Jay Dee's Post

by Ken Ward Jr. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are planning to join the growing investigation of safety concerns at DuPont Co.’s chemical plant in Belle, W.Va., following a string of leaks including one that killed a worker. Two teams of EPA inspectors plan to visit the plant next week. One will be looking into DuPont’s compliance [...]

by Andrew Clevenger Earlier this week, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee released state-by-state snapshots of the economy. For West Virginia, it’s a classic good news, bad news situation. First, the bad: In December 2009, unemployment reached 9.1 percent, a big jump from December 2008 (4.5 percent) and December 2007 (4.3 percent). The 2009 percentage translates to [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. When it announced plans to investigate recent DuPont Co. Belle plant problems — including a Saturday afternoon phosgene leak that killed a worker –  the U.S. Chemical Safety Board noted its concern about six previous leaks at the facility since December 2006. I thought readers might want some more information about those six [...]

While President Obama addresses the US Congress in his historic State of the Union tonight, our nation will sit back and burn an estimated 115,000 tons of coal. Close to 250,000 tons of CO2 will be released from coal-fired plants during the hourlong presentation; hundreds of pounds of toxic mercury emissions will enter our air, [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Gazette photo by Chris Dorst When federal workplace safety inspectors walked through the gates of DuPont Co.’s Belle, W.Va., chemical plant yesterday to begin investigating worker Carl “Dan” Fish’s death,  it was the first them they had set foot in the place in nearly five years. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. You have to wonder sometimes what Gov. Joe Manchin is thinking … there he was yesterday, with all his talk about finding a “balance” between jobs and the environment. And the very next day … Top lawmakers today introduced — at Manchin’s request — a resolution attacking efforts in Congress and by the [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Well, here’s the answer to the question posed on my previous post, “What’s Gov. Manchin going to say?“  For starters, Manchin emerged from a long meeting with coalfield citizens and issued a call for an end to threats and intimidation against West Virginians who are fighting to stop mountaintop removal: We will [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. That was the scene at the West Virginia Capitol back in early November, when the stae’s political leaders turned out in force to join Gov. Joe Manchin in backing the mining industry against what they say is the Obama administration’s “war on coal.” This afternoon, Gov. Manchin is having a quite different meeting [...]

Perched on 60-foot-high platforms in tulip poplar and oak trees, three nonviolent tree-sitting protestors associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice carried out the duty of the EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection this morning–they reportedly shut down the reckless mountaintop removal blasting at the controversial Bee Tree Strip Mine on [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. Yesterday’s release of the report detailing the expected decline of Central Appalachia’s coal production has generated continued discussion here on Coal Tattoo about the subject of a regional economic transition that would involve more “green jobs.” Well, today we got at least a little bit of an answer from the Obama administration, in [...]