Articles by Jeff Biggers

Civil disobedience campaign launched at Massey Energy mountaintop-removal site

"Give me but a banner to plant upon the mountains of West Augusta, and I will rally about it the brave men who will lift our bleeding country from the dust, and set her free."

-- George Washington, 1779

In Pettus, West Virginia this morning, five Coal River Mountain activists were arrested and charged with trespassing after locking themselves to a bulldozer and a backhoe at a Massey Energy mountaintop-removal mine site.

In the face of an impending 6,600 acre mountaintop removal strip mine, they planted a banner for the Coal River Wind Project, a nationally acclaimed proposal that would create 200 local construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs, enough energy for 150,000 homes, and allow for sustainable forestry and mountain tourism projects, as well as a limited amount of underground mining.

After the TVA coal ash disaster in December, when a billion gallons of coal ash poured out of a pond and deluged 400 acres of land in six feet of sludge, the Coal River Mountain activists fear blasting for the proposed mountaintop removal site on Coal River Mountain, which rests beside a 6 billion-gallon toxic coal waste sludge dam above underground mines, could be catastrophic for the communities downstream.

"Massey could flood the towns of Pettus, Whitesville and Sylvester with toxic coal sludge," said Julia Bonds, of Rock Creek, W.Va. "Blasting at a multi-billion-gallon sludge lake over underground mines could cause the sludge to burst through and kill thousands of people."

"The governor and county legislators have failed to act, so we're acting for them," Coal River Wind advocate Rory McIlmoil said. "They shouldn't allow the wind potential on Coal River Mountain to be destroyed, and the nearby communities endangered, for only 17 years of coal. There is a better way to develop the mountain and strengthen the local economy that will create lasting jobs and tax revenues for this county, and that's with wind power."

A $4.6 billion coal gift in stimulus package, record profits for FutureGen members

While Peabody Coal, one of the prime sponsors of the FutureGen boondoggle in Illinois, announced an eightfold increase in profits in their fourth quarter reports for 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee just approved legislation for an additional $4.6 billion in handouts to the coal industry as part of the stimulus package, in the guise of "clean coal."

There's a new detail on this "clean coal" money: $2 billion are no longer slated for zero emissions plants, but "near-zero emissions" power plants -- so much for all of those TV ads about zero emissions.

What are near-zero emissions? Sorta like near-zero coal ash ponds and accidents, near-zero 10,000 black lung cases, near-zero workplace mining accidents, near-zero 1 million acres of strip mining and mountaintop removal, near-zero watershed contamination, and near-zero coal truck accidents?

This is on top of $2.8 billion the coal industry picked up in the last bailout.

In the meantime, check out the dream team sponsors of FutureGen, the much ballyhooed poster child of the "clean coal" proponents who somehow like us to forget that before coal will ever be burned with near-zero mercury and carbon dioxide emissions, coal first needs to be extracted, processed, transported, and burned with ash piles.

FutureGen Alliance Members include:

Oval Office lights connected to mountaintop removal

When President Barack Obama's staff turns on the lights to the Oval Office this week, a signal will be sent from the Potomac Energy Company to the Chalk Point Generation Station, where the coal-handling facility service of the power plant will shovel in coal that has been strip-mined from the clear-cut, toppled-over, and exploded mountains of West Virginia.

At least, in theory.

In effect, President Obama and his administration are now connected to one of the most tragic environmental and human rights disasters in American history -- the employment of mountaintop-removal mining methods in Appalachia that have eliminated over 470 mountains and adjacent communities, 1 million acres of hardwood forests, and 1,200 miles of streams from our American maps.

This includes Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, the last great mountain in a historic range that has been on the forefront of the clean-energy movement. Citing the unique wind potential of Coal River Mountain, local citizens and coal miners have pushed for an industrial wind farm that would provide 200 jobs, enough megawatts for 150,000 homes in the area, and $1.7 million in tax revenues. Last week, however, as Obama visited a wind-turbine parts factory in Ohio, the first bulldozers arrived to clearcut the forest and open the way for the next mountaintop-removal tragedy.

Illinois leg. and gov. hoodwinked by 'clean coal'; will Obama be as susceptible?

Impeachment notwithstanding, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) signed a bill this week that will send another $18 million down the "clean coal" rabbit hole in Illinois.

The delusional symbolism couldn't be more obvious. In fact, the Chicago Tribune captured the carbon truth of the story: