Tag: Mountaintop Removal

Grassroots Pastoral Letter from Appalachian Catholics Calls for the Telling of New Stories

The Catholic Committee of Appalachia just published a pastoral letter. It’s the third of its kind. Forty years ago the first was written and acclaimed as “one of the most significant statements to emerge from the U.S. Catholic Church,” according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia.

The Magisterium of the Poor and of the Earth

“When the story of these mountains as “resource”

takes over the story of the mountains as “home,”

we become homeless in our own place,

and disconnected from Earth and one another.”

These are some of the opening lines from the new pastoral letter released from the Catholic Committee of Appalachia: The Telling Takes Us Home: Taking Our Place in the Stories That Shape Us. The Committee is a network of faith-based people who are focused on addressing social justice issues in Appalachia.

“The Pastoral itself is a telling of the people of Appalachia in all of our diversity,” said lead author of the letter, Michael Iafrate — a Wheeling resident completing a doctorate in theology. “It’s the telling of the church at the grassroots that’s committed to justice, which is often a contrary voice in larger church context.”

Committee members organized listening sessions with religious and nonreligious alike over a four-year period. Their listening sessions especially targeted marginalized groups like women, miners, the homeless and imprisoned, people of color, and folks with a variety of sexual orientations.

The resulting missive is 60 pages (74 if you include the notes) written in an open-verse poetic form, studded with Parkersburg-native Christopher Santer’s paintings of mountains that have been surface-mined. Iafrate says themes of the open letter are similar to many recent messages from Pope Francis. The pontif has been preaching about moral obligations to care for the earth and the wisdom to be learned on that subject from marginalized populations most affected by ecological devastation.

From the People of God

“I remember how significant the first pastoral was, and this is like the first one,” said Jaculyn Hanrahan, a lawyer and a Catholic nun from the Congregation of Notre Dame. Hanrahan is also the director of the Appalachian Faith and Ecology Center and has been a member of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia since 1982. On a steering committee for this pastoral, she says the letter came from a need to give people hope and spread a message of inclusivity.

The first and second people’s pastorals were endorsed by Catholic bishops but this most recent letter comes without endorsement from any church hierarchy.

“This time we just felt we wouldn’t get [endorsements], to be honest,” Hanrahan said, “because some [bishops] had already told us that they wouldn’t have signed the first one.”

Hanrahan does credit many of the southern bishops in Appalachia for helping to fund this latest pastoral, but after some thought the committee decided no endorsements were really necessary.

“We are the people of God, and we have this authority,” Hanrahan said, quoting this passage from the pastoral letter:

By lifting up the authority of these stories, we Christians at the grassroots hope to contribute to the growing movement that is telling a new story about our region. This is a pastoral message from the people themselves to our region, to the world, and to the churches, leaders and laity alike.

“And we’re accepting the freedom that we have as people,” Hanrahan added, “to name a truth that sometimes those in authority aren’t free to name.”

Stories of Justice Beyond Faith Boundaries

“So we’re really hoping for a grassroots, viral spreading of this message with all sorts of groups, not just Catholic but even beyond people of faith,” said lead author Michael Iafrate. He calls the letter an ecumenical gift-exchange in the work for social justice. But nonreligious folks also reviewed the pastoral before publication.

“And many said they were able to find their voice in the document as well which was really important to all of us — that the document could be something that could help build bridges for the work of justice.”

Iafrate says lots of different people are trying to tell a new story of what it means to be Appalachian these days. He says the pastoral is a way for people of faith to join that chorus.

SNL Energy Coal Reporter Discusses New Coal Production Numbers

Coal production from mines using mountaintop removal has decreased 62% from 2008 to 2014.  That figure was released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Agency.  Taylor Kuykendall, coal reporter for SNL Energy, an on line news service, says the coal industry is facing a perfect storm.  Low demand, federal regulations, competition from natural gas and pressure from campaigns against the mining practice from environmental groups have all taken their toll.  We spoke with Taylor Kuykendall about the news.

Officials Want Mining Health Effects to Be Closely Studied

Federal officials plan to recommend the National Academy of Sciences review a series of studies that have found residents living near mountaintop removal mining operations face increased risks of serious illnesses and premature death.

The Charleston Gazette reports that Office of Surface Mining Director Joseph Pizarchik said on Friday that his agency would ask the academy to help West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection officials examine the studies.

Former West Virginia University researcher Michael Hendryx and other scientists have published more than two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles in recent years that say residents living near mountaintop removal mines face a greater risk of cancer, birth defects and premature death.

Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Randy Huffman says the reports needed a closer examination by health experts and strip-mine regulators.

W.Va. Regulators Halt Mine Near Kanawha State Forest

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protect has closed down a mountaintop removal mine site located near a state forest in Kanawha County and is now blocking the mine operators from receiving new permits anywhere in the country. 

The DEP issued the cessation order Friday after 13 months of mining at the KD Mine #2. It’s located adjacent to the Kanawha State Forest outside of Charleston. 

A release from the agency said after a series of violations, they have also entered the mine’s operators- Revelation Energy and Keystone Development- into the national Applicant Violator System. The national database will prevent the companies from ever holding another mining permit in the United States.

In a news release, the DEP said since the mine began operating in May 2014, the agency has issued 20 violations for various problems at the surface mine, including failure to meet monitoring and sampling requirements and exceeding both blasting and water quality discharge limits.

“Our mining program has been very diligent about monitoring this site,” DEP Secretary Randy Huffman said in a written statement. “Because of the close proximity to the forest, we have gone above and beyond the normal regulatory requirements for both permitting and inspection enforcement.”

Revelation and Keystone could have their names removed from the national database that forbids them from mining, and have their cessation order at the KD #2 site lifted, if they submit and the West Virginia DEP approves a plan to abate the violations and reclaim the site.

A spokesperson for the DEP said in an email Friday the company was already in “reclamation mode,” but had recently removed all of their equipment from the site.

“The failure to abate CO is a formal declaration from DEP that no activity at the site can occur without approval from this agency,” DEP spokesman Jake Glance said. 

WVU Researcher Warns About Toxic Ultrafine Dust in W.Va.

  When we hear about the danger of dust exposure, we are usually talking about coal dust underground, or silica dust. But that’s not the only dust that can make people sick. Apparently almost any dust can, if it’s fine enough.

Much research has surfaced over the past decade demonstrating clearer and clearer evidence that surface mining creates environmental hazards for communities in the vicinity. Epidemiologist Michael Hendryx has published a lot of research that demonstrates how life expectancy in the southern coalfields, for example, is much shorter that just about anywhere else in the country. But Michael McCawley says that’s not all we know.

“We also know they have a much increased rate of lung disease and also death from lung disease, much higher than in the rest of Appalachia and much higher than in the rest of the country in general.” 

Michael McCawley is Interim Chair of the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences at West Virginia University. He’s been studying some aspects of air pollution that might shed new light on some of the human health disparities that seem to be abundant around surface mining operations, including lung and cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure. His passion these days: ultrafine particle pollution.

Health Effects

By ultrafine, we are talking about dust small enough to pass right into the smallest parts of you.

“So your cell is kind of like Jell-O with a harder outside casing but the harder outside casing has pinholes,” McCawley explained, “and these particles are smaller than the pinholes. So they can move into the inside of the cell where the exposure results in inflammation. And inflammation is the beginning of a huge number of diseases.”

McCawley explains that there is a substantial body of literature that demonstrates the toxic effects of these particles.  He says exposure to ultrafine particles emitted from diesel engines in Europe is associated with exacerbated asthma in young children as well as lung and cardiovascular diseases.

“They get into the lungs. In the lungs they can affect the nervous system. And the nervous system has an effect on the entire body including the arteries in the body. So you can get an increased blood pressure due to exposure just in the lungs.”

McCawley says it matters to some degree what the dust is made from, but all ultrafine are probably toxic.

“One of the ways we know that,” McCawley said, “they’ve done experiments with titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is the white pigment it paint. Generally it’s known to be fairly nontoxic.”

He says rats exposed to high concentrations of titanium dioxide dust at two, to four micrometers in size, has no effect on the animals’ health. But the same amount of exposure to ultrafine particles of titanium dioxide kills the rats.

Monitoring Ultrafine Particles

McCawley has been studying ultrafine particles in regions of West Virginia where surface mining is underway. In his research, he uses particle counters that which indicate how many dust particles exist in the air. He has also been able to determine the sizes and distribution of particles. It’s a complicated metric system but McCawley says it provides much more accurate ideas of the doses of dust likely to be absorbed in human lungs.

He also looked at the makeup of the dust and was able to determine that it was, “crustal, in other words from dirt being disturbed,” McCawley said. “So that suggested to us that there was activity going on removing dirt and materials that would have aerosolized these crustal particles, so we assumed that that would be associated with the mining activities.”

The Environmental Protection Agency does not have any rules on the books regulating ultrafine particle pollution. Rules do exist pertaining to larger dust particle exposure. But McCawley explains that EPA considers the overall mass of dust in the air for those rules. Ultrafine particles, he says, would need to be monitored and regulated differently.

McCawley recently gave a talk about ultra-fine particles to the Kanawha Forest Coalition, a group of Kanawha County residents concerned about a mountaintop removal site located near Charleston. He recommends that any community in the vicinity of surface mining or mountaintop removal test for ultrafine particle pollution.

But coal mining isn’t the only industry McCawley is concerned about. He says anywhere where there’s a lot of traffic or diesel generators (highways and horizontal gas drilling operations, for example) are major sources of ultrafine particle pollution. McCawley is also set to talk in Doddridge County, April 16, 6pm, at the Senior Center in West Union, to folks who live in the heart of West Virginia’s natural gas boom. 

NASA Images Show Decrease in Air Pollution, Increase in West Virginia Surface Mining

Satellite images from NASA and other government agencies can tell us a lot about the changing of the climate as well as the environment. Their photo…

Satellite images from NASA and other government agencies can tell us a lot about the changing of the climate as well as the environment. Their photo series State of Flux: Images of Change depicts noticeable differences in our world over various spans of time–looking at everything from water, air, natural disasters, as well as the impact of industry.

Here’s a few takeaways from these images that highlight West Virginia:

Air Pollution Down in West Virginia

Air pollution was down from 2005 to 2011 in the United States’ large northeast cities but also across states like West Virginia.  The images from NASA show a decrease in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is depicted in each image as red. According to NASA, NO2 can cause “respiratory problems, contribute to the formation of other pollutants, and serve as a proxy for air pollution in general.”

Here NASA explains the reduction of NO2 and, thus, a reduction in air pollution in large U.S. cities as well as West Virginia: 

"Thanks to regulations, technology improvements and economic changes, air pollution — including NO2 — has decreased despite an increase in population and number of cars on the roads. These images represent the improvement seen in the northeast corridor of the U.S., from Boston to Richmond, where some of the largest absolute changes in NO2 have occurred."

West Virginia Saw a Major Increase in Surface Mining, Mountaintop Removal 

According to the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health Safety and Training, there are 200 surface mines currently permitted to operate in the state.

Satellite images from NASA show surface mining in West Virginia increased significantly between 1987 and 2011. These photos (taken by the Thematic Mapper sensor onboard Landsat 5 from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey) detail an area just north of Webster Springs.

Here NASA details the impact of surface mining and mountaintop removal on the environment and human health:

"More than half of the U.S.' electrical power comes from coal burning and a large percentage of that coal comes from West Virginia. Of the nearly 150 million tons of coal extracted each year from the state's mines, an increasing amount (60 million tons in 2009) comes from surface mining and mountaintop removal. Mountaintop removal can have serious impacts on the health of local people — through the pollution of groundwater by mine runoff and exposure to airborne toxins and dust — and on the environment — through permanent loss of critical ecosystems, destruction of forests and loss of streams. Scientific evidence suggests that these impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that efforts to reclaim the disturbed land can't make up for the impacts felt by the mining process."

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