Mountain Holler

Hearings, Hearings, Hearings

October 28th, 2007

Milky Water from Upper Big Branch into the Coal River. This is with the 100 foot Buffer Zone.

The week of October 21st was a busy one. Coming off of a weekend hosting 70 students, we had 3 hearings and a rally to prepare for and attend. The first hearing was for a proposed 220 acre expansion of the Upper Big Branch surface mine on the Coal River. If that mine sounds familiar to you, you may have seen it while perusing the West Virginia DEP's web site and noticed that it was cited for polluting the Coal River in July, and would have been again in August had the inspector received the complaint from the Spill Hotline sooner than 25 hours after the complaint was made.

In spite of previous actions, the DEP is considering granting the extension, part of which will be affecting the Upper Big Branch creek, the source of the citations. At the hearing, several people spoke out against the addition and no one spokie in favor. We'll see what the DEP does.

Clean Water = Healthy Kids.

The Second hearing was slightly bigger with over 200 people cramming into the Charleston Holiday Inn to comment on the Proposed Office of Surface Mining (OSM) Stream Buffer Zone Rule Change. It's understandable why the OSM wants to get rid of this law. After all, they don't actually enforce it, so it's in their interest to get rid of it before they're forced to. Of course with the current unenforced law in place, this is what we get.

Before the hearing we had an invigorating rally in the rain. After an hour of rallying, just a few minutes before heading in, 4 older fellows came out of the hotel with two vinyl banners that read only "Friends of coal," which is really the equivalent to me holding a sign that said "Coal River Mountain Watch." Not really much of an argument there.

The Rain couldn't deter us!

The hearing brought out people from both sides of the issue and then some. We had the powerful Judy Bonds speech and the moving words from Patty Sebok, and even Friends of Coal Spokesperson and professional fisherman, Jeremy Starks turned out to talk about fish. And mentioned specifically how great the fishing is in one hollow with contaminated ground water. His proof of high water quality lied mainly in the amount of non-native trout that are stocked there. This is important: Stocking a river does not make it a healthy aquatic ecosystem any more than putting trout in my bathtub makes my bathroom a reproducing trout stream. Stocking fish is no substitute for actually bringing a stream up to water quality standards that would support a healthy reproducing fish population.

This is how SMCRA and the CWA came about.

Other's argued that the coal industry is much better than it was before SMCRA was passed in 1977 and the Clean Water Act in 1983 were passed, and indeed it is. Of course the Coal Industry didn't submit to these laws willingly. In fact, the current hearing is to reduce stream protection afforded by the CWA. Citizens fought hard against the coal industry to win those battles and even Jimmy Carter, while signing SMCRA, called it a good start, but hopefully not the end. For the coal industry to claim these improvements as there own is not only a lie, but an insult to all the people who fought to protect their homeland.

The comment period for the Stream Buffer Zone Rule Change is open until Nov. 23. You can submit comments at 700mountains.org. While you're at it, you can email Dennis Rice (drice@osmre.gov) and let him know we want another 60 days for comments and that the OSM's refusal to hold a public hearing in South Western Virginia or any of the other 31 affected states that did not receive hearings is a complete subversion of Democracy.

The third hearing was on Thursday the 25th. This was the Public Energy Authority's hearing on their "Blueprint for the Future (pdf)." This was the third in a series of hearings, the first being on Energy Conservation; the second on renewable energy, and this one focusing on Fossil Fuels. Fossil Fuels here being mainly Coal-to-Liquids. This follows typical WV Government style of refusing to look at things cumulatively. After the hearing I was speaking with one of the PEA members who wouldn't accept that CTL would have any effect on mining.

The truly incredible thing about the Blueprint, which Vernon referred to as "barely even a sketch," is that not once in the entire document or in Thursday's presentations, where the words "Global warming" or "climate change" or "Holy $^@#! We're in deep @#$% this time!" ever used. In a year where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for their work on climate change, the WV Public Energy Authority managed to write an energy plan ignoring the concept and focusing on a technology that even with Carbon Sequestration (which isn't going to happen) releases 8% more CO₂ than traditional fuel.

What is present in the Blueprint is a justification of CTL based on gasoline prices. They may be high, but whether CTL is forgotten about tomorrow or 1000 CTL plants are built in West Virginia, not one drop of gasoline will be produced for the simple reason that the planned CTL methods don't produce gasoline, but rather diesel and jet fuel.

It's not too late to comment on the plan. You can do so at the WV DOE's Website. Be sure to let them know that not 1 dollar should go towards finding new ways to mine and burn coal, but rather all the money and research, and then some, should go towards finding and implementing renewable energy and sustainable jobs in Appalachia.

Posted by: Matt Noerpel

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