Jay Dee's Post

by Ken Ward Jr. Well, the race to stand up for coal continues at the West Virginia Legislature … Yesterday, the Coal Association lobbyists gave their pitch about mining permits to the special committee set up by House Speaker Rick Thompson. There are reports out from Larry Messina at The Associated Press and Ry Rivard at the Daily [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. If you follow the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s Web site, you may have noticed a half-dozen or more new entries under the “News and Stories” section. OSMRE staff have been busy posted photos and captions from agency Director Joe Pizarchik’s late January tour of the West Virginia coalfields. There are [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Goodbye purple mountain’s majesty–here comes Patriot Coal! Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert hosted scientist Margaret Palmer in a brilliant takedown of the Obama administration’s recent decision to green light more mountaintop removal permits, in light of a blockbuster new scientific study that concluded that “mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials will return to the scene of their infamous mountaintop removal hearing tomorrow morning, this time for a special meeting with coal company officials. I’m told the meeting was originally set up as a private discussion for coal operators with the Corps, U.S. EPA and the WVDEP about [...]

Mountaintop Removal Mayhem: Blair Mtn Scandal (Feds See Dead People), Coal Profits Soar, EPA Disses Scientists Who needs to go to the movie theatre to watch Avatar and the horrors of ruthless extraction companies when we have our own bizarre mountaintop removal policies at play. Check out the trailers for this week’s episodes: Blair Mountain Scandal: National [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. “Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for the losses.” Photo by Paul Corbit Brown That quote above is the conclusion of a blockbuster study being published tomorrow by a group of the nation’s top scientists, detailing the incredibly [...]

CHARLESTON, W.Va.–Roland Micklem, 81, will begin a fast at the West Virginia State Capitol on Monday, Nov. 30. It will continue for an indeterminate period of time, and Micklem has neither set demands nor preconditions for its termination. Micklem spent half a century as a naturalist, teacher and environmental writer. The loss of biodiversity caused by [...]

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 [...]