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Today federal agencies will release a major study of the
environmental impacts of mountaintop removal and valley fill coal mining.
The long overdue study, ordered as part of a 1998 court settlement, was to have been completed in
December of 2000.
Coalfield residents and citizen groups that have been vocal in opposing
mountaintop removal learned early this week of today's release date and
got word of what the 2000-plus-page document will contain.
An earlier
version, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, was made public
by the Charleston Gazette in May 2002.
"Sadly, the Department of the Interior has chosen to ignore the
scientific studies on mountaintop removal and has instead drawn
conclusions dictated by the Bush political agenda. Considering what we
now know about the administration's dismal record on the environment,
this comes as no surprise. We would never have agreed to settle the
case if we had known the extent to which the administration will go to
have politics trump scientific reality," said Cindy Rank, mining
chairwoman for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the group which
filed the lawsuit that brought about the EIS.
The groups' sources indicated that conclusions from the environmental
impact studies would remain the same as those in the draft on the
Gazette web site. Those studies confirm the empirical data that led to
the common sense conclusions of coalfield residents and environmental
groups-mountaintop removal and valley fill coal mining is irreversibly and
substantially harming the forests and streams of Southern West Virginia
and Eastern Kentucky.
Throughout central Appalachia, some of the most productive and diverse
temperate hardwood forests in the world have been destroyed when coal
companies blast off hundreds of feet of mountaintops to get to thin
seams of coal. In most circumstances, the former lush forests will
remain degraded as grassy, unproductive scrub land for at least several
centuries. These unproductive grasslands cover nearly 20% of some
southern West Virginia counties.
Millions of tons of rubble from the former mountains are pushed into the
adjacent valleys. Coal companies have already buried hundreds of miles
of Appalachian streams, destroying not only the streams themselves, but
creating disastrous impacts to downstream waterways and towns. As
residents point out, mountaintop removal is also devastating the culture
and communities of the region.
Sources indicate that, in the EIS draft, the Bush administration will
not recommend curbing the environmental harm caused by mountaintop
removal, but will instead ask the agencies that are supposed to be
regulating coal mining to streamline the way they work together.
"You can practically smell the corruption wafting off this document.
Bush and his coal industry friends weren't happy with the scientific
truth, so they delayed the study for months, trying to figure out how to
put a positive spin on the worst intentional environmental disaster in
the nation. Perhaps they were attempting to tweak the studies just like
their Enron pals cooked the books," said Vivian Stockman, with the Ohio
Valley Environmental Coalition, a Huntington, W.Va.-based group calling
for an end to mountaintop removal.
One of the coordinators of the EIS, J. Steven Griles, Deputy Secretary
of the Department of Interior, is a former coal industry lobbyist with
ties to mountaintop removal companies. The DOI's Inspector General is
currently investigating Griles for conflicts of interest. The PBS
television program, Now with Bill Moyers, will air an expose on Griles
at 9 p.m. EST Friday May 30.
"It's outrageous that a man so obviously still in bed with the coal
industry could be allowed to leave his grubby fingerprints all over this
document," said Judy Bonds, a community organizer for the Whitesville,
W. Va.-based Coal River Mountain Watch. Bonds won the 2003 Goldman
Environmental Prize for North America for her efforts to ban mountaintop
removal.
"I am shocked that it took the agencies this long to try to put their
spin on the truth, and they still couldn't do it. They still couldn't
say that mountaintop removal isn't permanently scarring the land," Bonds
added.
"The scientific studies and the economic data included in the EIS
clearly show that there is no reason for the valley fills should be so
large and so damaging to the environment,"" said Joe Lovett, Executive
Director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment.
"It is remarkable that, based on these data, the Bush administration is
proposing to loosen the reins on permitting, not tighten them, as they
should."
"The Bush administration is determined to remove any obstacles to
maximizing profit for an outlaw coal industry," said Teri Blanton of the
citizens group Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, a group which also
filed a major mountaintop removal lawsuit. "It doesn't matter to him if
mountains, water, communities or lives are destroyed in the process.
This EIS is further proof of that."
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, www.opensecrets.org,
during the 2000 election cycle, Bush was the top recipient of all
campaign contributions from the coal industry. Out of every dollar the
coal industry contributed to political campaigns for 2000, 88 cents went
to Republican candidates.
"The Bush administration hopes we will buy into the EIS. Well, we
taxpayers were forced to pay millions for this study, but we don't buy
its excuses and rationalizations for the destruction of our mountains
and our heritage. After all, one of the studies showed that limiting
valley fills down to 35 acres would only add 50 cents per ton to the
price of coal. Yet, the Bush administration is dismissing the science
and endangering our futures in order to reward its political cronies,"
said Janet Fout, a coordinator with the People's Election Reform
Coalition of West Virginia.
After its release, the draft EIS will be open for a public comment
period.
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