Solar on Superfund Sites; Why Not On Surface-Mined Moonscapes?

The mountains of Eastern Kentucky present some of the most beautiful scenery this country has to offer - until you run smack into an abandoned surface mine.  Whether a bedrock parking lot smack up against a highwall or the amputation scar of mountaintop removal, these scenes of the coal-mining crime have defied "restoration" for decades.

Replaced soil won't stay in place on a slope; you can't build houses or anything else on solid bedrock; nothing but scrub plants will grow on a sliced-off mountaintop.

But now, finally, maybe hope.

Katie Valentine at Think Progress:

A 43-acre solar farm is now generating power at a Superfund site in Indiana, making it the nation’s largest solar farm built on a Superfund site.

The Maywood Solar Farm, which is made up of 36,000 solar panels, started producing power last month. It’s one of 85 renewable energy projects that the EPA has helped install on Superfund sites, landfills and old mining sites in the U.S., projects which together produce 507 megawatts of power.

The solar farm is located on the site of a former coal tar refinery plant, which dealt with hazardous chemicals until its closing in 1972. In the 1980s officials found that the groundwater underneath the site was contaminated with benzene and ammonia, and afterwards the area was designated as a Superfund site.

“This innovative solar project demonstrates that Superfund sites can be redeveloped,” EPA Regional Administrator Susan Hedman said in a statement. “The Maywood Solar Farm project has transformed a site with a long history of contamination into a source of renewable energy.”  

Yeah, Kentucky has a few Superfund sites.  But what it mostly has is a shitload of abandoned surface mine and mountaintop removal sites glaring like fresh scars through the forest.

Cover 'm with solar panels.  No, it's not primeval forest. But it's a vast improvement over what's there now.

Do You Love Mountains? Then Vote to Keep Them.

It's finally going to get above freezing on Wednesday - perfect for the I Love Mountains Day march on the Kentucky Capitol. Put your idea for a bright future for Kentucky on a sign and bring it to the Capitol. Tell your bright idea to your legislators. And cast your vote online for ideas for Kentucky's Bright Future.

From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

Our 9th Annual I Love Mountains Day rally and lobby day will be Wednesday, February 12, 2014 at the state capitol in Frankfort. Keep an eye on this page and Facebook page over the coming weeks as we release more information about the day. If you have any questions, please contact teri@kftc.org. If you are planning to attend, please fill out our registration form below to let us know you're coming.

Schedule for the day

• 9 a.m. to Noon - Members and groups meet with lawmakers. If you plan on coming to lobby with us before the rally, please try to schedule meetings with your legislators beforehand. Our lobby teams will be gathering in the capitol rotunda.
• Noon - Gather at the Kentucky River
• 12:30 p.m. - March from the river to the capitol steps (about 1/2 mile)
• 1:15 p.m. to 2 p.m. - Rally on the capitol steps

Cast your vote for Kentucky's Bright Future

Let us know what ideas you have to create a bright future for Kentucky! We will display all the votes that are cast online at I Love Mountains Day. Click the button below to cast your ballot.

Protector of Water Polluters Beshear Cynically Declares "Protect Your Groundwater Day"

It's a testament to the blindness/stupidity/corruption of Kentucky's supposed guardians of clean drinking water that they insist the greatest threat to groundwater wells in Kentucky is human excrement.

Mention a "straight pipe" going from someone's rural toilet directly into a nearby stream and they call out the cavalry and start issuing citations left, right and center.

But mention the massive, widespread poisoning of freshwater mountain streams by mountaintop removal coal mining, and they yawn.

Or point out the danger to the Kentucky River - which provides drinking water to millions of Kentuckians - of a proposed natural gas liquids pipeline, and Beshear dismisses it as unimportant. Or rather less important than the legal fees flowing from the pipeline company to his son's law firm.

From the press release:

Gov. Steve Beshear has proclaimed Sept. 10 as Protect Your Groundwater Day in Kentucky to help bring attention to the importance of groundwater to our communities and the need to protect this vital natural resource.

In signing the proclamation, the governor called upon Kentuckians to “help protect our source waters from pollution, to practice water conservation and to get involved in local water issues.”

Groundwater is a valuable resource for industry, commerce, agriculture and, most importantly, drinking water. In Kentucky, 2 million people rely on groundwater from wells and springs for their drinking water.

One way citizens can help protect their groundwater source is through proper water well maintenance, said DOW geologist Rob Blair.

“When we follow up on complaints about problems with private wells, the solution is usually related to well maintenance,” said Blair. “It helps to think about your well as you would your car – you’re better off performing routine maintenance rather than waiting until something goes wrong. It’s the same with wells – they need regular attention.”

Blair added that well users are often unaware of basic well maintenance needs – a problem his agency will address with a special Protect Your Groundwater Day to be held Sept. 10 at Appalshop in Whitesburg, Ky.

DOW is inviting the public to learn the basics of well maintenance at a hands-on demonstration to be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 10, in the parking lot of Appalshop, located at 91 Madison Ave.  A mock-up well and plumbing system complete with running water will illustrate the parts of a well, the pump and the piping, while DOW groundwater experts demonstrate the methods for proper cleaning and maintenance. The event is free and open to the public.

Blair said wells should be checked annually.

“If you are a well owner, inspect your well annually and disinfect it to prevent problems from arising,” said Blair.  “An annual checkup by a qualified water well contractor is the best way to ensure problem-free service and quality water. Preventive maintenance is usually less costly than emergency maintenance and it can prolong the life of your well and related equipment.”

The Kentucky Division of Water coordinates several programs aimed at protecting the Commonwealth’s groundwater. The Groundwater Protection Program requires the development and implementation of a protection plan by anyone conducting activities that have the potential to pollute groundwater. The Wellhead Protection Program requires public water supplies relying on groundwater to delineate the recharge area of the well or spring from which it draws its water, identify potential contaminant sources in this area and implement groundwater protection strategies for these areas. Additionally, the Drillers Certification Program regulates the construction of water wells.

Yes, Mountaintop Removal Mining is Killing People

How many studies saying the exact same fucking thing is it going to take?


James Bruggers at the Courier:

Residents in Floyd County, where coal is stripped from the tops of mountains, report more health problems than in other Eastern Kentucky communities, according to new research out of West Virginia University.

The study, published in the online Journal of Rural Health, is the latest to suggest links between health and mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia, said its author, Michael Hendryx, director of the university’s West Virginia Rural Health Research Center and a professor in its School of Public Health.

“Mountaintop-removal mining should stop,” said Hendryx, a psychologist and expert in health disparities. “We should develop other ways to grow the economy in these areas.”

SNIP

Rep. Greg Stumbo, the speaker of the Kentucky House of Representatives, and a Floyd County Democrat, issued two statements about the study.

The first one objected to it, citing bias. The second one said he would withhold judgment until after he’s reviewed the study, while also signaling his skepticism.

SNIP

Hendryx said one of the problems may be tiny particles of dust from coal mining near blasting zones that are so small they can penetrate the lungs and get into the blood, causing health impacts. There are also concerns about people drinking polluted water or handling contaminated soil, he said.

An infinite number of studies and a million bodies wouldn't do it, because what it's really going to take is the political will to stand up to Big Coal.  Greg "I eat coal dust on my corn flakes every morning" Stumbo ain't got it.

Best I Love Mountains Day Yet

It looked more than seven or eight hundred to me, but a thousand is possible.

KFTC members and friends celebrated their hope for Appalachia’s Bright Future at the annual I Love Mountains Day march and rally in Frankfort today.

“I believe in Harlan County’s Bright Future, in Kentucky’s Bright Future, in Appalachia’s Bright Future,” KFTC member Carl Shoupe of Benham told the crowd on the capitol steps. “But we must do more than want it. We have to dream it. We have to build it and protect it, together. We have to demand it and work for it every day. We have to organize for it and we have to vote for it.”

From the Capitol Avenue Bridge to the Capitol steps, people from toddlers to elders in wheelchairs, they marched and sang and chanted. Some had walked all the way from Prestonsburg - 140 miles. Some spent the morning before the march lobbying their representatives and senators. Mountain lovers like the gentleman below stationed outside the cafeteria mingled with suits wearing "I Love Coal" buttons. I love coal, too - so much that I want it left right where it is.

Are You Ready for I Love Mountains Day?

You cannot be a progressive/liberal/dirty-fucking-hippie in Kentucky unless you're part of I Love Mountains Day.

From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

Kentuckians For The Commonwealth’s annual I Love Mountains Day draws more than 1,000 Kentuckians to the State Capitol in Frankfort each year. Concerned citizens of all ages come together to call attention to the scale of destruction created by mountain-top removal coal mining in Kentucky and the need to begin a just transition to a more diverse, sustainable, and thriving economy in the mountains. This year’s I Love Mountains Day will take place on Thursday, February 14.

See below for more details, a schedule for the day, and registration.  Please tell your friends, schedule a day off from work, and make plans to join us again in Frankfort for this exciting day of action.

Schedule for the day

9 a.m. to 12 p.m. – Citizen Lobbying for the Mountains & Mountain Communities
Start your I Love Mountains Day off by arriving a little early for time to lobby your state lawmakers. To get started lobbying, visit Capitol Annex Room 111 to get a packet of lobby materials and have answered any questions you may have about citizen lobbying. Make sure to grab lunch before the march and rally begin.

12 p.m. — Gather at the Kentucky River Bridge
Begin your I Love Mountains Day experience at the foot of the Kentucky River. This is where we will all gather, practice a few songs and chants, and kick-off our march.

12:30 p.m. — March to the Capitol
Hold your home-made signs up high and raise your voice – we are taking our message to the Capitol! As a unified voice, hundreds of us will march together the ½ mile up Capitol Avenue to the front steps of the Capitol.

1:15 - 2:00 p.m. — Rally on the Capitol steps
Keep those chants going as we hold an energizing and fun rally on the front-steps of the Kentucky Capitol. Listen to rousing leaders who are leading the charge for an end to mountaintop removal and transition to a new, clean energy economy.

2:00 p.m. — I Love Mountains Valentine Delivery

Bring two Valentines!

Help share your love for the mountains by bringing two Valentine cards to Frankfort with you on I Love Mountains Day.

1.) Card for Governor Beshear:  We are bringing our love of the mountains directly to our Governor!  As a group, after the rally concludes, we will head into the Capitol building to drop off our Valentine Cards in the Governor’s Office to let share with him our love for clean water, our mountains, and our heritage! The power of hundreds of homemade Valentine cards arriving on his desk will help send a powerful – and passionate – message to our Governor that we need his leadership now to end mountain removal and move towards a clean energy future.

2.) Card for a KFTC grassroots leader:  Bring a card to share your love and appreciation for those working everyday to help save our mountains and mountain communities.  KFTC will have a basket in the Capitol for you to drop off your Valentine for a grassroots leader and we will deliver those Valentines after I Love Mountains Day. These everyday grassroots movement leaders are people who are standing up and speaking out in their communities for our mountains.  Your message to these leaders in the movement will help inspire and motivate them to continue the work beyond I Love Mountains Day!

Besehar So Happy We Are All Going to Die From Poisoned Water

A: Clean water regs never killed a single coal mining job and overturning them won't add a single coal mining job.

B: New clean water regs would probably save lives; the lack of them for the past several decades has certainly claimed lives.

C: No, people who work in coal country can NOT afford to buy bottled water to drink, cook and wash with.

D: Mining-poisoned water does not recognize county, state or even national borders. If there's a poisoned water source on this continent, you're imbibing it somehow. So it behooves you to work to minimize them everywhere.

E. Kentucky Governor Steve Cowardly Waste of Oxygen Beshear is a piece of shit. 

James Bruggers at the Courier: 

A federal judge has thrown out one of the key provisions of the Obama administration’s crackdown on pollution from coal mining in Appalachia, saying the EPA went too far in trying to impose tough new water-quality guidelines for states such as Kentucky.

SNIP

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear and the Kentucky Coal Association had joined the lawsuit by the National Mining Association and other plaintiffs, arguing that the EPA’s guidance had in essence established formal standards that mining companies had difficulty meeting. 

The mining association’s president, Bill Bissett, declared victory, saying the judge’s ruling could begin to ease a mining permit logjam that he said has tied up “at least 46 Eastern Kentucky mining operations.” 

Beshear likewise praised the ruling. 

“Today’s action by the federal court is a victory for coal miners who have seen mines close and their jobs put in jeopardy due, in part, to the actions of the federal EPA,” he said in a written statement. 

But environmentalists lamented the court’s ruling. 

“It’s a big deal, and it is bad news,” said Judy Petersen, executive director of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a group that advocates for clean water. “Unfortunately the decision seems to follow the pattern we’ve seen lately that appears to place further limits on the EPA’s ability to protect the public interest and public health.”

SNIP

[The mining association’s president, Bill] Bissett said the issue could also be resolved during the presidential election, which could bring a change of administrations in Washington. 

Water-poisoning, mountain-destroying, job-killing coal mine owners for Romney!

Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Is Exactly What We Have

Because it's not about global warming or pretty forest streams; it's about an unnecessary industrial practice that destroys whole communities. James Carroll at the Courier:

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, and a dozen other House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday that would impose a moratorium on new or expanded mountaintop mining in Kentucky and other Appalachian states. “The Appalachian Communities Health Emergency Act will provide the families in these communities the answers and the protection they deserve,” said Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who is the chief sponsor of the bill with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y. Yarmuth is the only Kentucky lawmaker co-sponsoring the bill. He said mountaintop mining “destroys entire ecosystems, contaminates the water supply in mining communities, and makes people sick.” “In addition, it has cost Kentucky more than half of its mining jobs,” the Louisville congressman said. “If it takes a government health study to finally end this destructive practice, I support it.” The legislation would put a hold on new or expanded mountaintop-removal mining operations until scientific research identifies the potential health risks from such mining.

Find out more about mountaintop removal mining and the efforts in Kentucky to stop it here.

What Big Dirty Energy Poisons

At the Feb. 14 I Love Mountains protest against Mountaintop Removal Mining, two points of emphasis stood out for me: the deep importance of the mountains as home to people who have lived there for a dozen generations, and the connection between Big Coal's destruction of eastern Kentucky and Big Oil's destruction of Alberta's Tar Sands.

It's the same crime: Big Dirty Energy poisoning landscapes and lives.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I have a piece out today at Alternet detailing the struggle to protect some of the United States’ most beautiful and unique landscapes from the scourge of dirty energy production. Ranging from the Sand Hills of Nebraska to West Virginia, upstate New York, the Louisiana marshlands, and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, dirty energy production threatens to devastate (and is devastating) some of the this nation’s unique places.

I also focus heavily on the impact of energy production on the human body, particularly exploring east Texas and southern Louisiana:

A polluted ecosystem leads to sick people. This is the case on the Gulf Coast from east Texas into Louisiana, where the oil industry processes its raw material. The people who live near these plants, ranging from roughly Corpus Christi to the Mississippi River, are mostly poor and African American. Petroleum companies have intentionally sited their plants here, assuming that underprivileged people cannot resist a multinational corporation. Local residents have seen high cancer rates, birth defects and congenital health problems. Working conditions in these plants are notoriously poor. A 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 17 workers and injured more than 170.

However, locals have fought back. Although environmental organizations have been reluctant to take on their cases, environmental justice movements have demanded protection from exposure to toxic chemicals. Steve Lerner’s book Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor chronicles how the community of Diamond, Louisiana took on the town’s Royal Dutch Shell complex to stop the headaches, respiratory illnesses and cancers that afflicted residents. After years of organizing, Shell finally agreed to relocate their homes away from the plant.

That’s one limited success story, but thousands of poor people live their lives subjected to the environmental racism of the petroleum industry. Our energy future needs to include processing energy in a way that protects people’s health and spreads the burden of energy production more evenly.

I Love Mountains Week Starts Tonight

The I Love Mountains Day rally at the Capitol next Tuesday, Feb. 14, has mushroomed into a full week of events you do not want to miss.

Via the indispensable Barefoot and Progressive, Lexington offers six full days of I Love Mountains events, starting tonight:

Thursday, Feb. 9th: Film Screening — Dirty Business: “Clean Coal” And The Battle For Our Energy Future // @ Homegrown Press 7 pm, FREE, 574 N Limestone

At 7:15 p.m. on Monday, the Kentucky Coffeetree Cafe on Broadway in downtown Frankfort will host a special pre-rally party.

Celebrate the marchers coming from Prestonsburg, KY, and participate in an interactive film screening of #whilewewatch.

#whilewewatch is the gripping portrait of the #OccupyWallSt media revolution. Citizens came together at Zuccotti Park with energy, intelligence and guts to impassion their message, "We are the 99%." #whilewewatch discovers the #OWS media team who had no fear of a critical city government, big corporations, hostile police, or a lagging main stream media to tell their story. Through rain, snow, grueling days, sleeping on concrete; they pumped out exhilarating ideas to the world. Fueled with little money, they relied on the power of Twitter, texting, Wi-Fi, posters, Tumblr, live streams, YouTube, Facebook, dramatic marches, drumbeats and chants.

And on Tuesday, as Kentuckians for the Commonwealth says:

Please join us on Tuesday, February 14th for I Love Mountains day to continue calling for an end to mountaintop removal and asking our leaders to share a vision for the solutions that Kentucky so desperately needs. Help us call on Governor Beshear, our state legislative leaders, and even our leaders in Washington D.C. to serve the public interest by ending mountaintop removal and looking towards a clean energy future that provide good, safe jobs and health communities.

12:00 p.m.: Gather on the front steps of the State Capitol (please eat lunch before you arrive).

12:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.: Rally and march. Our rally will feature special guest speaker, Tar Sands Activist Melina Laboucan-Massimo

Coal mining harms Kentucky and Kentuckians in many more ways than mountaintop removal, as horrific as that is.

John Cheves at the Herald:

Kentucky's leaders should consider the health hazards of mining, moving and burning coal as they craft the state's energy policy, an environmental group said (in January).

The Kentucky Environmental Foundation, based in Berea, released a 44-page "health-impact assessment" on coal and sent copies to Gov. Steve Beshear and the General Assembly.
The statement cites published, peer-reviewed scientific studies from recent years that document health risks associated with coal. They include air and water pollution from mountaintop-removal mining, mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, and toxic metals, including arsenic and cadmium, that are found in coal-waste storage ponds. Burning coal also releases heat-trapping gases that contribute to climate change, the statement says.

Just as state government can require an environmental-impact statement before it undertakes a public construction project, it should require a health-impact statement before it passes laws or regulations concerning coal, said Elizabeth Crowe, executive director of the Kentucky Environmental Foundation.

"Unfortunately, many of Kentucky's elected officials seem concerned about protecting the image and profits of the coal industry with little if any time donated to consideration about the impact on public health," Crowe said. "After all, this is the state in which legislators last year proposed a bill that would make Kentucky a 'sanctuary state' for the coal industry."

Show Your Love for Mountains

Show your sweetheart what kind of lover you really are this Valentine's by taking her/him to the I Love Mountains demonstration at the State Capitol in Frankfort.

From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

When Kentucky author Wendell Berry and the 13 other Kentucky Rising leaders emerged from the State Capitol to join the I Love Mountains Day rally last February, he said:

"We do not think of what we have done as in any sense a symbolic gesture. We are humbled, instead, by the realization that our effort cannot be carried to success by us, or by any other few of us. If the adventure of the last few days, by this small company of friends, is to be more than a symbolic gesture, that can be only because all of you who are here, and many of our friends who are not here, will take it up, make it your adventure and your cause, until this great house will become the true home of justice to all the people of this state, and of faithful care for the divine gifts of land and water, and of life itself."

So we'll be back at the State Capitol on February 14 with a powerful and visible presence as KFTC members continue to answer Wendell Berry’s call, You see, right now is our best chance in generations to end mountaintop removal mining and build a clean energy economy that generates good jobs in every Kentucky community. We won't stop until we have: a thriving democracy, clean energy jobs, affordable, renewable energy, and healthy communities.

All over eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia, residents in communities like Eolia, Hueysville, Benham, Lynch and Montgomery Creek are speaking up to protect their health and homeland from the destruction of coal and to create a more sustainable economy.

Will you join us and be one of the more than 1,200 people standing up for clean water, clean energy, and a just economic transition for eastern Kentucky?

And will you volunteer to bring with you at least one other person with you? If each us brings a friend, imagine how much more powerful our voice will be!

More information about the day, including a schedule, and registration information can be found on our website here.

The march around the Capitol starts at 12:30, and the rally at 1 p.m. Come early and buttonhole your state legislators inside.

Big Coal Means Poverty

It's reassuring to get scientific proof of something that empirical evidence has made obvious for decades.

The Courier:

Poverty in Appalachia is concentrated in the communities around mountaintop removal mines, and people living in those areas suffer greater risk of early deaths, according to West Virginia University study.

The study by Michael Hendryx, an associate professor in the WVU Department of Community Medicine, found that mountaintop mining areas in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia had significantly higher annual death rates, higher total poverty rates and child poverty rates compared to other counties in 2000-07.

The study appears in the current Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, The Charleston Gazette reported.

Hendryx also noted that residents near mountaintop removal mines face the combined risks of exposure to potential environmental hazards from coal and mining-related chemicals, along with economic vulnerability that comes with low education, depressed property values and employment instability.

Hendryx's study doesn't attempt to determine whether mountaintop removal causes poverty, though he says other researchers already have identified the effects of mining “on such factors as depressed property values, employment declines and volatility, and foregone alternative economic opportunities.”

Liberals put people before corporations.

Blair Mountain March

So reassuring to know that the forces of reaction never change: they meet every attempt to make social, economic or environmental progress with violence.

Kevin Gostula at Firedoglake:

From Marmet, West Virginia, to Blair, West Virginia, hundreds are marching across the Appalachian region throughout this week to honor the historic labor event known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. This event designed to remember one of the largest battles in US labor history, however, is not just about history. A coalition known as Appalachia Rising is using the five-day march to call attention and protest mountaintop removal coal mining.

Parson Brown, co-founder of the Topless America Project, a small group from Chicago that has been producing a documentary on mountaintop removal coal mining for more than five years, reports at the end of the first day of the march the “exhausted marcher”s set up camp. They were met with “steady slew of harassment.” A local came on the scene and tried to “sabotage” the media RV. Cars, coal trucks and “emergency” vehicles, according to Brown, made laps around the marchers blasting horns and sirens.

SNIP

The coalition behind the “March on Blair Mountain” notes in March 2008 the mountain was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Pressure from coal operators had it removed from the list and now it is under threat.

Labor should be on the side of activists fighting mountaintop removal. MTR doesn't maintain, much less create jobs in coal country. It eliminates jobs by destroying the clean water sources, homes and communities that support jobs.

Labor knows what it's like to demand basic human rights from Big Coal - the MTR activists are on labor's side, and deserve labor's support.

*For more updates on the march, visit MarchonBlairMountain.org

What WON'T Kentucky Do to Please Big Coal?

Nothing. I mean it. If Big Coal demanded that school lunches in Kentucky must contain at least a heaping teaspoonful of pulverized coal every day, Kentucky's spineless legislature and worthless governor would leap to comply.

Ecopolitology:

Just days after a group of activists ended a four-day occupation of Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear's office to protest the state's support of mountaintop removal mining, two bills advanced in legislative committees on Thursday that would make it easier for coal companies to continue the controversial practice. One of the bills advancing would declare Kentucky “a sanctuary state” from the EPA’s “regulatory actions against coal-producing counties.”

Introduced by chairman of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, Brandon Smith (R), Joint Resolution 99 passed by a vote of 9-0 Thursday and could be considered by the full senate as early as Friday.

Smith said he got the idea for the resolution after hearing about "sanctuary cities" that declare themselves exempt from federal immigration law.

"We're doing it to raise awareness of the fact that the federal government is overreaching into parts of our economy and it's having a negative impact on Kentucky," Smith said.

Also on Thursday, the Kentucky House Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment unanimously approved a bill that seeks to exempt coal mines that sell coal for use in Kentucky from the federal Clean Water Act. That bill, as well as the "sanctuary state" bill, were both introduced as a reaction to stepped-up enforcement of Clean Water Act regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration.

And the cocksucking of Big Coal is bipartisan, maintaining full suction through administrations rethuglican and DINO:

The state Transportation Cabinet spent more than $1 million from 2006 to 2008 to close and move a 2-mile section of Ky. 699 in Perry County at the request of a coal company that wanted to strip-mine the land where the highway was located, according to state records.

The cabinet's inspector general concluded in a Dec. 8 report that cabinet officials were not authorized to execute the subsequent land swap with subsidiaries of James River Coal Co. of Richmond, Va., giving up the highway site in exchange for nearby land owned by the coal company. Only the state Finance and Administration Cabinet, with the governor's permission, can give away state assets, Inspector General David Ray wrote.

State Auditor Crit Luallen issued an audit of state government Feb. 17 that mentioned the land deal in passing, with few details, concluding that the Transportation Cabinet could not legally give away state land.

Records show that then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher's transportation secretary, Bill Nighbert, authorized the project in 2006. Joe Prather, Nighbert's successor under Gov. Steve Beshear, approved its completion in 2008. That section of road, near the Leatherwood community, was not in the cabinet's six-year plan of priority projects.

Meanwhile, as Big Coal eliminate jobs along with mountains, forest ecosystems, clean water, communities and families, Kentucky politicians refuse to see that economic salvation lies not in worshipping Big Coal, but in regulating and replacing it.

Page One Kentucky:

Sure, the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is focused on praising mountaintop removal and will never, ever dwell in the realm of reality when it comes to, well, anything, ever. Sure, people like Steve Beshear and his pals in the Energy and “Environment” Cabinet are suing left and right because they’re delusional.

But a new report from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Ceres finds that investments to clean and modernize power plants will create over 30,000 jobs in Kentucky. Yes, 30,000 jobs. In this state. Because of those allegedly pesky rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency, no less!

The key findings of the report:

* Based on recent estimates that the power sector will invest in capital improvements over the next five years, total employment created in Kentucky by these capital investments is estimated at more than 30,000 jobs, or about 6,000 jobs on average in each of the next five years.
* Installing modern pollution controls and building new power plants create a wide array of skilled high-paying installation, construction and professional jobs, as well as jobs at companies that manufacture pollution controls and other required construction/maintenance equipment.

Read the whole thing.

But the EPA is our enemy, you betcha.

As Jake writes often, this is why Kentucky can't have nice things.

Gatewood: A Pretty Flower With A Fatal Sting

Between not just allowing Big Coal to destroy eastern Kentucky's land, water, communities and families but praising them for it, and handing millions of tax dollars to every freakazoid con man with a plausible story, Gov. Steve Beshear sure is giving a hell of an impression of somebody who wants to make sure that no liberal ever votes for him again.

Media Czech reviews an option:

Since Steve Beshear doesn't want your vote (and for you to be on his damned back), it looks like this guy would at least take it, if you were willing to give it:

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Independent Gatewood Galbraith differentiated himself Thursday from all other Kentucky gubernatorial candidates by taking a strong stand against mountaintop removal mining.

Galbraith told The Associated Press that the practice has caused "unsurpassed environmental damage" in Appalachia and should not be permitted to continue.

"It is too large a cost for the extraction of coal," he said Thursday. "I'm for coal, but mountaintop removal is the most wasteful, unsustainable method for extracting coal. It destroys an ecological heritage that belongs to all of Kentucky."

Of course, you might have block from your memory some of the things he's said about abortion...

Seriously though, do you think that Beshear even wants your (liberals) vote? If anyone has any evidence that he does, please feel free to share it with us.

Yes, perennial candidate Gatewood (like "Mitch," he is known by just his first name) has long been an option for disaffected dems willing to overlook his gun fetish.

Last month, Ralph Long posted a persuasive analysis arguing that as an independent, Gatewood could take advantage of the teabaggers splitting the republican vote and widespread dem disgust with Beshear to actually win the governorship in November.

Governor Galbraith would be a hoot and a half ... for the half of the population without uteruses, that is.

In August 2009, Media Czech interviewed Gatewood at Fancy Farm on the subject of abortion.

Long story short, his liberatarianism stops at the vagina's edge.

I ran into Gatewood Galbraith and had one heck of a conversation. The one thing about Gatewood that most of his supporters don't know is that Mr. Freedom is actually anti-choice when it comes to abortion. I've cast a couple protest votes for Gatewood in my day and didn't realize this until recently. I wanted to figure out just how anti-choice he is, so I went through the same series of question that I usually do with folks who protest abortion clinics and have rallies with giant pictures of aborted fetuses. When asked whether abortion should be legal or illegal, he strongly said illegal, except in cases of rape. I asked if he thought it was murder, and he again gave a strong yes. I asked, if the law was totally up to him, would these women be charged with this crime as murder, and he again said yes, it is the murder of a human being. I asked him if that would be pretty harsh, having the government lock you away for ending your pregnancy, and he further elaborated that if these women didn't want a baby, they should have thought about that before they had sex, i.e., the old "sluts should pay the price" argument that we know and love so well here at B&P. I seriously wasn't expecting this. At all.

I asked him how this position jived with his whole "freedom" rhetoric, that the government should control what women do with their own body. He again went back to the "she should have thought about that before she had sex" line, then talked about the "rights" of fertilized eggs. When I repeatedly pressed to him that a government policy like this would likely mean women given life in prison or the death penalty, he kind of wavered a bit towards the end, possibly realizing he sounded a bit.... nutty. I hope to G-d he was just altered at the time.

I asked him if he supported emergency contraception (morning after pill), and he had the gall to say that he didn't, because this is no different than an abortion. This, my friends, is just plain ignorant and fanatical. He also noted (or perhaps this was Dea) that he felt this way because he is "Catholic". He apparently didn't get the irony when he emphasized to me, quite strongly, when discussing the criminal punishment for abortion, that he is a big supporter of the death penalty.

Don't you just love selective Catholicism?

Even though I grilled him pretty damn good on abortion, he was at least a good sport and didn't duck any questions, and gave me a copy of his book. But yea....

(UPDATE: Gatewood is now saying that I "made up" the entire conversation, accusing me of "slander". Hilarious. As fanatical as he sounded, I can't say that I blame him for lying about it)

I then spoke with his running mate, Dea Riley, and informed her about what Gatewood just told me about abortion. The look on her face was priceless when she said "oh did he now?" .....one of the highlights of my day. I truly truly truly felt sorry for Dea, but she gave a very smartly worded answer to me in a damned tough situation. (UPDATE: Dea is now jumping on the slander bandwagon. Fanning the flames, not smart!)

Wondering what Gatewood's official position on abortion is? Good luck finding one. His official campaign website covers ten issues, from taxes to agriculture to "gaming" and including the federal deficit and the military - about which the governor has no influence - but not a whisper about abortion. Or gay rights for that matter.

Long's right that Gatewood is by far the smartest candidate and the only one addressing real issues facing Kentuckians. The problem is that anyone who views adult females like retarded children who cannot make their own decisions is not someone who can be trusted with the welfare of the Commonwealth.

MTR is not an environmental issue; it's a crime against people

Silas House's novels about life in the Appalachians are so painfully accurate that some people who grew up there can hardly bear to read them.

So when Silas House wants to tell you something important about the mountains, stop what you're doing and listen.

The news media and the rest of the country typically think of mountaintop removal as an environmental problem. But it’s a human crisis as well, scraping away not just coal but also the freedoms of Appalachian residents, people who have always been told they are of less value than the resources they live above.

Over the past six years I’ve visited dozens of people who live at the edge of mountaintop removal sites. They bathe their children in water that has arsenic levels as high as 130 times what the E.P.A. deems safe to drink.

Their roads are routinely destroyed by overloaded trucks; their air is clouded with pollutants. Their schools sit below ponds holding billions of gallons of sludge. Their children lose sleep worrying that the sludge dams will break, releasing the sludge down upon them. It happened 40 years ago at Buffalo Creek, W.Va., killing 125 people, and it could happen again today.

It’s a horrible way to live. And yet, as it does in many other impoverished quarters of America, the news too often avoids covering Appalachia as if it were a no man’s land.

When a 3-year-old Virginia boy was crushed to death in his crib after a half-ton boulder was accidentally (and illegally) dislodged by a mining company, it barely made the national news. Many people around here believe the omission reflected that the child lived in a trailer home in the heart of coal country.

In 2000, 306 million gallons of sludge — 30 times more than the volume of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez — buried parts of Martin County, Ky., as deep as 5 feet. Yet hardly anyone outside the region remembers the disaster, if they ever heard about it.

More recently, my friend Judy’s grandson was playing in a creek when he was suddenly surrounded by dozens of dead fish. Tests later proved that a coal company was releasing polyacrylamide — a cancer-causing agent used to prepare coal for burning — into the creek. When Judy complained to the state, no one replied. She recently died of brain cancer.

I’ve heard dozens of stories like these, but they rarely make it beyond the mountains. Is it any wonder then that Appalachian residents feel invisible?

Read the whole thing.

Weekend Sit-in at KY Governor's Office

UPDATE Below

As much of a cowardly waste of oxygen as Gov. Steve Beshear is, he knows better than to give a protester-enamored national media photographs of Kentucky icon Wendell Berry, age 76, being handcuffed and dragged out of the Capitol.

From the Herald:

Bags of groceries packed with bread, sandwich meat and granola bars lined the interior of Gov. Steve Beshear's outer office on Friday night as a group of high-profile environmentalists hunkered down for a weekend sit-in at the Capitol.

The group, which includes noted Kentucky authors Wendell Berry, Silas House and Erik Reece, was not satisfied by a meeting with the governor earlier Friday about mountaintop mining. They had said they were going to stay until they were arrested.

But the group was told shortly before 3 p.m. that they would be allowed to spend the weekend at the Capitol.

Kerri Richardson, a spokeswoman for Beshear, said the state decided the group appeared not to be violating any laws.

"As far as we can tell, they aren't doing anything wrong," Richardson said.

Mickey McCoy, an Inez native and a member of the group, said they plan to stay in the Capitol at least until Monday, when the annual "I Love Mountains" rally is held in Frankfort.

The issue is not "mountaintop mining." The issue is mountaintop removal mining, which destroys entire watersheds, ecosystems and communities along with the actual 450 million-year-old mountain itself.

On a scale of permanent environmental destruction, it ranks with the devastating BP oil spill killing the Gulf of Mexico.

The annual I Love Mountains rally in Frankfort begins at 11 a.m. Monday, Feb. 14. It's gonna be gorgeous - 45 degrees and bright sunshine. Be there.

UPDATE, Feb. 13: See Media Czech, Matt Murray at the Kentucky Kernel, and Kentucky Rising.

A Real Pro-Life Protest

They weren't armed. They weren't demanding blood be spilled in a violent overthrow of the government. They didn't spout lies or twist history or whine about taxes.

They performed peaceful civil disobedience in support of communities being murdered by corporate greed.

From the Herald:

About 100 people, including at least a dozen from Kentucky, were arrested outside the White House on Monday while protesting mountaintop-removal mining.

The protesters were arrested after refusing orders from U.S. Park Police to leave the sidewalk outside the White House. They staged a rally at nearby Freedom Plaza earlier in the day.

"It was my first adventure being arrested," Teri Blanton, former president of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, said by phone after being released from jail Monday evening.

She said she wasn't aiming to get arrested but thought civil disobedience was worth it.

"The message was to President Obama and his administration that our people and our mountains are being destroyed and water polluted," Blanton said.

Rick Handshoe of Floyd County said the protest was about more than mountaintop-removal mining.

"It's not just about the environment. They're killing the environment and they're killing people," he said. "This is about death. ..."

Read the whole thing.

Ashley Judd Brings Mountaintop Removal to D.C.

Dave Niewert at Crooks and Liars captures Kentucky's own Ashley Judd schooling national environmentalists on the horror of mountaintop removal.

I have to admit celebrities don't normally do very well speaking out on political issues, but Judd's speech was powerful, in no small part because it was an emotional speech for this native Kentuckian:

But the ache I feel for my mountain home is now more than a bittersweet nostalgia accrued through inimitable generations of belonging. There is a searing tear, a gaping wound in the fabric of my life and the lives of all Appalachians. And it gets bigger with every Appalachian mountaintop that is blown up, every holler that is filled, every stream that is buried, every wild thing that is wantonly and recklessly killed, every ecosystem that is diminished, every job that is lost to mechanization, every family that is pitted one against the other by the state-sanctioned, federal government-supported coal industry-operated rape of Appalachia: mountaintop removal coal mining.

She went on to describe in heartfelt terms the kind of wretchedness -- the environmental devastation and job loss -- the mountaintop removal technique has brought to the Appalachians. Basically, the coal companies don't want to have to mine for the coal anymore: now they just blow up entire mountains to scoop it out with a handful of large machines.

I didn't capture it on video, but she also pointed out that the devastation is occurring on a scale similar to that being wrought by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. She reads from a thought-provoking and poetic essay by Silas House titled "Sufferings":

I can’t imagine the president doing a flyover of a mountaintop removal site, or holding a press conference about it. And I’ve certainly never seen a mountain blown up on national television—not even once, much less every morning on the Today show.

Yet I would venture to say that mountaintop removal (MTR) is as devastating as the oil spill in the Gulf.

I don’t mean to compare suffering. What I’m saying is actually the opposite of comparison: they’re equally as bad, yet everyone is outraged about the spill while very few people even know about MTR.

Both the oil spill and MTR are environmental, cultural, economic, and health disasters. Both are devastating an entire way of life.

Every time someone says that more than 100 miles of shoreline has been affected by the oil spill, I want to shout that at least 1,500 miles of waterways have been lost forever in Appalachia.

Every time I think about the spill I also think of the pollution pumping into our creeks and rivers by way of MTR. I think of all the people in the fishing industry whose jobs are threatened by the spill, and then of all the hard-working Appalachians who can’t find a good-paying job besides the mines because we live in a mono-economy created and fostered by the coal industry. I think of how the spill could affect the Gulf so badly that the region’s fishing industry could be wiped out. Immediately I think of how mountaintop removal is hurting all the industries in Appalachia, particularly timber and tourism. New economy doesn’t want to come into a place that has been turned into a war zone with pollution, constant blasting, and intimidation.

NRDC's Rob Perks has more. You can also watch the entire speech over at CSPAN.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out the NRDC's page on mountaintop removal, as well as sites like ILoveMountains.org, which has (among other resources) as great endangered mountains list that gives you a rundown of the scale of what's ahead. You should also check out the work of places like Appalachian Voices.

Read the whole thing and see the video here.

And guess who thinks blowing up mountains, poisoning fresh water and destroying people's lives to get coal is just hunky-dory?

Yeah, it figures.

Back-Door Attack on Mountaintop Removal

If President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency is still too terrified of Big Coal to just outlaw MTR, I suppose this is better than nothing.

The number of Appalachian streams buried during surface mining should drop significantly under new guidelines, the nation's top environmental regulator announced Thursday in a move hailed by environmentalists.

The water-quality guidelines probably will limit creation of valley fills, which often bury parts of streams. Coal companies create fills by putting excess rock into valleys and hollows near the area being mined.

Few fills will be able to meet the new standards, Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said during a conference call.

"Obviously, we're talking about minimizing or zeroing out valley fills," Jackson said.

Groups opposed to mountaintop mining saw the move as a major victory. Many say federal regulators have not properly enforced water-quality rules on the coal industry for decades.

Read the whole thing.

If Tom Fitzgerald of the Kentucky Resources Council, who has been fighting the strip miners for decades, thinks it's a good idea, then it's OK with us.

But as Fitzgerald know better than anyone, the mountain-strippers have been defying laws and thumbing their nose at government regulations for a century. It's going to take putting corporate CEOs in prison to get them to stop.