U.S.: Coalfield Uprising Grows, More Sit-ins

by Jeff Biggers

This might be a first in the country: The failed West Virginia
Department of Environmental Protection is emerging as such an
embarrassingly pro-coal anti-mountain public relations nightmare for
Gov. Joe Manchin that even retired coal miners have taken to the
streets against the state’s environmental regulators, calling on the
federal EPA and Office of Surface Mining to take over the key duties of
the dysfunctional state agency.

The
uprising in the Appalachian coalfields against failed state government
action on mining policy is growing–today, coalfield residents took
their protests directly to ground zero of the state’s regulatory
failure.

Following
12 previous protests and civil disobedience actions in the Appalachian
coalfields this spring and summer, a contingent of four protesters
locked themselves to the WV DEP doorsin Charleston, WV in a nonviolent
sit-in. Four protesters were reportedly arrested.

While
the WVA Department of Environmental Protection carried out the
“Blaster’s Exam” today, as part of its unfettered support for
mountaintop removal mining and the daily detonation of 3.5 million
pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives in historic mountain
communities, scores of fed up coal miners and coalfield residents also
rallied at the agency’s office this morning. The protesters presented
an embarrassingly long list of the agency’s failure to hold up its
mandate to protect and restore the environment, ensure water quality,
and enforce strip mining, and demanded the resignation of WV DEP
Secretary Randy Huffman.

According
to the coalfield residents, the DEP has failed to hold mining operators
accountable for violations, refused to thoroughly address the potential
dangers of coal slurry injection and to set permit limits for abandoned
mine site discharge, and misled residents on regulatory actions.

The protestors posted condemnation signs: “Closed Due to Incompetence” and “Department of Encouraging Pollution.”

“The
WVDEP ignores or dismisses citizen complaints and refuses to exercise
their duty to shut down operations with repeat violations or to deny
permits to operators with outstanding violations,” retired West
Virginia coal miner Chuck Nelson declared. “It is imperative that we
restore the enforcement of all mining laws, so that citizen’s civil and
human rights are upheld, and our families and homes are protected from
the impacts of mining, and from the hazards of industrial waste.”

On
Monday, August 10, in a rare call for federal intervention in this
growing national emergency, coalfield citizen groups including Coal
River Mountain Watch, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and West
Virginia Highlands Conservancy, along with the Sierra Club and the
Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, formally
petitioned the OSMRE to withdraw approval of the state’s surface mining
program and substitute federal enforcement. The petition concludes:

“Given
West Virginia’s refusal to enforce the law in the face of coal industry
interests, we believe that the only remedy that will protect the
State’s essential environmental resources is for OSM to substitute
federal enforcement, in whole or in part, of the state’s surface mining
program.”

The entire petition can be seen here: http://wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/bufferzonepetition.pdf

Earlier
this month, the EPA actually announced its intention to exert greater
scrutiny over the WVDEP process of permit applications received for
surface mining operations “with valley fills”.

Testifying
last month at the first bipartisan US Senate hearing on mountaintop
removal in a generation, DEP Secretary Huffman stunned the crowd by
chucking his environmental protection mandate out the window and openly
defended the reckless part of West Virginia’s Big Coal economy beholden
to devastating mountaintop removal operations. Huffman defiantly
lectured the US Senators: “West Virginia and the nation need jobs and
coal. Nothing in the debate over mountaintop mining debate is going to
change that in the short term.”

As
if offended by the ancient mountain range and lush hardwood deciduous
forests in our nation’s carbin sink of Appalachia, the mountain state’s
top environmental regulator then depicted West Virginia mountains as
“steep, hostile terrain.”

Hostile terrain? What happened to “Wild and Wonderful”? Or the state motto, montani semper liberi?

This was not the first time for Huffman to declare his horror of the mountains–in the mountain state.

On
April 20, Huffman made an extraordinary admission in an interview with
the West Virginia Public Radio, declaring that the mountains impeded
the state’s development, and therefore, needed to be destroyed through
mountaintop removal.

“Mainly
what we’re concerned about as regulators is the ability to develop land
after mining,” he said. “You need valley fills if you’re going to have
a viable post mining economy. You need flat land. And in order to have
flat land you need to have valley fills, and one of our biggest
concerns is that EPA is wanting to reduce the size and number of valley
fills in Appalachia.”

The radio interview is here:http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=9248

As
the state’s top environmental regulator, Huffman apparently failed to
read the EPA’s 2002 EIS report that “it is unlikely that any more than
2 to 3% of the future post-mining land uses will develop land uses such
as housing, commercial, industrial, or public facility development”
after mountaintop removal operations.

In
fact, Huffman and the WVDEP have apparently failed to consider a lot of
basic environmental and human rights issues in the coalfields, none
more critical than the impact of injecting coal slurry in underground
mines. In the face of overwhelming scientific evidence of contaminated
leakages of toxic coal slurry into watersheds and wells, Huffman
brazenly told an AP reporter this spring: “”We studied specifically the
possibility the slurry injection had migrated into the water, and
there’s not a geologic connection between where it was stored and where
their problem is.”

Despite
Huffman’s denial, scientific tests on water samples contaminated by
coal slurry this spring ” found six metals–antimony, arsenic, lead,
barium, cadmium and chromium–in levels that exceeded federal standards
for primary drinking water at one or more sites.”

The study is at the Coal Tattoo blog: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/03/19/citizen-slurry-study-ii/

Charleston
Gazette reporter Ken Ward has filed numerous stories on Huffman’s
“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy on coal slurry injections:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/05/29/wvdeps-dont-ask-dont-te...

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/07/15/citizens-say-wvdep-inco...

Here’s a chart of coal slurry injection sites:

For more information on coal slurry issues, see: http://www.sludgesafety.org/coal_slurry_inj.html

“The
WVDEP simply fails to adequately regulate the coal industry,” said Rock
Creek resident Lorelei Scarbro. “When WVDEP Secretary Randy Huffman
runs off to lobby the EPA to grant illegal valley fill permits, he’s
abdicated his responsibility to the people. Corporate coal influence
has become so great inside the WVDEP that he has become a public
relations spokesperson for the coal industry instead of an enforcer of
mining laws and regulations.”

“We
will not sit idly by today while the WVDEP is granting blasting
certifications for coal companies to demolish our mountains and ruin
our homes and communities,” said Bo Webb of Naoma. “It is time for
Huffman to resign or be fired. He’s derelict in his duties and grossly
incompetent at best. Quite possibly a case for criminal negligence
could be made.”