspot.com/

Gas Well Drilling Slide Show

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:39:25 GMT

Check out this site for a slide show on gas well drilling. The destruction seen here is very similar to what has happened to Kanawha State Forest. Kanawha State Forest has mountain top removal on two sides and gas well destruction inside.

http://wvsoro.org/galleries/index.php?spgmGal=gas_well_drilling

Where Does The Scrubber Waste Go?

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:36:12 GMT

From: Vivian Stockman [mailto:vivian@ohvec.org]
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 11:19 AM
To: a bunch of folks
Subject: AEP settlement will eventually lead to cleaner air -- but where will the scrubber waste go?

When I was teaching at Duval High School in Lincoln County a student brought me a white substance that had been spread on the dirt road that went by his home. I had him analyze it and he found that it contained Calcium and Sulfate ions. Calcium Sulfate is a by-product from power plant scrubbers. It is commonly known as gypsum which is in sheetrock. I figure it came from the John Amos power plant scrubbers. The gypsum itself, although out of place on a country road draining into creeks, is not very toxic. However all kinds of toxic chemicals come from burning coal and I suspect mercury and others were also trapped in the gypsum.

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/10/aep-settlement-will-eventually-lead-to.asp

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

AEP settlement will eventually lead to cleaner air -- but where will the scrubber waste go?

Yesterday the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a record $4.6 billion settlement with American Electric Power in a lawsuit brought by eight northeastern states and a number of environmentaladvocacy groups. The Ohio-based company also agreed to install pollution controls in order to reduce air pollution coming from its facilities, including coal-burning plants in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.

"Less air pollution from power plants means fewer cases of asthma and other respiratory illnesses," said Granta Nakayama, assistant administrator for EPA’s enforcement and compliance assurance program.

It's true that the settlement reached with the company will allow millions of people to breathe cleaner air. But it also raises a question: What will the company do with the additional coal combustion waste collected after installing more effective emissions controls?

The EPA currently does not regulate coal combustion waste as hazardous waste, and this lack of regulation is creating serious environmental problems. Across the South and the nation, coal combustion waste landfills and surface impoundments have released to the environmental toxic chemicals and metals including arsenic, lead and cadmium at levels dangerous to human health. At least 23 states including Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina have poisoned surface or groundwater supplies from the improper disposal of coal ash. As we reported last month, the agency recently released a draft risk assessment on coal combustion waste disposal that found unlined coal ash waste ponds pose a cancer risk 900 times above what the government considers acceptable.

Environmental advocacy groups have been urging EPA to begin regulating coal combustion waste as hazardous waste, and the agency is now accepting public comments on the matter. The AEP settlement and the additional waste the company's cleanup efforts will create highlight the importance of addressing this environmental hazard soon.