Mountaintop removal has caused irreversible harm, researchers say
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
By Vivian Nereim, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A group of scientists presented research in Pittsburgh Tuesday about the environmental impact of mountaintop removal mining, claiming that the practice had irreversibly harmed Appalachian ecosystems, damaging streams and increasing the risk of flooding.
Despite mining company and government efforts to restore ecosystems, surface-mined areas suffer damages that are effectively permanent, said Dr. Keith Eshleman, a professor at the University of Maryland.
The scientists were in town for a weeklong conference of the Ecological Society of America. The research they presented Tuesday was some of the first that provided ecological data on mountaintop mining, Dr. Eshleman said.
Mountaintop mining, which annually produces more than 100 million tons of coal, mostly occurs in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, with a lesser presence in Virginia and Maryland. During the practice, mining companies clear mountaintops of forests, topsoil and rock, detonate explosives to access coal seams and move debris into nearby valleys. Later, they try to reclaim affected areas by replacing topsoil and planting grasses, a process called mitigation.
Mining officials said Tuesday that the scientists’ claims were greatly exaggerated.
“We have a number of studies … that have indicated post-mining impacts are minimized,” said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. “They’re clearly different in many cases, but certainly they’re not terminal, nor are they negative. You’ve got to give this some time.”
They also said the criticisms ignored the economic benefits of mountaintop mining.
“The law does not seek to ban mountaintop mining because Congress understood the importance to the economy,” said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. “We’re talking about tens of thousands of jobs that are supported either directly or indirectly in regions of these states that have very little high-wage employment.”
The scientists, visiting from several universities, spoke about myriad effects of mountaintop mining on ecosystems, from changes in the flow of streams to reductions in bird populations.
Several were co-authors of a paper published in January in Science magazine that called for a moratorium on mountaintop mining permits.
“We’re reconfiguring … the potential for that landscape to support living things, including humans,” said the discussion moderator, Dr. William Schlesinger, president of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
“All the people who live in those areas should be concerned,” Dr. Schlesinger said.
In particular, by compacting soil and clearing forests, mountaintop mining increases the risk of flooding, Dr. Eshleman said. Other scientists said the practice reduces water quality in streams and wells. In the January paper, they wrote that water samples from domestic wells in mined areas had higher levels of certain chemical constituents than water in unmined areas, even after reclamation.
Since 2000, mountaintop mining has quickened, partly due to an increasing demand for coal, Dr. Schlesinger said.
The Obama administration has re-examined the practice, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency threatened in March to halt work at a mountaintop mining site in West Virginia.
“EPA is using existing regulatory authorities to significantly strengthen and improve protections for the public,” an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman wrote in a statement.
Still, Margaret Palmer, director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory at the University of Maryland, said current mining regulations were insufficient.
Companies proposing to mine a site must apply for a permit and prove that they plan to minimize their environmental impact. They are governed by the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
But Dr. Palmer said company mitigation practices did not address some of the most serious effects of mining. She particularly questioned a procedure called “stream creation.”
“They shape drainage ditches into the shape of streams,” Dr. Palmer said. “There is no such thing as stream creation in any sort of science.”
Several hundred people registered to attend the conference, which concludes Friday.
Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10216/1077396-455.stm#ixzz0vdyrP4LX
Vivian Nereim: vnereim@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1413.
Actor, Director, and Environmental Activist
IT’S THE OPPORTUNITY, STUPID!
A small minority of Senators robbed America of a cleaner, more prosperous future last week. In the middle of the biggest oil disaster in American history, the hottest summer on record, and a war with an oil-rich nation, this group of cynics blocked efforts to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation. This was the moment brimming with potential for new jobs, a more robust economy and cleaner environment — this bill would have guided America down a profoundly safer and more productive path.
So therefore, the Senate is left to vote on an anemic energy bill of such remarkably limited scope that it could have been passed during the Bush era.
The elected officials who steered this turnaround have abdicated their responsibility to uphold our nation’s best interests, and have shown us, and the world, an America woefully deficient in both leadership and ingenuity.
This was our moment to create two million clean energy jobs here in the United States. This was our moment to outpace China in the clean energy market that will dominate the 21st century. This was our time to slash our oil imports in half. This was our time to confront the perils of climate change, which despite head-in-the sand-denial, is in fact happening.
The American people wanted a home run, not a bunt. A recent CNN poll found that nearly 80 percent of voters believe that reducing oil use and shifting to cleaner energy would make life better for Americans, while a Wall Street Journal poll in June found that an overwhelming majority of people specifically support passing legislation to limit global warming pollution.
Yet a handful of politicians decided they didn’t want to represent the will of the people. Given the chance to invest in American jobs and reduce dangerous pollution, they chose instead, to focus on their own interest and self-preservation.
The Republican Senate leadership has fought against every clean energy and climate measure simply because their political opponents were for it. This was the most shameful partisanship I have seen in my lifetime. We all know who really loses when GOP leaders block progress: American citizens. The economic recession and climate change don’t care which party you are in — they will make life harder for everyone until we put the right solutions in place.
But the GOP wasn’t the only force acting on its own behalf. A handful of moderate Democrats were so worried about being tarred by the Tea Party or losing reelection campaigns that they failed to show their support for clean energy and climate legislation — even those who are on record saying that we must fight global warming. When elected officials act as bystanders to a crisis, they reveal their deep cowardice.
We can’t forget that Big Oil and Big Coal reached deep into their pockets to inspire politicians to block climate action. Their undue influence in our nation’s politics has once again placed the desires of polluters above the interests of all Americans.
Stronger leadership from the White House could have helped burst through political obstructions. President Obama has certainly done more than any other president to advance clean energy, yet he never seemed to roll up his sleeves, bring lawmakers to the table, and work to rally the American public behind it. If he thought his move earlier this year to approve new offshore oil drilling for the first time in decades would pay off last week in the form of GOP support for this bill, I guess he got his answer.
This is one of the many times when average citizens may be ahead of our leaders. All of us who want to generate jobs, reduce hazardous pollution, and strengthen our nation’s security need to make our voices heard. We should praise those senators who represented our best interests and hold accountable those who looked out only for their own.
I remember the last time our nation came this close to embracing clean energy — back in the late 1970s. I hope my children don’t have to wait another 35 years to seize the moment once again, because that moment, that opportunity might not be there.
I watched the documentary “Gasland” on HBO last evening. It really opened up my eyes to the dangers and potential environmental disasters that may come with the drilling of Marcellus Shale for natural gas here in Pennsylvania and other areas. Tony Norman of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an excellent column on this subject at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10190/1071417-153.stm or you can visit the documentary’s website http://gaslandthemovie.com/ for more information.
There has been some media coverage about this subject matter, but there needs to be more about this important decision especially with the election of a new Governor in Pennsylvania this November. We need to make our political process held accountable and responsible about their decisions. We have to remember that government is for the people by the people, not the bottom line feeder of corporate america at any cost.
I just saw two letters to the editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in regards to Tony Norman’s column http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10195/1072523-110.stm . They are by LOUIS D. D’AMICO, President and Executive Director, Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and RICHARD WEBER, President, Atlas Energy Inc.
Obviously, they have a substantial interest in any negative publicity concerning the drilling of natural gas and with the events happening in the Gulf of Mexico, people may be a little more sensitized to environmental issues and their impact. With that being said, I would have two questions for the gentleman, one is why won’t you as an industry list publicly the chemicals used in the process of fracturing and number two is why won’t you let the federal water laws that you were exempted from in the 2005 Energy Policy Act be reenacted if we have nothing to worry about in regards to our water supplies??? Simple questions, yet I surmise they won’t have simple answers and/or cooperation.
I am hoping one day we will be to see this as the tragedy it really is before it is too late…….
Talks on reducing whale hunting break down
By Marc Kaufman and Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, June 24, 2010; A04
Three years of talks aimed at reducing whaling activity by Japan, Norway and Iceland broke down Wednesday, leaving management of the population of the world’s largest animals essentially in the hands of whale hunters.
Anthony Liverpool, acting chairman of the International Whaling Commission, told delegates meeting in Agadir, Morocco, that “fundamental positions remained very much apart.”
The goal of the meeting was to forge a 10-year compromise that would create a legal framework to allow limited whale hunting by Japan, Norway and Iceland. The commission has banned all types of whale hunting, but the three whale-hunting nations consistently ignore the bans. Through loopholes in the law, they have caught thousands of the mammals since the 1980s.
Delegates of the commission’s 88 member governments were trying to work out a plan proposed by the United States and other anti-whaling nations to let the three countries conduct whaling expeditions, but under tight international control and at significantly lower numbers.
The talks reportedly failed over the issue of how many whales Japan could kill in the waters off Antarctica, where Japanese whalers hunt hundreds of whales each year. The compromise plan also called for a gradual phase-out of the Japanese hunt in the South Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Japanese officials balked at that step.
The Japanese government says its whaling activity is for scientific purposes, but critics say the Japanese hunts are commercial. Newspaper accounts of alleged Japanese efforts to buy votes of poor nations also made compromise difficult.
Japanese delegate Yasue Funayama said her country had offered major concessions and agreed “to elements which are extremely difficult to accept.” She blamed the failure of the talks on countries that refused to accept the killing of even a single animal.
U.S. Whaling Commissioner Monica Medina said the American delegation did push hard to phase out virtually all whale hunting over time. “We think that all whaling, other than indigenous subsistence whaling, should come to an end,” she said.
The compromise proposal to limit whaling significantly but allow some legal hunting was controversial among environmental groups, some of which opposed the notion of any legal whaling.
“Under a cloud of corruption allegations, the IWC is taking a safe course, opting for a cooling- off period that protects the moratorium and other IWC conservation measures,” said Patrick Ramage, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare’s Global Whale Campaign. “Had it been done here, this deal would have lived in infamy.”
But Sue Lieberman, director of international policy for the Pew Environmental Group, said in a statement: “We are deeply disappointed that the governments present here, after more than three years of intense work, could not reach a solution that will benefit whale conservation.” Speaking to the hundreds of delegates after the negotiations ended, former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer, who tried to forge a compromise, said: “I think ultimately if we don’t make some changes to this organization in the next few years, it may be very serious, possibly fatal for the organization — and the whales will be worse off.”
Sometimes I think I have seen everything, but just when I think Massey Energy and CEO Don Blankenship can’t go any lower the I read this from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10177/1068429-28.stm . This is just another example of corporate values over moral values.
Within days of the disastrous explosion that killed 29 men at its Upper Big Branch Mine, Massey Energy began issuing news releases declaring its grief, demanding a wide-open public inquiry and blaming the federal agency assigned to ensure underground safety.
Earlier this week, Massey also took a bold step. The company on Tuesday filed suit against the Mine Safety and Health Administration, challenging its authority to overrule crucial mine ventilation plans and impose its own. Such plans determine how a steady flow of air will be assured in the mine’s working areas, delivering fresh air to miners and carrying out accumulations of dust and explosive methane.
The aggressive public stand, in the pressroom and the courtroom, points to a company long accustomed to steering discussion its way through careful practice. News releases, often quoting company chairman Don Blankenship, ordinarily don’t include a phone number or contact for reporters seeking more information. As Upper Big Branch unfolded, a receptionist at company headquarters in Virginia said she wasn’t authorized to identify the company’s spokesman.
In its lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, Massey now hopes to establish that MSHA’s mine ventilation policies go beyond the agency’s legislative mandate.
“It matches the blame-shifting pattern that I’m intimately familiar with in other litigation that I’ve been involved with with Massey,” said David B. Fawcett, a Pittsburgh attorney who has gone head-to-head with the coal giant on two occasions.
Spokesmen for Massey, including one at a Washington public relations firm hired to handle inquiries, either did not return calls or said they were not authorized to speak for the record.
At MSHA, officials contend that the agency’s role with ventilation consists of reviewing plans submitted by the company to ensure that they effectively protect miners, and to offer technical assistance when it is requested. Officials at MSHA’s Arlington office say Massey had a series of documented ventilation problems at Upper Big Branch, which forced them to submit a large number of changes to MSHA.
“Massey is well aware that MSHA doesn’t ‘draft ventilation plans,’ and it’s curious that the company is only raising these objections after the explosion, and as they face civil and criminal investigations over their safety practices,” said one MSHA official familiar with the matter.
The firm’s head-on approach with MSHA and others finds some supporters within an industry that often feels itself under attack.
“I like their straightforward approach, there’s no doubt about it,” said Michael Carey, president of the Ohio Coal Association. “They’re saying, ‘Look, this is what we believe and we’re going to take that straight at you.’ And I think in an era when everybody’s trying to be politically correct all the time it’s refreshing.”
Bruce Stanley, a Pittsburgh attorney who has represented families of miners killed at another Massey facility, likened Massey’s approach to a technique used by photographers capturing a portrait of a child.
“It’s a classic ‘watch the birdie’ campaign. The whole notion is they’re trying to get people to focus on something other than what needs to be focused on,” he said.
The lawsuit challenging MSHA’s right to dictate a ventilation plan was filed on behalf of six Massey subsidiaries — Elk Run Coal, Independence Coal, Mammoth Coal, Spartan Mining, and White Buck Coal, all in West Virginia, and Martin County Coal, in Inez, Ky.
It makes no mention of Upper Big Branch. Massey general counsel M. Shane Harvey did not return calls from the Post-Gazette seeking comment.
“They pretty clearly have had a PR campaign launched since the time of the disaster and I would say this is just part of that campaign,” said Tony Oppegard, a Kentucky lawyer and former MSHA official.
Part of Massey’s argument regarding the April 5 disaster has centered on company complaints that MSHA officials forbade them to use so-called “scrubbers,” devices that collect coal dust on continuous mining machines. They complained, too, that MSHA insisted on a ventilation plan that they said was less effective than the one proposed by Massey engineers.
MSHA spokeswoman Amy Louviere said the agency was not prepared to comment at length on the suit. “While we find the timing and substance of some of the arguments curious, we generally do not comment on pending or ongoing litigation,” she said.
As to Massey’s complaint about being refused the use of scrubbers at Upper Big Branch, she said no blanket policy exists, “as evidenced by the fact that 50 percent of Massey mining units are permitted to operate their dust scrubbers on continuous mining machines.”
She said the ventilation plans at some operations utilizing the scrubbers “did not comply with basic dust control and other regulatory requirements. MSHA continues to monitor their compliance performance.”
Massey’s lawsuit suggests that MSHA’s standards on ventilation plan approval contradicts the need for each plan to be tailored to the unique configuration and conditions of each coal mine.
Massey’s suit does not impress some others with oversight of coal safety.
“They seem to be more concerned with public relations than miner safety,” said Aaron Albright, spokesman for Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee.
Mr. Miller plans to introduce new mine safety legislation early this week, as MSHA begins its underground investigation at Upper Big Branch. Hazardous conditions at the mine had prevented investigators from going underground to determine the cause of the April 5 explosion, the deadliest mine disaster in 40 years.
I ask only one question this morning, does Judge Feldman, the US District Court Judge who overturned the ban on deep sea drilling have a true conflict of interest and should not have heard the appeal. I leave you with this article http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m6d26-Video-Judge-in-Gulf-oil-spill-moratorium-case-had-significant-holdings-in-drilling-companies to judge for yourself.
Sometimes I feel like I am losing my mind when I listen to the intellectual laziness of people. When I see certain issues as so clear cut and others seem to miss the point or just not care, I just wonder about the disconnect. Environment issues aside, there is a prevalent connection to the real issues of today and education.
Two things that struck me in the last day, first I met a young lady yesterday named Laura with her masters in elementary education who said to me during a discussion about learning and knowledge that we are never really done with our education in spite of age and two, columnist Tony Norman from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who wrote piece titled “Minorities need to show education the love” at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10173/1067244-153.stm?cmpid=bcpanel1 What impressed me about each is the link of education to the broadening of the learning experience.
There is more to education than a degree. There is a pursuit of what we have yet to learn. This is the issues of today and their overall effect on the world as a whole. It is the joining of the subject with the people who seek the satisfaction of knowing. Would we allow whales and other creatures to be slaughtered in such a cruel manner, would we allow our pollution to contribute to the melting of the ice caps, would we allow our food sources to become tainted with hormones, chemicals and insecticides, would we allow our poor and lower middle class to become more disillusioned from participating in our society, would we allow archaic laws and attitudes limiting anything considered progressive in the realm of job creation, gun control, gay rights, minorities and environmental issues? These among many other issues of today have the direct relationship of education and answers.
I leave you with this quote from Confucius that best sums up my feelings: “When things are investigated, knowledge is extended. When knowledge is extended, the will becomes sincere. When the will is sincere, the mind is correct. When the mind is correct, the self is cultivated.”
I’ve been thinking with everything that is going on in the world what do we as a species consider important? Is it the overall health of our living existence or is it our individual egos that create a different self-worth for each of us. What some of us may deem extremely important wouldn’t even raise a single eye brow on another. So what does bring us together to want what is best for all of us?
Sometimes certain tragedies and celebrations bond us. Looking back, don’t people associate some tragedy and/or celebration to exactly what they may having been doing at a specific point in time. I still hear from people in regards to what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was shot or just saying “9-11″. The tragedies among these events disregard our individual self to rather a communal display. Sport celebrations often have the same characteristics. So is it the sudden change and the degree of effect that causes the response or is it the need to share an experience within the species?
So why am I asking something that may have it answers in a psychology book? Well it has more to do with what we consider important over why we consider things important. This is where our ideal of self importance plays a significant role. The common ground needed to make us feel part of something is part of what should be examined.
Many simultaneous tragic and celebratory events of various degrees happen each and every day. Why don’t we consider the environmental tragedies more important than most. Doesn’t this effect all of us? Isn’t the tragedy of one species more important than all others when those tragedies impact all other living creatures. Should we be looking at this at the level of individual self importance and coming together as one or do we still think the pittance of blonde girl murdered in the Caribbean or the sexuality of an celebrity is more important to our species as a whole. These questions do need to be asked of each of us, first as an individual, second as a world society.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the oil industry claims “each deepwater rig employs 180 to 280 workers, with each of those jobs supporting another four industry workers, for a total potential loss of more than 40,000 jobs. The moratorium ‘will result in crippling job losses and significant economic impacts for the Gulf region.’”
An interesting little quip provided to us about job losses and economic impact. I have a few friends that paid with their jobs for the 2008 financial market collapse, so I am sensitive when it comes to job losses and their effect on an individual person. With that being said though, there is something bigger here. Something that says as long as the industry in question uses the potential job loss technique to get their way in some sort of government regulation and/or intervention then it is justified.
What does the coal industry do when the idea of regulations to mine safety and environmental destruction come to light? What does the oil industry do when an oil spill happens like the Valdez and/or the Gulf Of Mexico? What did the financial sectors related to the 2008 financial collapse talk about regarding the financial bailouts they sought? What do these and other industries have all in common aside from their powerful lobbying interests. The answer is they use the same rhetoric about the potential negative job and economic impact unless they get what they want in regulation or law.
There are two further questions to ponder, one is don’t corporations already use job losses or “job cuts” as a way to improve their bottom line? and don’t these “job cuts” have negative economic impacts on an area. Number two would be the question when does a job become obsolete or a detriment to the health of our society and planet?
Does anyone have the answer or is it as simple as saying as we move forward as a society, sometimes we have to look at alternative ways of doing things and move jobs to sectors that are overall beneficial to our society and planet, as bottom line be damed. These are the questions that will move us forward. Ponder this little scenario and see if you can relate it to what is happening now: Did the shutdown of the death camps in World War II affect the local economies in terms of job losses?
The question I ponder today is something I think about often. Currently we have oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico that is destroying the environment and will have an impact for decades to come. I cannot look at the pictures of the animals covered in oil and not wonder to myself that our greed and thirst for destruction has led us down this course. Are we that insane and selfish not to realize what we are doing now will lead to a potential catastrophe that there is no recovery.
Much of what we do today has led to the interruption of the natural processes that have been in place since this planet’s beginning. Why don’t we live in harmony with nature instead of trying to control it. We really do believe our need for control involves the profit motives currently in place at any cost to the planet. Our financial markets get the attention that our environment craves and needs. It is the satisfaction of one that is overriding the importance of the other. All we have to do is look at the response of BP to the oil spill, as it has to do more with the effect on its stock price and bottom line than the spill and its aftermath. If this was the exception rather than the rule, I could see this as a mistake. This is no mistake, but rather a calculation of greed and control that has been the model at the expense of our planet.
This is our wake up call, as it is time to demand sanity from the people, for the people. We all share responsibility for this tragedy either from our compliance and/or apathy. Our response to this will say what we are as a society. If BP CEO Tony Hayward is able to get his life back as he recently said then we have failed because it is business as usual.
