October 20th, 2010

An Environmental Protection Agency regional office in West Virginia has recommended that the Spruce No. 1 mine be denied a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.

If upheld by the national office, the decision to veto that permit would prohibit Spruce No. 1 from disposing of mining waste in the state’s streams. If the project is scrapped, it will cost Logan County, W.V., an estimated 250 jobs and $250 million in revenue, based on earlier commitments made by mine owner Arch Coal.

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July 8th, 2010

Activists with the Rainforest Action Network staged a sit-in today at EPA headquarters in Washington to protest the passage of a permit that will allow mountaintop removal coal mining in Logan County, West Virginia.

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February 25th, 2010

By Harriet Blake
Green Right Now

As passionate as his father was about civil rights, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is equally so about the environment.

In a lecture in Fort Worth on Wednesday, the 56-year-old son of the late Senator, advocated for moving the nation to green energy, which he doesn’t see as encompassing nuclear power.

Coal is not the only power-producing industry that needs scrubbing, said the longtime environmentalist, nuclear energy is simply not safe. “Nuclear energy is the most catastrophic form of energy. No bank will finance it…[and] no insurance company will insure it,” he said.

“It’s not just a bunch of hippies saying it’s unsafe. There are spills all the time into the Hudson,” says Kennedy, who serves as chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper, whose mission is the restoration of that waterway. Three Mile Island was not the last accident despite what nuclear advocates say.

He made it clear that lobbyists for fossil fuel and polluting energy industries are powerful and dangerous. The nuclear industry, for example, managed to find a way to get a Congressional exemption that leaves them free from damage. “All homeowners’ policies in the U.S. exclude radiation from the nuclear industry,” he said.

Kennedy believes greed has taken over the utility companies as well. “Utility companies make money by selling more energy – even if the energy is green. We need to change the rules,” he says. “Don’t reward bad behavior.”

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January 12th, 2010

Green Right Now Reports

A coalition of groups that includes the Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Coal River Mountain Watch and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, has accused coal mining giant Massey Energy of more than 12,000 violations of the Clean Water Act and mining laws related to its mining operations in West Virginia.

The groups have served the company legal notice that they intend to file a citizens lawsuit against Massey if the company does not clean up the violations in 60 days.

Massey continues to illegally dump pollution into Appalachian waterways, despite a $20 million federal fine imposed for separate, previous environmental violations, the groups reported in a news release on Monday.

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June 24th, 2009

From Green Right Now Reports:

Famed climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah and Rainforest Alliance Network Executive Director Michael Brune, along with several local residents were arrested on Tuesday while protesting mountaintop removal in Southern West Virginia.

The protesters were outside the gates of a Massey Energy plant in Raleigh County, where they sat down and blocked a roadway. Thirty-one protesters were arrested for obstructing traffic and police officers, according to the Charleston Gazette.

The protesters chose the site because Massey has a slurry (wet waste from coal operations) impoundment that sits near an elementary school.

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January 19th, 2009

By Harriet Blake

A son of Appalachia and its coalfields, Arnold “Bud” Fultz has not forgotten his hometown of Wallins Creek, Kentucky. After 25 years as an airline exec with now-defunct Pan American World Airways, he felt compelled to speak out about what the coal industry was doing to the part of the country he calls home. In his book Fixing the Ungodly Mess: A Pathway to Change (AuthorHouse, 2008), Fultz takes aim at mountaintop removal mining, a technique of withdrawing coal from the mountains by removing up to 1,000 feet of a mountain’s summit.

“My heart never left the area and I still had relatives there.. In July 1999, I was watching Nightline. The camera was panning over my old town. It was a piece about a seventh grade class that was taking on the coal industry. “

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