EC May 2010

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6 participants
19 discussions

Fwd: Fw: Since spill, feds have given 27 waivers to oil companies in gulf | McClatchy
by James Kotcon 11 May '10

11 May '10

This is an on-going news story. Although Obama says there is a moratorium on oil leasing, it does not appear that the Mineral Management Service has gotten the memo. JBK

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Fwd: Fw: We Can't Fight Global Warming Blindfolded
by James Kotcon 11 May '10

11 May '10

To: Energy Committee This is a pretty important initiative, one that could go a long way toward solving many of our energy issues. I recommend that someone take a look at this and try drafting a response letter. I am very interested and will assist, but this is an opportunity for someone who wants to step up their involvement. It is a short-term project, but one with a potentially big impact. Who wants to "Take It To The Next Level!"? JBK

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Fw: We Can't Fight Global Warming Blindfolded
by Jim Sconyers 11 May '10

11 May '10

Jim Sconyers jim_scon(a)yahoo.com 304.698.9628 Remember: Mother Nature bats last. ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: "Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club" <membership.services(a)sierraclub.org> To: jim_scon(a)yahoo.com Sent: Mon, May 10, 2010 9:03:03 PM Subject: We Can't Fight Global Warming Blindfolded Sierra Club View a web version of this email. Jim, Tell CEQ it's Time for Federal Agencies to Start Factoring Climate into their Decisions. Environmental impacts studies are a key tool that federal agencies use to evaluate the possible environmental costs of the permits they issue and the work they do. However, climate change is rarely factored into these decisions, allowing projects like coal power plants and mega-highways to move forward without owning up to their real impacts. But the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is working to change this, and they need your help. Let CEQ know that you support their work to make climate change a factor in the decision making process by sending a public comment today. Environmental disasters happen because we turn a blind eye to the risks. The BP oil disaster that is unfolding in the Gulf? The Deepwater Horizon was exempted from a detailed environmental impact study because three reviews concluded that a spill was "unlikely."1 We cannot allow an oversight like this to occur again, and yet they happen every day because federal agencies are allowed to ignore the greatest threat to our environment -- global warming. Tell CEQ we cannot wait any longer for new guidance requiring agencies to evaluate the risk to our climate when making decisions. The new guidance that CEQ proposed isn't perfect. It exempts land management decisions from climate analysis, meaning efforts to cut forests or plow under prairies can move forward without addressing the critical role our wild places play in trapping carbon pollution. Thank CEQ for starting the process by proposing to require climate be included in the decision making process, and tell them to finish the job by closing the loophole for land management. Thanks for all that you do to protect the environment. Mary Anne Hitt Sierra Club Big Picture Campaign P.S. Please forward this message and help spread the word to your friends and family! [1] "U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study," Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post: May 10, 2010. If you do not wish to receive future emails like this, click here to be removed from this type of email contact. Update My Profile| Manage My Email Preferences | Update My Interests Sierra Club 85 Second St. San Francisco, CA 94105

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NYTimes: In Backing Clean Energy Start-Ups, Fund Looks for Longer Résumés
by William DePaulo 11 May '10

11 May '10

From The New York Times: In Backing Clean Energy Start-Ups, Fund Looks for Longer Résumés Virgin Green Fund, an investment firm backed by Richard Branson, is investing in established companies, with better odds, instead of looking for home runs. http://nyti.ms/akOzvH Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://itunes.com/apps/nytimes William V DePaulo, Esq 179 Summers Street #232 Charleston WV 25301-2163 Tel 304-342-5588 Fax 304-342-5505 william.depaulo(a)gmail.com www.passeggiata.com

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Fwd: EPA announces coal ash rule today!
by Paul Wilson 07 May '10

07 May '10

might be worthwhile to get out a chapter alert on either CONVIO or just on the Chapter website? best, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lyndsay Moseley <Lyndsay.Moseley(a)sierraclub.org> Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 2:39 PM Subject: EPA announces coal ash rule today! To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org All: EPA finally proposed new safeguards for toxic coal ash today! After a quick review, EPA has proposed two options for regulation of coal ash under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and is seeking public comment on both options. The first option designates coal ash as a "special waste" under Subtitle C of RCRA and would provide the kind of federally enforceable safeguards we've been advocating for to adequately protect the public from toxic coal ash. The other option regulates coal ash under Subtitle D of RCRA and the other treats toxic coal ash (which contains potentially dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals) less stringent than household garbage. Both the science and past failures of the patchwork of state-based regulations call for the stronger, federal protections. There will be a 90-day public comment period during which Sierra Club will be working hard to call on EPA to adopt the most protective safeguards. Stay tuned! Here is a link to the proposed rule: http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/ccr-rule/ccr-rule-p… Best, Lyndsay Lyndsay Moseley Washington Representative Sierra Club, Beyond Coal Campaign 408 C St. NE Washington, DC 20002 tel: 202-548-4581 fax: 202-547-6009 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/ -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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Coal CEO''s swagger .... strong-interesting piece by Susanna Rodell
by Frank Young 06 May '10

06 May '10

This was one of the posts in Vivian Stoickman's daily list for OVEC website. Many of us remember Susanna Rodell from her former work with the Charleston (WV) Gazette...... http://www.ajc.com/opinion/the-swagger-behind-a-520788.html The swagger behind a mining tragedy By Susanna Rodell 7:15 p.m. Wednesday, May 5, 2010 After I signed on as editorial page editor of the Charleston Gazette, West Virginia’s premier newspaper, the first visitor to the editorial board was Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship. I arrived in 2003, and I’d been mostly delighted with this quirky, gorgeous and still isolated piece of America. But I quickly bumped up against West Virginia’s dark side: the ravages of coal mining. The mountains were being raped. Mountaintop removal was destroying much of the last wild landscape in the eastern U.S. “Mountaintop removal,” by the way, is a terrible misnomer, since it creates the impression that it’s simply a matter of slicing the tops off some remote peaks. In fact, the practice systematically destroys entire mountains, reducing them to rubble that then chokes the surrounding valleys, creating thousands of acres of decimated, dead landscape. And the main character in this ongoing drama, I was informed — a man who could have come from Central Casting in the role of old-fashioned mustachioed Bad Guy — was Blankenship. He arrived at our office with a PR guy in a green suit and regaled our little gathering with his Local Boy history: childhood in rural Mingo County, graduation from West Virginia University, working his way up from the bottom of the industry. He then told us he thought it would be only fitting for us to give him a regular column. We didn’t do that. We told him we’d be happy to treat him as any other member of the community and consider any contribution to our op-ed page, but that we weren’t in the habit of handing out weekly space to anyone who asked for it. To him, I’m sure, it only seemed fair that he should have his own regular forum in the paper to “balance” the aggressive and dedicated reporting of our coal beat reporter, Ken Ward. What I remember most about the encounter, however, was Blankenship’s quiet arrogance: He was clearly a man used to getting what he wanted and utterly convinced of his right to walk into the local newspaper and demand a forum. Once he figured out that wasn’t going to happen, we paid a price: He slapped the paper with a $300 million defamation suit. He lost the suit eventually, but it cost our little paper dearly in legal fees. And in the intervening time, he would ruin the career of a state Supreme Court judge who ruled against his company in environmental suits, spending millions to promote the election of an unknown lawyer who then ruled in his favor. For a while, it seemed Blankenship would have his way. The Bush administration had stacked the Mining Safety and Health Administration and the EPA with industry-friendly types who weren’t much interested in enforcing environmental or safety regulations. Ward’s reporting at the Gazette doggedly pointed this out, along with the tragic results. >From time to time, as in 2007 with the Sago disaster, national attention would briefly be focused on West Virginia. But only briefly. And in my subsequent forays into the world beyond those mountains, I found it nearly impossible to get anyone to listen to the story. Beyond the mountains, West Virginia seemed to exist only as an amusing stereotype: pretty scenery and poor people, some of them coal miners. Not really a part of 21st-century America. That isolation helped Blankenship. For years it seemed no one outside the state cared that he had succeeded in buying his own justice. It also helped the man to believe in his own mythology. For a few years, he seemed invincible. Then two things happened: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that Brent Benjamin, the judge elected with the benefit of Blankenship’s largesse, should have recused himself from ruling in a suit involving Massey. Then came the explosion at Montcoal, killing 29 miners, the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in 40 years, and subsequent revelations about Massey’s safety record. And now the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the Massey tragedy; several news outlets report that it includes allegations of bribery of state and federal inspectors. Blankenship is not the only character in this story. Last week, two miners were killed in a roof collapse at a mine in Kentucky. The Kentucky mine belongs to another company, and the neglect of Appalachia is a theme in American history. But the Massey CEO’s aggressive tactics, combined with the recent anti-regulatory atmosphere in Washington, helped perpetuate both environmental and human disasters. West Virginia’s coal industry likes to tout itself as the lifeblood of the state’s economy. Too much government interference, the coal apologists love to assert, will cripple a state whose economy is already close to the weakest in the nation. But as a former colleague reminded me this week, there are now more nurses in the state than coal miners. This year, with a nonfarm work force of about 730,000, mining and forestry combined only employed 27,900. Coal only accounts for about 7 percent of the gross state product. In fact, coal is probably more important to the rest of the country than it is to West Virginians. Most of the relatively cheap electricity we depend on comes from coal. Thanks to automation (including the scary, stories-high machines that efficiently chew up the mountains), more coal is mined today with fewer workers. All those “clean” cars we intend to plug in will have to get their power from somewhere: chances are, from coal-fired plants. So yes, while the swaggering Blankenship deserves considerable blame, there’s another enemy in this story: the one we see in the mirror. The least we can do, as participants in this drama, is to remember who’s risking their lives to keep our lights on, and encourage our lawmakers to keep up the pressure on Big Coal and its enablers to clean up their act. Make sure they can’t hide behind the mountains any more. Susanna Rodell lives in Milton.

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NYTimes.com: No Fooling Mother Nature
by william.depaulo＠gmail.com 05 May '10

05 May '10

This page was sent to you by: william.depaulo(a)gmail.com. OPINION | May 05, 2010 Op-Ed Columnist: No Fooling Mother Nature By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN After the oil spill in the gulf, an energy/climate/jobs bill is needed more than ever. America has to stop messing around with the environment's future. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05friedman.html?emc=eta1 ---------------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THIS E-MAIL This e-mail was sent to you by a friend through NYTimes.com's E-mail This Article service. For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help(a)nytimes.com. NYTimes.com 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

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FW: EPA announces coal ash rule today!
by Grubb, Karen 04 May '10

04 May '10

Should we do a future Convio on this topic? -----Original Message----- From: Announcements from the National Coal Campaign team. [mailto:COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG] On Behalf Of Lyndsay Moseley Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 2:39 PM To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Subject: EPA announces coal ash rule today! All: EPA finally proposed new safeguards for toxic coal ash today! After a quick review, EPA has proposed two options for regulation of coal ash under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and is seeking public comment on both options. The first option designates coal ash as a "special waste" under Subtitle C of RCRA and would provide the kind of federally enforceable safeguards we've been advocating for to adequately protect the public from toxic coal ash. The other option regulates coal ash under Subtitle D of RCRA and the other treats toxic coal ash (which contains potentially dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals) less stringent than household garbage. Both the science and past failures of the patchwork of state-based regulations call for the stronger, federal protections. There will be a 90-day public comment period during which Sierra Club will be working hard to call on EPA to adopt the most protective safeguards. Stay tuned! Here is a link to the proposed rule: http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/ccr-rule/ccr-rul e-prop.pdf Best, Lyndsay Lyndsay Moseley Washington Representative Sierra Club, Beyond Coal Campaign 408 C St. NE Washington, DC 20002 tel: 202-548-4581 fax: 202-547-6009 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/

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Fwd: WVNS story: When Out-Of-State Companies Drill For Gas, What Does WV Get?
by Paul Wilson 03 May '10

03 May '10

fyi, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Public News Service <wvns(a)newsservice.org> Date: Mon, May 3, 2010 at 5:58 AM Subject: WVNS story: When Out-Of-State Companies Drill For Gas, What Does WV Get? To: PaulWilson <pjgrunt(a)gmail.com> Public News Service-WV May 03, 2010 When Out-Of-State Companies Drill For Gas, What Does WV Get? CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Workers and residents are asking how much West Virginia is getting out of the drilling boom in the huge Marcellus Shale natural gas field. Three union locals - operating engineers, pipeline welders and laborers - are picketing a Marshall County processing station. Donnie Huff with Local 132 of the *International Union of Operating Engineerssays* says it's part of an enormous pipeline system being built by a Texas company, Caiman Energy, along the Ohio valley. It's supposed to employ thousands, but so far, Huff says, the jobs are going to workers from Texas and Oklahoma. "Like the timber industry, they raped West Virginia, exported everything. Same thing happened with the coal industry - 90 percent of it is going out of state. It's time West Virginia gets something for our natural resources." An official with a natural gas trade group says many of the Marcellus jobs are going to West Virginians, and that Caiman has used West Virginia contractors in the past. But in some cases, he says, the jobs require special skills that the local workforce lacks. Huff disagrees, saying highly skilled local workers could fill all the jobs. "Pipeline welders, UA tradespeople, pipeline operators, station operators, building trade operators - yeah, we could man all their work." The gas drilling boom also strains resources in rural counties, and it's unclear how much it adds to the tax base. Ray Renaud, with the *Wetzel County Action Group*, is also a volunteer firefighter. He says they've had good results talking to Chesapeake Energy about some transportation issues, but the boom definitely adds to the need for emergency services. "Now, our call volumes have increased rather dramatically. With all this road volume, our accident rates are very high and there are also accidents on well sites that we have to respond to." Caiman Energy did not return a call requesting comment. Click here to view this story on the Public News Service RSS site and access an audio version of this and other stories: http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/13747-1<http://www.publicnewsservice.org/index.php?/content/article/13747-1> --- To be removed from this list please send an e-mail to remove(a)publicnewsservice.org <remove(a)publicnewsservice.org?subject=remove>and put the word "remove" in the subject line. -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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EC May 2010