The characters are different but the plot is all too familiar:

In the movie Avatar, Parker Selfridge of the RDA mining corporation, has the bulldozers take down the Na’vi history tree. It’s standing between them and a valuable black energy rock called “unobtainium.”

In Appalachia, Randall Reid Smith, WV Commissioner of Culture and History, asks the National Park Service to remove National Historic Register designation from Blair Mountain, site of a major 1921 confrontation between the coal miners unions and the coal industry. On Jan. 8, 2010, Carol Schull, Chief of the National Register for the Park Service, announces an unprecedented de-listing of a national historical site, effective immediately.

Appalachia’s history is standing in the way of another valuable black rock.
 
“If they can Stalinize our history like this, it shows that big coal still owns our state government,” said Wess Harris, editor of “When Miners March,” a book documenting the union’s side of the battle of Blair Mountain. “This action does not stand alone but is part of a deliberate effort to erase Appalachian history.”
 
The site of the 1921 armed conflict between over ten thousand coal miners and company guards involved at least 80 deaths. The site has enormous significance for historians and for the American labor movement.
 
Letters of support for the original historic places listing—approved just last March of 2009—came from the Presidents of the United Mine Workers of America, the Society for Historical Archeology, the Society of American Archeology, and many other historians and scholars.
 
“The Blair Mountain Battlefield is a unique historic and cultural treasure that deserves all the recognition and protection we can muster,” said archeology professor Harvard Ayers of Appalachian State University. “The coal industry…conducted a scare campaign to con property owners within the nomination boundary into signing formal objections to the listing. “

The decision to de-list Blair Mountain (first reported in a blog post by Jeff Biggers) is questionable on a number of levels, not the least of which is that two of the property owners who supposedly object to the Historical listing are deceased.

In the movie Avatar, the Na’vi of Pandora have intricate language, customs and connections to the natural world that supports them. They are under assault from corporate greed, and one of the first places attacked is their historical memory contained in the Tree of Voices.
 
Appalachian people have similarly intricate connections to the natural world of Appalachia—connections that they are losing as explosives and giant bulldozers destroy the mountains for coal.
 
Their history is also under assault.
 
Its one thing to watch a movie, but it’s another to understand the point that a movie like Avatar is trying to make.
 
Outside the popcorn palaces, the harsh reality of the struggle over valuable black rock is evident not in distant lands or remote worlds, but very close to home.

Appalachian Voices joined with more than 100 environmental organizations including the Sierra Club, Earth Justice, Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Resource Defense Council to post a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday, December 22 calling for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enact regulations for coal ash waste disposal. The ad ran on the one-year anniversary of the Kinston, TN coal ash disaster, in which 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash tragically spilled into the Clinch and Emory rivers at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired power plant.

View the ad

Send a letter to the EPA asking for coal ash regulations

On Tuesday, Duke Energy and the North Carolina Utility Commission reached a preliminary settlement on Duke’s request for a substantial rate increase on residential and commercial utilities.

The proposed agreement would cut Duke’s original request of a 13% residential rate increase to around 7%, a hike which would phase in over a two year period, starting with a 4.3% increase in January, 2010. The proposed agreement would reduce Duke’s expected profit increase from $496 million to $315 million.

Commercial and industrial groups have sought out similar reductions.

The Public Utilities Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing in Raleigh on Wednesday about the proposed rate request. According to an article by Bruce Henderson of the Charlotte Observer, “it is not known how the nine other formal parties to the rate case will regard the…compromise” and that the state Attorney General’s office has asked for a delay in Wednesday’s hearing to “analyze the agreement.”

Duke Energy’s official press release

Just the day before, the Utilities Commission held the last in a string of public hearings in which Duke Energy customers were able to make public comments concerning the hike. According to Commission Chairman Edward Finley, Jr., thousands of emails, phone calls and letters had also poured in opposing the increase.

During yesterday’s hearing, over a dozen residents spoke out against the rate hike, citing health concerns, economy, and the lack of need for the Cliffside coal-fired power plant expansion

Read Appalachian Voices’ official submitted commenton the Duke Energy rate hike.

Several speakers chastised Duke Energy for its failure to move towards more renewable energy. Elizabeth Goyer, a UNC Asheville environmental studies student, noted that while the utility claims to be pushing for more renewable sources, only about 3% of Duke’s electricity comes from alternates to coal. “I am waiting for Duke to make a real commitment to renewable energy,” she said.

Zell McGee, a North Carolina native and a medical expert who taught for years in Utah, testified about known health effects of coal-fired power plants. “Healthcare costs are translated to the customers,” he said, further increasing their financial burden beyond the rate increase. He compared rate payers to prey and Duke Energy to predators, and said that the Commission needed to work harder to “encourage harmony between utility companies and their customers.”

A representative of the North Carolina Conservation Network delivered a petition signed by over 1500 citizens asking that the rate hike request be rejected, and an attorney with the North Carolina Justice Center, testified on behalf of the disadvantaged residents of the state, noting that of the 1.3 million poor people currently living in North Carolina, none of them could afford to pay for the increase, either monetarily or physically.

“One thing that has not been mentioned today,” Ripley said, “is the extensive research that has been done to show correlations between energy costs and the health of our children and of our poor elderly people in this state.” Ripley elaborated by explaining that increased external costs means less money to spend on food, which leads to malnutrition and poor health.

Ruby Best, a disabled 61-year-old from Durham, N.C., testified that her electricity rates have steadily increased since she bought her home in 2005, in spite of changes in energy use habits, and that she currently struggling to pay her bills. “If this [increase] is granted, how am I going to be able to manage this?” she asked.

And Casey Baker, whose family owns a vineyard and farm near the Cliffside plant, mentioned that the rate increase would seriously effect farmers who rely on electricity to pump water and power farm equipment. “If the rate increase comes in, our profit margins are going to be seriously cut,” he said, and noted that some of the farmers have begun researching off-the-grid alternatives such as solar.

Representatives from Duke Energy and several environmental groups were present, but only residents were allowed to testify. No residents at the hearing on Monday spoke out in favor of the rate hikes.

Safety of Dozens of Citizens Threatened at “Public Hearing”
Pro-coal groups and mountaintop removal coal mining opponents verbally clashed at a hearing on the Army Corps of Engineers’ NW21 permits Wednesday night in Charleston, W.Va. According to eyewitnesses, hundreds of coal industry supporters rallied to outnumber mountaintop removal opponents, and heckled and yelling threats to individuals who came to present their case against mountaintop removal coal mining; some reports included elbowing, pushing and other physical forms of intimidation (view a video and read testimonials from citizens present at the event), and most were prevented from speaking at the hearing. Both the Charleston Daily Mail and the Charleston Gazette covered the event. According to a blog post by Ken Ward, the Corps claims that the hearing was “conducted in an orderly fashion.”

Jackson Claims Coal “Can Be Mined Safely and Cleanly”
In other Obama Administration news, according to an article also by Ken Ward in the Charleston Gazette, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson defended her agency’s scrutiny of mountaintop removal while claiming to have no desire to end coal mining, amid growing pressure from coalfield political leaders and the mining industry. During a Congressional committee meeting, Jackson stated: “Neither EPA nor I personally have any desire to end coal mining, have any hidden agenda, any agenda whatsoever that has to do with coal mining as an industry….I believe coal can be mined safely and cleanly. I believe it can be done in a way that minimizes impacts to water quality.”

ACCCE Back In The News
As reported today by Kate Shepard in her Mother Jones blog post, the hearing scheduled to investigate the role of Bonner & Associates and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity in the forged anti-climate bill letters sent to Congress was postponed until next week. Read Shepard’s full report.

Shepard’s post also mentioned a new report out by Politico outlining the ACCCE budget on astoturfing and lobbying efforts for the past 18 months – a cool $10 million.

Light on the Horizon for Marsh Fork School
To end on a positive note, Jeff Biggers reports on Huffington Post that yesterday evening in Coal River, W.Va., the Raleigh County School Board met with local citizens and announced its intention to ask the state for funds to construct a new school for March Fork Elementary. Marsh Fork School—which sits immediately below a 2.8 billion gallon coal sludge impoundment and a mountaintop removal mining site and adjacent to a dusty coal silo—has been at the center of a series of rallies and campaigns from local residents and mountaintop removal coal mining opponents, who have worked for over five years to obtain a new school for the children.

And that’s all in just two turns of the clock.

After a 14-day initial review period, the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional offices followed the lead of EPA headquarters, recommending that all 79 pending mountaintop removal mining valley fill permits be remanded into a full 60-day extended review process. The extended review will closely examine potential environmental and health impacts of the valley fills on headwater streams and watersheds, and is part of the EPA’s promise of a more stringent review process for overseeing mountaintop removal coal mining. During the previous presidential administration, a change to the “fill rule” in the Clean Water Act allowed permits for mountaintop removal valley fills to be rubberstamped without conducting any environmental or health impact assessments.

Read Appalachian Voices’ statement on the decision.

The struggles of folks in West Virginia is not only getting national air time, it is finally front and center – the lead story of last Sunday’s New York Times, to be exact. The article details the Massey family from Prenter, W.Va., and their life with toxic tap water contaminated with heavy metals from nearby coal slurry impoundments and injections of the slurry into old underground mines. Accompanying the article was a heart-wrenching photo slide show with an audio interview featuring Jennifer Hall-Massey.

Read the full article at the New York Times, and also check out Jeff Biggers’ commentary and interview with a young activist from the Prenter Water Fund, a group striving to defend the citizens of Prenter and their right to clean drinking water.

Two activists from Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice engaged in a tree sit have halted blasting for a second day at a Massey Energy mine site in West Virginia. The two sitters established themselves on platforms over 80 feet above the ground near the Edwight mountaintop removal mine above Pettry Bottom, within 300 feet of a planned blasting zone.

Two individuals on the ground were arrested and cited for trespassing, but later released because they are the primary line of communication to the tree sitters, who claim they will not climb down until numerous conditions are met by Massey.

This is the thirteenth non-violent direct action and protest in the Coal River Valley this summer. Others include the June 23 protest at Marsh Fork School where NASA scientist James Hansen and activist/actress Daryl Hannah were arrested, and a June 18 civil disobedience action where four individuals scaled a 150-foot dragline on a Massey Energy mine site and unfurled a banner that said, “Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining.”

Visit Climate Ground Zero for the full story and latest updates.

According to a Grist blog posted today titled “A Farce to be Reckoned With,” a Pennsylvania coal-industry group calling itself Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy (FORCE) isn’t actually comprised of families after all. Instead, membership criteria is limited to “any Pennsylvania company doing business with the coal industry” and “coal and coal company-related sponsorship.”

The group is responsible for billboards along Penn state highways promoting “clean coal,” which you think would lead the public to believe this group has a lot of “families” supporting “clean coal.”

Read Jonathan Hiskes’ punchy account of his attempts to gather more information from the group.

And be sure to check out his other blog post on the Families Organized to Represent Coal coloring book for kids, appropriately titled “Eyes for Frosty.” As Hiskes says, “At least it picks a relevant topic in snowmen—they won’t be around for long if the coal industry succeeds in stomping all over climate change legislation.”

Al Jazeera English, the world’s first global English language news channel to be headquartered in the Middle East, aired a ten-minute segment on the energy future war taking place in West Virginia coalfields, and focuses on the struggle over Coal River Mountain.

Shortly after a Senate sub-committee hearing on the anti-mountaintop removal bill the Appalachia Restoration Act (co-sponsored by Senator Lamar Alexandar [R-TN] and Senator Ben Cardin [D-MD]), a letter was released to the public detailing how two subsidiary companies of Arch Coal were encouraging their employees and families to boycott Tennessee in response to Sen. Alexander’s support of the bill. The letter claimed that the two companies had canceled annual company outings to Dollywood in Gatlinburg, and encouraged their almost 1200 employees and their families to not visit the fair state of Tennessee for personal vacation.

Not to be deterred, Senator Alexander reportedly responded that “Every year, millions of tourists come to Tennessee and spend millions of dollars to see our scenic mountaintops, not to see mountains whose tops have been blown off and dumped into streams.”

Since the letter first came out, one of the companies, TECO Coal based in Kentucky, reportedly backed off from its original support of the boycott, stating “We regret our previous action, which was an emotional response that doesn’t benefit our 1,200 employees, the eastern Kentucky communities we support, the environment we work to protect or our neighbors in Tennessee.” Tennessee brings in a reported $14.2 billion in tourism revenue a year, compared to coal, which generates only $67 million for the state.

We would like to encourage our readers to visit Tennessee for vacation this year. We even held our summer staff retreat on the banks of Watauga Lake, near Butler. What a beautiful state.

Read the original story by WV Public Broadcasting, the original letter, and the recent article by the New York Times.

GetEnergySmartNow.com posted an article today examining the escalating violence in the West Virginia coalfields between proponents and opponents of mountaintop removal coal mining. Threats of violence, both in written form and verbally, are growing on a daily basis. Videos posted to YouTube from the June 23 Marsh Fork Elementary School anti-mountaintop removal rally and from the July 4 family festival at Kayford Mountain have garnered numerous comments that are increasingly hostile. How will all of this turn out?

Read the full article on GetEnergySmartNow.com

The latest documentary film to examine mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia, “Coal Country,” premiered Saturday, July 11 night to a standing-room-only crowd. While the event was mostly uneventful, during the screening there were boos and heckling from pro-mountaintop removal people in the audience and Capitol Police escorted several coal miners from the building after the screening.

Photojournalist Antrim Caskey was on hand for the event – read her full account at Climate Ground Zero’s blog.

Visit the Coal Country movie website

Read an account by West Virginia Public Broadcasting