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Wyoming County Families Want Coal Company to Restore Water

This story has been updated.

Twenty-six families say that a coal company is responsible for damaging their water supply. Trial for 16 of those families begins Monday, April 11, in Wyoming County Circuit Court.

The court has already ordered Dynamic Energy, a subsidiary of Mechel Bluestone Inc., to provide a temporary water solution for residents involved in the case Belcher vs Dynamic Energy. Paulette Blankenship is one of the residents who is currently getting water from the company.

Blankenship built her colonial style home with her husband. Her temporary water supply currently sits in her back yard, about a 5 feet tall tank covered in tarps with a valve and single rock perched on top.

“They come about three times a week and deliver water into this,” she said.

According to court documents, residents filed their complaints in May 2014. The families say that Mechel Bluestone violated the law, the West Virginia Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation Act and damaged several wells along Cedar Creek Rd.

While awaiting trial, the plaintiffs filed a motion in October 2014 for the company to replace their water. Two months later, the court granted the motion based on the residents’ need for clean water to “meet their basic needs for survival.”

Water testing presented by the plaintiffs showed high levels of arsenic, aluminum, lead, iron and other pollutants. It took eight months, and another court order before residents like Paulette got a temporary solution for clean water. Paulette and her husband say they’re not trying to create problems in the small town with anyone who might work at the surface mine site.

“We taught our children, everyday in school, stand up for what’s right and if you have been wronged stand up for your rights, ” Paulette Blankenship said. And that’s basically what we’re doing. We’re standing up for our right to live on this land to live in this house unencumbered with contaminated water. We want what we had before simply.”

Paulette and the rest of the plaintiffs involved in this suit are asking for permanent water replacement. Her attorneys have estimated the replacement for a reverse osmosis system would cost $57,000 per household.

Mechel Bluestone’s attorney, James Brown, did not want to comment on the case on the eve of the trial. The company maintains that they are not responsible and that the mining practice did not contaminate these water systems.

Mechel Bluestone is owned by front runner for state Governor, Jim Justice. Justice sold the mine to a Russian company in 2009 but bought it back last year.

The residents along parts of Cedar Creek Road in Wyoming County are represented by Thompson and Barney out of Charleston. The attorneys recently won a case against a different coal company formerly owned by Patriot Coal in Wyoming County. In that case, the new permit holder is now required to supply permanent water to residents in part of Clear Fork.

A Justice Companies spokesman said in a statement that Bluestone has been hauling fresh water to each house for years since this case was brought against the Russian company.

The statement says West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection scientists have found that there is no correlation between this mine and the wells in question and that, “Anyone with a legitimate issue we will make whole.”

The statement also says Bluestone is challenging the lawsuit because it doesn’t want to risk losing 150 union coal mining jobs.

This story was updated on April 11, 2016, to reflect the fact that it was a Justice Companies spokesman, not a Justice campaign spokesman, who issued a response to the lawsuit.

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.

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.

Appalachian Voices Releases Mountaintop Mining Mapping Tool

A nonprofit environmental group has released a mapping tool it says shows mountaintop coal mining has been expanding closer to communities in central Appalachia in recent years, with nearly half of the 50 areas most at risk in West Virginia.

Appalachian Voices released the map Tuesday in consultation with SkyTruth, a nonprofit group that uses satellite images to study environmental changes.

The map uses federal geological data, satellite imagery, mine permit databases and an online mapping tool.

It identified 50 communities in 23 counties most at risk from mountaintop mining, including 22 in West Virginia, 18 in eastern Kentucky and 10 in southwest Virginia.

Appalachian Voices says since 1999, surface mining has grown closer to West Virginia communities even as production from those mines has declined.

The 10 communities at greatest risk from mountaintop mining coal operations in Central Appalachia, according to the nonprofit group Appalachian Voices:

Krypton, Kentucky
Bishop, West Virginia
Roaring Fork, Virginia
Wainville, West Virginia
Decota, West Virginia
Red Warrior, West Virginia
Busy, Kentucky
Lindytown, West Virginia
Tiptop, Kentucky
Yolyn, West Virginia

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."