Jay Dee's Post

An interesting development just in concerning Massey Energy’s Bee Tree Mine, the Southern West Virginia operation where environmentalists had hoped to put a wind energy facility instead of a mountaintop removal job. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are investigating the Bee Tree site, examining Massey’s operation there without first obtaining a “dredge-and-fill” permit under Section 404 [...]

The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce is calling on the state’s congressional delegation — particularly Sens. Robert C. Byrd and Jay Rockfeller — to refuse to advance health-care reform legislation unless or until the Obama administration stops what the Chamber calls a “war on coal/energy.” In a press statement issued this morning, Chamber President Steve Roberts [...]

I think at the Obama administration we all believe that everybody has the right to live in a clean, healthy environment and a prosperous economy. And we're working towards that. We need to reach out to communities whose voices have been ignored and where there are disproportional impacts, whether it's environmental protection or promoting [a] [...]

Late last week, West Virginia citizen groups filed an update to their petition asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to take over Clean Water Act permitting and enforcement from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. As you recall, the original petition filed in May cited a variety of problems with the way DEP is handling its [...]

EPA releases reports on AEP coal-ash dam in W.Va. by Ken Ward Jr. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials have finally made public the contractor’s report upon which they based their decision to require additional testing and warn the public about possible structural problems at two American Electric Power coal-ash dams in Mason County, W.Va. The report by [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. There’s an incredible story out today in the Miami Herald about the boy pictured above, and other residents of a small Dominican Republic town where toxic coal ash was dumped. Here’s the lead, by reporter Frances Robles: ARROYO BARRIL, Dominican Republic — Maximiliano Calcaño is 2 and was born with no arms. “When I [...]

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin has scheduled what sounds like an “all-hands-on-deck” meeting of his coal industry friends for next week … Among the list of those invited and apparently likely to attend:– Massey Energy President Don Blankenship, CONSOL Energy CEO Brett Harvey, International Coal Group President Ben Hatfield, top officials from a dozen other [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. There can be no electricity without coal. – Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. The thought that Sen. Jay Rockefeller would somehow try to block, stonewall or mess with health-care reform to get the Obama administration to back off its increased scrutiny of mountaintop removal permits seemed a little over the top to me yesterday. But … [...]

Scrutinizing Mountain Top removal permist causes energy crisis in the United States , NOT

PARKERSBURG – A study in the C8 health project found children with higher levels of C8 in their blood tend to also have higher cholesterol, but the data doesn’t prove whether C8 caused it, the report said. The study, filed Friday in Wood County Circuit Court by the C8 Science Panel, says researchers found higher levels [...]