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September is back to school month, but the next big test for the White House and EPA has already begun. How the Obama administration handles the proposed regulation of coal ash – the toxic waste left over from coal-burning power plants loaded with mercury, lead, and arsenic – will serve as a key indicator of the administration’s sincerity in responding to one of the worst energy and environmental crises threatening the health and water supplies of millions of Americans.

Two key states, Tennessee and Alabama, have been shut out of the discussion on how best to regulate coal ash, thanks to EPA’s bewildering decision not to hold public hearings in either state. Residents of Tennessee might have a few things to say about the impacts of coal ash, since the state suffered the worst coal ash disaster in U.S. history less than two years ago.

<!–break–>The failure of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s massive coal slurry containment pond near its Kingston coal plant gushed more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash into nearby streams, destroyed three homes and continues to endanger the water supplies and health of nearby residents.

Meanwhile, a rural town in Perry County, Alabama is receiving the toxic leftovers from the spill by the train full. Uniontown, Alabama is host to the bankrupt Arrowhead landfill where the coal ash “spilled” into the Emory River is being buried. Thirty percent of residents in Perry County – which is majority African American – live below the poverty line, another prime example of environmental injustice in the South.

Why the EPA would gloss over Tennessee’s and Alabama’s input on coal ash by neglecting to hold hearings there is anyone’s guess. The nearest public hearing is in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 260-mile drive away for the Tennessee victims of the TVA disaster. Uniontown residents would have to drive nearly 500 miles, an 8-hour trip, to have their say in Charlotte.

In contrast, residents of Denver, Colorado will enjoy a hearing in their home town, even though there isn’t a single coal ash damage case in the state of Colorado, according to the “In Harm’s Way” report released last week by the Environmental Integrity Project, Sierra Club and Earthjustice.

Here is a little visual reminder for the EPA about what Tennessee residents experienced in the wake of the TVA disaster:

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A new study by three top environmental groups reveals another 39 coal ash threats in 21 states, bringing the total number of known coal ash threats to 137 in 34 states.  

The report by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, and the Sierra Club details the newly identified slurry ponds and impoundments filled with toxic coal ash that threaten drinking water supplies and public health at sites around the country.  

Earlier this year the groups identified 31 coal ash disposal sites in 14 states, adding to the 67 sites already identified by the Environmental Protection Agency.  The latest report brings the total number to 137 sites where coal ash threatens public health and water supplies. 

The U.S. EPA is currently grappling with how to regulate the toxic coal ash threat, which is now checked only by individual state laws that have failed to adequately protect the public from this growing problem. <!–break–>

Adding even more evidence that “clean coal” is an industry fairy tale, coal-fired power plants around the country stockpile the toxic coal waste left over from the coal combustion process in ponds and impoundments far too often located dangerously close to drinking water supplies and residential communities.  

The report notes:
“In several cases (e.g., Hatfield’s Ferry (PA), Gallatin (TN), and Johnsonville (TN)), [coal combustion waste] disposal sites are leaking their toxic cargo into rivers just upstream from intakes for public water systems.” 

The most egregious example of poor siting belongs to Massey Energy’s multi-billion gallon coal sludge impoundment, perched directly above the Marsh Fork elementary school in West Virginia.  Yes, a massive pool of dirty toxic coal waste perched above toddlers’ heads.  Great idea Massey!  (Thanks to a generous $2.5 million donation from the Annenberg Foundation, the school will soon be rebuilt in a new location.  Just in time too, since Massey had planned to build yet another coal silo near the school. The relocation will cost an estimated $8.5 million, relying mostly on state, county and local donations, with Massey agreeing to pay only $1 million.  The Annenberg contribution ensures the relocation will now move forward.)  

EPA will be hearing an earful about coal ash over the next month as seven public hearings are held in various cities to solicit public input on the coal ash regulations.  Utility industry and coal ash interests promise they will be out in force at these hearings.

An intense lobbying push by the coal and utility industries over the past year has put tremendous pressure on EPA to cave to industry demands and leave the issue up to individual states.  

Rather than spending money to clean up its toxic mess, the industry’s aggressive multi-million dollar K Street strategy threatens to undermine the critical need for strong coal ash regulations to protect water supplies and public health.

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The Washington Post this week launched a new politics homepage, PostPolitics.com, with a helping hand from the dirty coal industry.

According to the press release announcing the launch,
“The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is the Washington Post’s exclusive launch sponsor of PostPolitics.com.”

While PostPolitics.com itself is an exciting new tool for fans of political news, it is unfortunate that the Post had to partner with coal polluters to fund the launch.
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So far, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is sure getting some bang for however many bucks it is shelling out.  Go visit the PostPolitics.com homepage right now and admire the massive “Clean Coal” banner ads at the top and right side, featuring ACCCE’s poster miner Shane Evans, a mine dispatcher at Arch Coal’s Thunder Basin Coal Company.  (Finally, the coal industry has taken to featuring an actual miner in its ads, after learning a tough lesson last year when Adfero’s “FACES of Coal” ad campaign was discovered to be full of iStockPhoto images of actors.)

Doling out big bucks on advertising isn’t a new tactic for ACCCE by any means.  The coal industry’s main mouthpiece has an annual budget of at least $45 million, which it uses to land full page ads in such widely-read outlets as CQ Weekly, Roll Call, Politico, and, of course, The Washington Post. 

ACCCE’s extensive and expensive efforts to buy itself primo ad space have previously landed it in partnership with CNN. ACCCE’s predecessor group, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), co-sponsored six of the ’08 presidential debates along with ACCCE for a cool $5 million payment.  

Grist noted at the time of those debates that no questions about climate change were ever asked of the participants, calling into question whether there was undue influence on the forums thanks to the coal advertising dollars.

Will the same thing happen with PostPolitics.com? Will coal get special treatment in coverage of the climate policy debate?  Will climate change be adequately covered on PostPolitics.com?  Only time will tell.

The press release announcing the launch of PostPolitics.com notes that the site aims to be “an authority you can trust,” and Washington Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli urges political junkies to “bookmark PostPolitics or make it your homepage.”

Sorry Mr. Brauchli,  I’ll wait until Shane Evans and the ACCCE ads are replaced with something, anything, besides mythical suggestions of “clean coal.”

Filed under: Climate Justice, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Coal, Coal Campaign, Direct Action, Dirty Energy, global warming, mountain top removal, Politics, United States, Youth Leaders

After months of working on-campus to rename the Consortium for C!#@n Coal Utilization, here at Washington University, we decided to take our concerns to the source: the corporate headquarters of Peabody Energy in downtown St. Louis. Since our flashmob against our administration’s coal-sponsored “America’s Energy Future” Conference, a unanimous Student Union Senate Resolution calling for the renaming of the Consortium and a meeting with the head honchos of the Consortium have not yet yielded our goal – to remove the misleading term “c!#@n coal” from the Consortium’s name – we decided to take our concerns downtown.

This past Friday, March 26, 2010, over fifty Washington University students and St. Louis community members gathered outside of Peabody Energy to protest the company’s business practices. WashU senior Todd Zimmer laid out our demands for the crowd and for Peabody executives. “We want an end to dirty energy,” he said, “we want an end to lies about c!#@n coal, … And we want an end to the relationship between Washington University and Peabody Energy.” Many St. Louis employees emerged from their office buildings to hear our chants of “C!#@n coal, hell no, that’s a lie, it’s got to go,” and “coal, coal, no solution, we are sick of your pollution,”  accompanied by a drum set, full-size banners, and signs held by protesters.

And for those of us at Washington University in St. Louis, this is a company that has recently been given a great deal of undue power at our university. In December of 2008, WashU announced the formation of the Consortium for C!#@n Coal Utilization, funded with $5 million each from Peabody Energy and Arch Coal and $2 million from Ameren UE. Students, faculty, and members of the St. Louis community immediately opposed the Consortium because its name featured the term “clean coal,” a disingenuous advertising slogan and a conspicuous feature in light of the Consortium’s corporate sponsors. In August 2009, Peabody CEO Gregory Boyce and Arch Coal’s CEO Steven Leer received spots on WashU’s Board of Trustees. Peabody’s Vice-President of Government Relations Fred Palmer serves on the Advisory Board to the Consortium.

At WashU, we will continue to push until the dirty money of Peabody Energy, as well as Arch Coal, is removed from our campus, and the name of the Consortium for C!#@n Coal Utilization is changed. As students warned this Friday, “Chancellor Wrighton, we be fightin’, ’til the coal is gone!”

Filed under: Act Locally, Campuses, Coal, Coal Campaign, Corporate Responsibility, Extraction, global warming, Impacted Communities, Political Participation, United States, Youth Leaders

Check out 0:18 and 0:56

Two questions:

1- Who is advising this man and where is their information coming from?

2- When JFK said the following, did they have the technology required to get to the moon?

“We will go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

Filed under: global warming

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Congressmembers, are you too busy being indentured servants to corporations to find love?

Lobbyists, did that pickup line about healthcare flop with your beloved Senator?  Well, have you heard the one about “clean coal” yet?

Polluters, are you too shy to admit the things you’d like to do to Rep. Joe Barton? 

Well, you are all in luck.  Today marks the launch of PolluterHarmony.com, a new online matchmaking service designed to help dirty polluters and their lobbyists find that perfect politician to live forever in holy mmm…
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Forget Citizens United, PolluterHarmony knows all about uniting citizens, like the match made in heaven between Koch Industries and Sen. James Inhofe.

Speaking of below the Beltway… PolluterHarmony knows that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Rrrow!-AK) likes it dirty, as dirty as it gets in fact.  She’s on the receiving end of $111,296 in contributions from coal interests in the 111th Congress. 

Kert Davies, director of PolluterWatch.org, the masterminds behind PolluterHarmony, notes in his blog on Huffington Post that PolluterHarmony.com is “a dating service dedicated to helping polluter industry lobbyists, CEO’s and propagandists match up with willing public officials, making it even easier to buy and sell influence, sabotage global warming solutions and derail our clean energy future.”

Wow, I never imagined that such connections could be made any easier than they already are. 

PolluterHarmony proves that anything is possible! 

So, all you D.C. polluticians, why wait for all that snow to melt?  “Start your long-term collusion today!”

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The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has hired two new public relations firms to hock its message in the wake of the disastrous job done by Bonner & Associates. 

ACCCE has retained HDMK, a PR firm with very strong ties to former President George W. Bush and the Republican Party, to manage its national media efforts, while Dan Ronayne, a managing director of the Howard Consulting Group, was retained to work with regional reporters.

HDMK is run by Terry Holt, the national campaign spokesperson for George W. Bush in the 2004 election and the former spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner.  Other HDMK partners include Trent Duffy, a former deputy press secretary to President George W. Bush, Jim Morrell, former deputy chief of staff to the House Republican Conference and a speechwriter for former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL), and Chad Kolton, another long-time Republican communications operative who served in the Bush administration as press secretary at the OMB and FEMA.
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HDMK’s other clients include the Republic of Panama, America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association and the Real Estate Roundtable.

Holt told the National Journal that HDMK will be “part of the strategy team on message development” for ACCCE.  ACCCE is no doubt hopeful that HDMK will play a more traditional, behind-the-scenes role in promoting the coal industry’s message. 

ACCCE had no such luck with one of the key players in its 2009 PR campaign, Bonner & Associates, the Astroturf shop embroiled in a highly embarrassing scandal when it was caught sending at least a dozen forged letters to Congressmembers urging them to vote against clean energy and climate legislation.

Luckily for ACCCE, HDMK specializes in crisis communications and crisis prevention, which could come in handy for the coal industry if 2010 turns out to be anything like last year.

Written by Will Fischer, student leader at Washington University in St. Louis

The students have spoken!

In response to demonstrated student outcry over the naming of the “Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization” and with momentum from last week’s flash mob protest, on Wednesday the Wash U Student Union Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging the administration to change the Consortium’s name. More details in the Wash U student newspaper Student Life article.

The vote came after a week of intense lobbying by students, during which senators received an extraordinary number of emails from constituents in support of the resolution. The resolution originated in last week’s session, but the vote was postponed until after a drafting session could be held to address senators’ concerns. Wednesday’s senate session was packed with supportive students who applauded after the resolution was passed in the first 15 minutes of the meeting.

A truncated version of the resolution reads (full version available here):

“Whereas, The term “Clean Coal” is an industry marketing term intended to obscure the negative effects of coal extraction, combustion, and disposal;

Whereas, The use of said term may invite doubt regarding the integrity of the research the Consortium conducts;

…

Whereas, The Student Union supports the research being done by the Consortium to develop safer and more effective coal utilization technology; and therefore be it

Resolved, That the Student Union strongly urges the Washington University administration to change the name of the Consortium for Clean Coal Utilization; and be it further

…

Resolved, That the Student Union urges that the Consortium’s research into future uses of coal include studies of the social and environmental effects of its extraction, combustion, and disposal.”

We look forward to open dialogue with the administration and invite any concerns and comments.

Viva la Resolution!

Posted in Campuses, Coal, Coal Campaign, global warming, Political Participation, Renewable Energy, United States, Youth Leaders ]]> http://youthclimate.org/viva-la-resolution-wash-u-senate-urges-university-to-change-name-of-%e2%80%9cconsortium-for-clean-coal-utilization%e2%80%9d-12862/feed/ 0