President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it will reconsider the midnight memo issued by former EPA Administrator Steven Johnson which sought to prohibit controls on global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
The decision should halt virtually all new coal plant development until EPA decides how to address global warming pollution from coal plants.
On Friday, a panel of federal judges ruled in favor of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a controversial mountaintop removal mining case. The ruling would permit mining companies to conduct devastating mountaintop removal coal mining operations without acting to minimize stream destruction or conducting adequate environmental reviews.
As a result, Appalachia could be facing as many as 150 new mountaintop removal coal mining operations, 90 in West Virginia alone, which would destroy huge swaths of the Appalachian Mountains.
"Either Congress or the Obama administration need to reinstate the Stream Buffer Zone rule and to pass the Clean Water Protection Act," said Tierra Curry, conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. "But better yet, mountaintop removal should be prohibited and the burning of coal immediately phased out to save the planet from dangerous climate change."
Since mountaintop removal coal mining began in 1970, an estimated 1.5 million acres of hardwood forest have been lost, over 470 mountaintops have been blasted, and 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried.
Coal can be mined in a cleaner fashion and in a more limited fashion. A panel should be put together to make sure this happens and that the regulations are not violated in any way.
Coal is not clean. Period. Need proof? On December 22, hundreds of millions of gallons of coal ash sludge and contaminated water, the waste product of coal-fired power plants of the Tennessee Valley Authority, spilled over a retaining area damaging 45 homes and contaminating the water with dangerously high levels of arsenic. This disaster is another stark reminder of the environmental, health and economic hazards of our over-reliance on coal as an energy source.
On December 27, Appalachian Voices sampled several of the spill's piles and found elevated levels of toxins, including arsenic and lead. Most of this potentially toxic waste remains in or near those waters - both contaminating water and becoming airborne dust once it dries.
We at least know that the U.S. Senate hasn't missed this disaster - the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is holding a hearing on it this Thursday, Jan. 8, and you can watch a webcast of on the EPW website. There is also talk now of this tragedy spurring regulation of coal ash.
