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Fwd: Groups Secure Another Key Victory in Fight to Stop Pollution from Coal Mines
by Paul Wilson 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

fyi, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Verena Owen <verena_owen(a)prodigy.net> Date: Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 3:09 PM Subject: Groups Secure Another Key Victory in Fight to Stop Pollution from Coal Mines To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org *For Immediate Release **January 18, 2012*** *Contact: *Sean Sarah, Sierra Club, 202-548-4589 sean.sarah(a)sierraclub.org Jim Sconyers, Sierra Club, 304-698-9628, jimscon(a)gmail.com Cindy Rank, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, 304-924-5802, clrank2(a)gmail.com Dianne Bady, OVEC, 304-360-2072, dbady.ovec(a)gmail.com Joe Lovett, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, 304-645-9006, jlovett(a)appalmad.org Derek Teaney, Appalachian Mountain Advocates, 304-793-9007, dteaney(a)appalmad.org *Groups Secure Another Key Victory in Fight to Stop Pollution from Coal Mines **Settlement Requires Patriot Coal to Install Treatment Facilities and Pay Penalties* * * *Charleston**, **WV** – *Today, a coalition of conservation and environmental groups completed a legal settlement with Patriot Coal Corporation over high levels of selenium output at several of the company’s West Virginia coal mines. The settlement requires that the coal mining company and its subsidiaries treat selenium pollution at 43 outlets, including outlets previously thought to be untreatable. In a 2010 order resolving a separate action brought by the groups against Patriot, a federal judge ordered the company to treat selenium at four outlets. The company has estimated the cost of treatment at just those four outlets to be nearly $100 million. The suit resolved by today’s settlement was brought by the Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “Several years ago, the coal industry said that there was no way to treat selenium pollution from their mines,” said Jim Sconyers, Chair of the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “But now they’re agreeing to treat that pollution. This settlement, and other recent actions against Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, shows that mining companies can do far more than they admit to clean up their pollution. Water is life. Keep it clean.” The settlement requires Patriot to install treatment technology on a set schedule to bring selenium discharges within acceptable levels. In addition, the company will pay penalties of $7.5 million, with the vast majority of those funds directed to the West Virginia Land Trust. Patriot will be subject to significant additional penalties for any violations that occur after the compliance date for each source of pollution. The company has also agreed to abandon its permits for the 8.5 million ton Callisto Surface Mine in Boone County. “West Virginia coal mines are finally starting to address their legacy of selenium pollution,” said Dianne Bady with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “Mine operators and regulators in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia need to follow suit.” “Although treatment may be sufficient to address these existing selenium problems, ultimately the industry and regulators need to recognize that it’s not appropriate to mine coal where disturbing selenium laden rock strata will release harmful amounts of pollution,” said Cindy Rank with the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.** Selenium, a toxic element that causes reproductive failure and deformities in fish and other forms of aquatic life, is discharged from many surface coal-mining operations across Appalachia. At very high levels, selenium can pose a threat to human health, causing hair and fingernail loss, kidney and liver damage, and damage to the nervous and circulatory systems. The settlement was lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. The U.S. government will have an opportunity to review the settlement before its terms take effect. *The coalition was represented by Joe Lovett and Derek Teaney with the Appalachian Mountain Advocates. For more information on selenium visit * www.sierraclub.org/seleniumfacts**** *###* - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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SLATE.COM ARTICLE ON MARCELLUS
by William V. DePaulo, Esq. 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

What the Frack? Is there really 100 years’ worth of natural gas beneath the United States? By Chris Nelder <http://www.slate.com/authors.chris_nelder.html>|Posted Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011, at 6:37 AM ET [image: Shale gas.] A shale-gas drilling rig Christopher Furlong/Getty Images. The recent press about the potential of shale gas would have you believe that America is now sitting on a 100-year supply of natural gas. It's a " game-changer<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303491304575187880596301668.h…>." A "golden age of gas<http://www.iea.org/weo/docs/weo2011/WEO2011_GoldenAgeofGasReport.pdf>" awaits, one in which the United States will be energy independent, even exporting gas to the rest of the world, upending our current energy-importing situation. The data, however, tell a very different story. Between the demonstrable gas reserves, and the potential resources blared in the headlines, lies an enormous gulf of uncertainty. The claim of a 100-year supply originated with a report released in April 2011 by the Potential Gas Committee, an organization of petroleum engineers and geoscientists. President and Chairman Larry Gring works with Third Day Energy LLC, a company based in Austin, Texas, that is engaged in acquiring and exploiting oil and gas properties along the Texas Gulf Coast.*<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2011/12/is_th…>Chairman of the Board Darrell Pierce is a vice president of DCP Midstream LLC, a natural-gas production, processing, and marketing company based in Denver. The report's contributors are from the industry-supported Colorado School of Mines. In short, the Potential Gas Committee report is not an impartial assessment of resources. Advertisement Its website <http://www.potentialgas.org/>consists of a single press release announcing the April report, with a link to a brief summary slide deck. A more detailed slide deck<http://www.narucmeetings.org/Presentations/PGC%20NARUC%20Committee%20on%20G…>issued by the committee presents some optimistic estimates of potential resources, including a "future gas supply" estimate of 2,170 trillion cubic feet (tcf). At the 2010 rate of American consumption—about 24 tcf per year—that would be a 95-year supply of gas, which apparently has been rounded up to 100 years. But what is that estimate based upon? Those details haven’t been made freely available to the public, but their summary breaks it down as follows here and in the graph below: 273 tcf are "proved reserves," meaning that it is believed to exist, and to be commercially producible at a 10 percent discount rate. That conforms with the data of the U.S. Energy Information Administration <http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_enr_dry_a_EPG0_r11_bcf_a.htm>. An additional 536.6 tcf are classified as "probable" from existing fields, meaning that they have some expectation that the gas exists in known formations, but it has not been proven to exist and is not certain to be technically recoverable. An additional 687.7 tcf is "possible" from new fields, meaning that the gas might exist in new fields that have not yet been discovered. A further 518.3 tcf are "speculative," which means exactly that. A final 176 tcf are claimed for coalbed gas, which is gas trapped in coal formations. (Note: The PGC reports the total for probable, possible, and speculative coalbed gas as 158.6 tcf, but adding up their numbers for each category, we find the correct total is 157.7 tcf. We haven't been able to reach the PGC to discuss the discrepancy. Adding the 18.6 tcf of proved coalbed gas reserves reported by the EIA in 2009—the most recent data it offers—to the 157.7 gives a total of 176.3 tcf for all categories of coalbed gas. [image: 111221_FUTURE_futureGasSupply] By the same logic, you can claim to be a multibillionaire, including all your "probable, possible, and speculative resources." Assuming that the United States continues to use about 24 tcf per annum, then, only an 11-year supply of natural gas is certain. The other 89 years' worth has not yet been shown to exist or to be recoverable. Even that comparably modest estimate of 11 years’ supply may be optimistic. Those 273 tcf are located in reserves that are undrilled, but are adjacent to drilled tracts where gas has been produced. Due to large lateral differences in the geology of shale plays, production can vary considerably from adjacent wells. The EIA uses a different methodology to arrive at its resource calculations, offering a range of estimates. In the most optimistic, "high shale resource case," it estimates there are 1,230 tcf in the “estimated unproved technically recoverable resource base.” It also offers several production forecasts through 2035, ranging from 827 tcf in their Reference case, to 423 tcf in their Low case—one-fourth the headline number. In the Low case, which certainly could be correct, the EIA says the United States could once again become a net natural-gas *importer* by 2035. [image: 111227_FUTURE_howLongWillItLast2] One complicating factor here is recoverability, because we are never able to extract all of an oil or gas resource. For oil, a 35 percent recovery factor is considered excellent. But recovery factors for shale gas are highly variable, due to the varied geology of the source rocks. Even if we assume a very optimistic 50 percent recovery factor for the 550 tcf of probable gas (536.6 tcf from shale gas plus 13.4 tcf from coalbed gas), that would still only amount to 225 tcf, or a 10-year supply. That plus the 11-year supply of proved reserves would last the United States just 21 years, at current rates of consumption. Natural-gas proponents aren't advocating current rates of consumption, however. They would like to see more than 2 million 18-wheelers converted to natural gas, in order to reduce our dependence on oil imports from unfriendly countries. They also advocate switching a substantial part of our power generation from coal to gas, in order to reduce carbon emissions. Were we to do those things, that 21-year supply could quickly shrink to a 10-year supply, yet those same advocates never adjust their years of supply estimates accordingly. The truly devilish details of supply forecasts, however, rest in the production models of shale-gas operators. Arthur Berman <http://petroleumtruthreport.blogspot.com/>, a Houston-based petroleum geologist and energy sector consultant, along with petroleum engineer Lynn Pittinger, has long been skeptical of the claims about shale gas. Their detailed, independent work on the economics of shale-gas production <http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8212> suggests that not only are the reserves claims overstated, but that the productivity of the wells is, too. The problems begin with the historical production data, which is limited. The Barnett Shale in Texas is the only shale formation, or "play," with a significant history. The first vertical well was drilled in 1982, but it wasn't until the advent of horizontal drilling in 2003 that production really took off. By horizontally drilling and then "fracking" the rock with a pressurized slurry of water, chemicals, and "proppants" (particulates that hold open the fractures), operators kicked off the shale-gas revolution. Drilling exploded in the Barnett from about 3,000 wells in 2003 to more than 9,000 today. Thus we have a reasonably good data set for the Barnett. Data from the Fayetteville Shale in Arkansas are also reasonably substantial, dating back to 2004 and including roughly 4,000 wells. The data on the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana are minimal, dating to late 2007 and including fewer than 2,000 wells. The historical data for the rest of the major shale-gas plays—the Marcellus, Eagle Ford, Bakken, and Woodford—along with a handful of other smaller plays, are too recent and sparse to permit accurate modeling of their production profiles. After mathematically modeling the actual production of thousands of wells in the Barnett, Fayetteville, and Haynesville Shales, Berman found that operators had significantly exaggerated their claims. Reserves appear to be overstated by more than 100 percent Typically, the core 10 to 15 percent of a shale formation’s gas is commercially viable. The rest may or may not be—we don’t know at this point. Yet the industry has calculated the potentially recoverable gas as if 100 percent of the plays were equally productive. The claimed lifetime productivity, or estimated ultimate recovery, of individual wells was also overstated, Berman found. The production decline curves modeled by well operators predict that production will fall steeply at first, followed by a long, flattened tail of production. Berman's analysis found a better fit with a model in which production falls steeply for the first 10 to 15 months, followed by an more weakly hyperbolic decline. Shale-gas wells typically pay out over one-half their total lifetime production in the first year. So operators must keep drilling continuously to maintain a flat rate of overall production. [image: 111221_FUTURE_bermanLogic] Berman concludes that the average lifetime of a Barnett well might be as little as 12 years, instead of the 50 years claimed by operators, and the estimated ultimate recovery from individual wells might be one-half what is claimed. We will only know which models are correct after another five to 10 years for the Barnett, and more than a decade for the newer plays. Other issues Berman identified include artificially inflating the average well productivity numbers by dropping played-out wells from their calculations; improperly including production data from restimulated wells as if it owed to the initial well completions; and intermixing data from older and newer wells without aligning the data by vintage, giving the impression of significantly higher-than-actual production overall. Multiplying the error, operators seem to have applied their overly optimistic models of these older shale plays to newer plays, which may have radically different geological characteristics and might not be nearly as productive. For example, the lifetime output of Barnett wells may never be matched by wells in the Marcellus. The EIA makes reference to all of these issues in its assessment of the prospects for shale gas<http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/IF_all.cfm#prospectshale>, noting that “there is a high degree of uncertainty around the projection, starting with the estimated size of the technically recoverable shale gas resource,” and that “the estimates embody many assumptions that might prove to be untrue in the long term.” Yet none of these issues are properly accounted for in the official financial statements of the operators. [image: 111222_FUTURE_recoveryMap] An example of how inflated initial resource claims can be, and how they can be sharply cut, presented itself in August with a new assessment of the Marcellus shale<http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2893&from=rss_home>by the U.S. Geological Survey. It offered a range of estimates, from 43 tcf at 95 percent probability, to 84 tcf at 50 percent probability, to 114 tcf at 5 percent probability. (Not surprisingly, the 95 percent probable estimates have proven historically to be closest to the mark.) Only five months earlier, the EIA speculated in its *Annual Energy Outlook 2011<http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383%282011%29.pdf> * that the Marcellus might have an "estimated technically recoverable resource base of about 400 trillion cubic feet." The USGS reassessment had slashed the estimate for the Marcellus by 80 percent. Similar adjustments may be ahead for other shale plays. In addition to the uncertainty about shale gas resources and productivity, there are other lingering questions. For one thing, on an averaged annual basis, shale gas has been unprofitable since 2008. Wildcatters—those who explore and sink the first wells in a new location—have been taking on a great deal of debt and risk to discover the plays and produce them at a loss, in hopes that larger, well-funded players will buy them out later. It’s not clear that this gamble will ever pay off. The other major concern, of course, is about environmental contamination from fracking operations. It seems to me that the vast majority of shale-gas operations are as environmentally benign as the rest of the oil and gas industry's operations, although some bad actors have, through negligence or outright irresponsibility, caused actual contamination. For now, though, the jury is out on the overall safety of shale gas production. I am not anti-gas; neither is Berman. What concerns him, and me, are the overblown claims about the potential for shale gas and the poor quality of both technical and financial information about its production. We don't yet know how much of the estimated gas resources will be economically recoverable or whether the projected production rates for some wells might be off by a factor of 10. We might have a 100-year supply of gas, or we might have an 11-year supply. We might realize economic and environmental benefits by transitioning trucking and coal-fired power generation to natural gas, or we might do so only to find ourselves out on a limb far more economically dangerous than the current peak and impending decline of world oil supply. We simply don't know, and we may not know for years to come. *This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the Future Tense blog<http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense.html>and the Future Tense home page <http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense.html>. You can also follow us on Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/FutureTenseNow>.* *Correction, Jan. 3, 2012: This article originally misstated the name of Larry Gring’s energy company. It is Third Day Energy LLC, not Third Way Energy LLC. (Return<http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2011/12/is_th…>to the corrected sentence.) * -- William V. DePaulo, Esq. 179 Summers Street, Suite 232 Charleston, WV 25301-2163 Tel 304-342-5588 Fax 304-342-5505 william.depaulo(a)gmail.com www.passeggiata.com

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What traits make the best environmental citizens?
by James Kotcon 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '12

This just came from my Michigan State University Alumni newsletter. JBK What traits make the best environmental citizens? EAST LANSING, Mich. — Patient, persistent and confident people are among those who make the best environmental citizens, according to two Michigan State University researchers who have pinpointed character traits of good problem solvers and deliberators. “In situations where people are talking about very tough issues, such as climate change and sustainability, there are certain virtues people have that help those deliberations go better,” said Kyle Whyte, assistant professor of philosophy. “The public will have to increasingly deal with such issues so it’s important the educational system is preparing people to participate well with those who have different views.” But that’s not a focus of most environmental education programs, found Whyte and co-researcher Matt Ferkany, visiting assistant professor of teacher education. Their study was published in the journal Philosophy of Education. While the researchers said their list of traits isn’t complete, the most successful deliberators possess virtues that make people feel included and engaged, while producing results. The top 14 traits: wit, friendliness, empathy, courage, temperance, sincerity, humility, self-confidence, persistence, attentiveness, dependability, fairness, generosity and patience. “These virtues are based on the nature of the problems we face – problems that are collaborative in nature and for which there is widespread disagreement about solutions,” Ferkany said. Take self-confidence. In many conversations, people don’t value their own contributions and worry others won’t respect their ideas, Ferkany said. But a good deliberator believes, without arrogance, that his or her contributions can advance the discussion. Or take friendliness. Congenial people are open to differing opinions. And temperate people can shut down an argument gone wrong without losing their cool. Teachers and schools can provide opportunities for exercising such virtues, Ferkany said. For example, if a school touts the importance of sustainability, it could include students in the planning of organic menus. To promote self-confidence, schools should make all students feel important by offering activities appealing to many interests. Another way: experiential education, in which students gain experience through actual dialog. This fall, Whyte participated in a Sustainable Michigan Endowed Project grant led by Dale Rozeboom, professor of animal science. The project brought together students from animal science and MSU’s Student Organic Farm to discuss “ethical farming and food practices.” At the end of the semester, after all students visited both the MSU swine farm and the organic farm, they met to discuss sustainable pork production. They came from different worlds – those training to run conventional agriculture businesses and those training to become organic farmers – but concluded that everyone wanted to produce a good product and earn a living, while protecting the health of the pig and the environment. “Because the problems are so complex,” Whyte said, “citizens need deliberative and collaborative skills to deal with environmental and agriculture matters.” Published: Jan. 10, 2012 Kyle Powys Whyte, assistant professor of philosophy. Photo by G.L. Kohuth Matt Ferkany, visiting assistant professor of teacher education. Photo by G.L. Kohuth Students from MSU's Student Organic Farm deliberate with Kyle Powys Whyte about pig welfare after visiting the swine farm. ###

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Dominion Post on Albright meeting
by James Kotcon 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '12

DOMINION POST page 9A Friday 13 January 2012: Meeting set to discuss power plant’s fate Albright facility has three years to meet new EPA regulations BY MICHELLE WOLFORD The Dominion Post KINGWOOD — The West Virginia Sierra Club will sponsor a forum on the future of the Albright Power Plant at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Albright Fire Hall. First Energy, which owns the plant, will not attend. The forum is to discuss what changes may occur at the plant under new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, and their possible impact on plant employees and the community. Mark Durbin, a First Energy spokesman, said the company hasn’t made any decisions about the plant. “Once we have an announcement, we’ll make an announcement,” he said. Employees will get the information first. Durbin said changes in EPA regulations would require expensive changes at coal-fired power plants, such as the Albright plant. The company will have to decide the fate of about 20 such plants, he said — whether they’ll be retrofitted with the necessary emission controls, retired or repowered for natural gas generation. Companies will have at least three years to make the changes, which are being implemented “to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution from coal and oil-fired power plants,” according to the EPA. Delegates Larry Williams and Stan Shaver, both D-Preston, plan to attend, Williams said. County Commissioners Craig Jennings, Vicki Cole and Dave Price will be on hand. Roberta Baylor, executive director of the Preston County Economic Development Authority, confirmed Thursday that she plans to attend. Jim Sconyers, of the Sierra Club, said First Energy, which owns the power plant, “will not be sending a representative.” “Everyone in Albright knows that the Albright Station power plant is old,” the Sierra Club said in forum information. “Built in 1952, it lacks modern pollution control equipment. Change is in the air for the Albright plant. But no one knows what those changes will be, how soon, or how they will affect the community. And no one seems to be planning for those changes. Other communities facing these changes have won new investment and new jobs, but this requires planning and everyone working together.”

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research, bat deaths at turbines
by Frank Young 13 Jan '12

13 Jan '12

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=21648 Researchers have developed what they claim is a new way to reduce the amount of bats killed by flying into wind turbines. According to a team from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) in the United States deaths of migratory bats at wind energy plants have become a 'frequent occurrence'. Bat migration patterns are poorly understood and the relationship between deaths at wind energy sites and migratory behaviour are still being studied, says PSW ecologist Ted Weller. Mr Weller argues that previous research has already shown adjusting the operations of turbines can reduce the number of bats killed by wind turbines but, this strategy has not yet been widely implemented. The online tool takes into account bat activity at different times of the year and a number of environmental conditions, such as wind direction and speed, air temperature, and moon phase. Mr Weller and his research team used devices which detected the bats' echolocation calls, then linked the presence of bats to the weather conditions measured on-site on a given night. Researchers found echolocation detectors placed at 22 meters and 52 meters above ground were more effective at characterizing migratory bat activity then those located closer to the ground. Moreover, multiple echolocation detectors were required to accurately characterize bat activity at the facility. They then built models to predict the presence of bats based on date and weather variables. Mr Weller said: "Increasing the wind speed at which turbines begin to spin and produce energy to the grid has proven to be an effective way to reduce bat fatalities. "However, bat activity levels depend on more than just wind speed, our work demonstrates the use of a decision-making tool that could protect bats when fatality risk is highest while maximizing energy production on nights with a low chance of fatalities."

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Please Reply: Energy Efficiency in WV
by James Kotcon 12 Jan '12

12 Jan '12

We have been playing around with Energy Efficiency legislation in WV for the last couple years, but hope to launch a pretty concerted campaign this legislative session, and perhaps add other campaign elements. I propose that the Energy Committee establish the "Efficiency Subcommittee" for those who want to focus more effort on that. If you want to join the EE Subcommittee, let me know. There is likely to be some involvement/assistance from national staff, so this needs some volunteers locally. Let me know ASAP. Jim Kotcon

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Fwd: position for Ex. Dir. Appalachian Stewardship Foundation
by Paul Wilson 11 Jan '12

11 Jan '12

fyi, paul It may be a conflict of interest for an SC leader to take this job. Bill D. may be able to clarify that. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pam Parziale <pamoren(a)frontiernet.net> Date: Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 6:03 PM Subject: position for Ex. Dir. Appalachian Stewardship Foundation To: Paul Wilson <pjgrunt(a)gmail.com> ** Hello Paul, Knowing your commitment to conservation and the environment, I wanted you to know of a new opportunity that has become available. A****s past president of the WV Sierra Club, **you may be interested **on behalf of other environmentalists whom you know.** **** A position for a part-time executive director for the Appalachian Stewardship Foundation has been posted, Jan. 6, 2012. Because of your commitment in support of environmental issues, please look at the website: www.appalachianstewards.org .**** **The job description is found on the website, in several locations, including under the heading News & Media.** **Would you pass this information on to your colleagues at the Sierra Club? If you are interested or someone you know may be interested, applicants must submit a cover letter, resume and two writing samples by email to:** ** *K*athy(a)AppalachianStewards.org** **The deadline is February 10, 2012.** Thank you, Pam Parziale 5210 Paynes Ford Road Kearneysville WV 25430 USA 304-725-4251 email: pamoren(a)frontiernet.net -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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State Energy Focus, Surprise, Surprise.
by James Kotcon 06 Jan '12

06 Jan '12

Governor’s office: State energy focus on gas and coal THE STATE JOURNAL: Posted: Jan 05, 2012 5:20 PM EST Updated: Jan 05, 2012 5:25 PM EST By Taylor Kuykendall, Reporter Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's office, a staff member told reporters, is largely focusing on natural gas and coal, not expanding renewable or other energy sources through state initiatives. Chief of Staff Rob Alsop, speaking at the AP Legislative Lookahead on Thursday, said the state wants to be a leader in manufacturing and coal. Asked about expanding the energy portfolio to other sources, Alsop indicated the state executive's focus is elsewhere. "Our real focus has been on protecting coal and making sure it's production goes forward and then responsibly protecting the environment and working on natural gas," Alsop said. "So, that's been our main focus." Alsop said the governor believes there's much potential in shale gas, particularly for the downstream products that can be obtained from the gas. "We think this will reinvigorate manufacturing in the Appalachian basin," he said. Also said the success of wind production will most likely hinge more on federal tax programs, not state-level incentives. "If they stay, we have wind farms. If they don't then we won't," Alsop said. He pointed to challenges with wind and similar sources overcoming gas- and coal-fired electricity, such as price. He added that the state's Division of Energy was looking into a study that was conducted regarding the state's potential as a geothermal energy source but didn't immediately know the details of its progress. Alsop said the number one economic priority is attracting an ethane cracker to the state. An ethane cracker converts ethane, which is produced along with natural gas from Marcellus shale formations, into chemicals that can be used in various manufacturing processes. The resulting jobs and spin off jobs from chemical companies that use the products, have been much sought after by West Virginia officials. Announcements regarding one or more crackers are anticipated early this year. Alsop said the governor's office is confident West Virginia had a good chance of landing a cracker. "We believe we have some advantages that other states don't have," Alsop said. "We have a realistic shot at multiple crackers coming to the state."

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Fwd: Renewable Energy Growth in 2011
by James Kotcon 05 Jan '12

05 Jan '12

New data from US-DOE's Energy Information Agency for the first three quarters of 2011. Here is the part I like: Looking at just the electricity sector, compared to the same nine-month period in 2010: coal Down 4.2% nuclear Down 2.8%. natural gas Up 1.6%. renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, solar, water, wind) Up 24.73%. Renewables provided 12.73% of net U.S. electrical generation. Jim Kotcon >>> Ken Bossong <sun-day-campaign(a)hotmail.com> 1/4/2012 9:08 PM >>> SUN DAY CAMPAIG 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite #340; Takoma Park, MD 20912 301-270-6477 x.11 sun-day-campaign(a)hotmail.com News Advisory RENEWABLE SOURCES CONTINUE EXPLOSIVE GROWTH: NOW PROVIDE 12% OF DOMESTIC ENERGY PRODUCTION - 14% MORE THAN 2010 RENEWABLE ELECTRICAL OUTPUT INCREASES 25%; CONTRIBUTES 13% OF U.S. POWER For Immediate Release: Wednesday - January 4, 2012 Contact: Ken Bossong, 301-270-6477 x.11 Washington DC – According to the most recent issue of the "Monthly Energy Review" by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), with data through September 30, 2011, renewable energy sources continue to expand rapidly while substantially outpacing the growth rates of fossil fuels and nuclear power. For the first nine months of 2011, renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar, water, wind) provided 11.95% of domestic U.S. energy production. That compares to 10.85% for the same period in 2010 and 10.33% in 2009. By comparison, nuclear power provided just 10.62% of the nation's energy production in the first three quarters of 2011 -- i.e., 11.10% less than renewables. Looking at all energy sectors (e.g., electricity, transportation, thermal), renewable energy output, including hydropower, grew by 14.44% in 2011 compared to 2010. Among the renewable energy sources, conventional hydropower provided 4.35% of domestic energy production during the first nine months of 2011, followed by biomass (3.15%), biofuels (2.57%), wind (1.45%), geothermal (0.29%), and solar (0.15%). (On the consumption side, which includes oil and other energy imports, renewable sources accounted for 9.35% of total U.S. energy use during the first nine months of 2011.) Looking at just the electricity sector, according to the latest issue of EIA’s "Electric Power Monthly," with data through September 30, 2011, renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, solar, water wind) provided 12.73% of net U.S. electrical generation. This represents an increase of 24.73% compared to the same nine-month period in 2010. By comparison, electrical generation from coal dropped by 4.2% while nuclear output declined by 2.8%. Natural gas electrical generation rose by 1.6%. Conventional hydropower accounted for 8.21% of net electrical generation during the first nine months of 2011 - an increase of 29.6% compared to 2010. Non-hydro renewables accounted for 4.52% of net electrical generation (wind - 2.73%, biomass - 1.34%, geothermal - 0.40%, solar - 0.05%). Compared to the first three quarters of 2010, solar-generated electricity expanded in 2011 by 46.5%; wind by 27.1%, geothermal by 9.4%, and biomass by 1.3%. “Notwithstanding the recession of the past three years, renewable energy sources have experienced explosive rates of growth that other industries can only envy,” said Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “The investments in sustainable energy made by the federal government as well as state and private funders have paid off handsomely underscoring the short-sightedness of emerging proposals to cut back on or discontinue such support.” # # # # # # # # The U.S. Energy Information Administration released its most recent "Monthly Energy Review" on December 23, 2011. It can be found at: http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/index.cfm. The relevant charts from which the data above are extrapolated are Tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 10.1. EIA released its most recent "Electric Power Monthly" on December 16, 2011; see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/pdf/epm.pdf. The relevant charts are Tables 1.1, ES1.A, ES1.B, and 1.1.A. ======================= The SUN DAY Campaign is a non-profit research and educational organization founded in 1993 to promote sustainable energy technologies as cost-effective alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels.

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Fwd: [eewv] EEWV Lobbying January 10th!
by James Kotcon 04 Jan '12

04 Jan '12

To the Energy Committee: There will be a significant push for energy efficiency legislation this session, so if anyone wants to help get a head start, the "Lobby Day" next Tuesday would be an excellent opportunity to be come the expert in your region. EVERY possible scenario for addressing global warming that includes a significant Energy Efficiency component, and West Virginia has a long way to go to catch up to what other states are doing. This is the Year, Now is the Time! Jim Kotcon >>> Molly McLaughlin <molly.eewv(a)gmail.com> 1/4/2012 12:45 PM >>> We wanted to remind you about the first Energy Efficient West Virginia lobby day at the capitol next Tuesday, January 10th. This is the day before the start of the session, so it will be an excellent opportunity to let your legislators know what energy efficiency bills are coming and to encourage them to co-sponsor legislation. We will meet at 11am in the rotunda of the capitol building (the main dome) - on the lower level next to the Information Desk. If you can't find us, call us at our cell phone numbers listed below. We will give you a brief orientation and answer any questions that you have about talking to your legislators or the bills, as well as handing out fact sheets that you can provide to your legislators if you wish. If you wish to set up meeting times with your senators and representatives in advance, you can find their contact information on the legislature's website: http://www.legis.state.wv.us/ (see "Who's my legislator?" in the lower right corner). If you want to lobby on the 10th but can't make it at 11am (or if you have already arranged a meeting with your legislators at an earlier time), please email me and we can arrange to meet with you separately. This lobby day will coincide with an educational event organized by our friends at West Virginia Greenworks on energy efficiency in the House Chamber from 1-4pm. This event will include presentations and panel discussions on major pieces of energy efficiency legislation that will come up this year: improving building codes for energy efficiency, an energy expansion fund, the energy efficiency resource standard, and least-cost planning. We hope you can stick around for what promises to be an exciting discussion! Feel free to email us with any questions. Molly (404-729-9312) Cathy (304-237-3802 ( tel:%28304-237-3802 ))

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Fwd: Join us for "Energy Efficiency 101: Using efficiency to retire coal"
by Paul Wilson 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

fyi, in case you are not on the Coal Campaign listserve. paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Becki Clayborn <becki.clayborn(a)sierraclub.org> Date: Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:07 PM Subject: Join us for "Energy Efficiency 101: Using efficiency to retire coal" To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org Dear friends - HAPPY NEW YEAR! Please see the full invitation below for the repeat of the Efficiency 101 webinar. This version will be in the evening in order to accommodate more volunteers. FYI - as I stated before, the Beyond Coal Campaign goal is to have monthly webinars (offered both in the day and evening) pertinent to your work on the Beyond Coal Campaign. Until we have fine tuned the listserves serving our staff and lead volunteers working on the Beyond Coal Campaign,* I encourage you to forward these invitations to your appropriate lists.* If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at becki.clayborn(a)sierraclub.org. I hope you can join us for this webinar! Thanks! Becki Clayborn Internal Capacities and Communications Coordinator Beyond Coal Campaign Energy Efficiency 101: Using efficiency to retire coal Join us for a Webinar on January 17 <https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/368799454> *Space is limited.* Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/368799454 Visualize energy efficiency retiring coal fired power plants!!! In this webinar, you will learn why energy efficiency is the cleanest, cheapest and fastest way to fulfill a significant portion of our energy demands. You will also learn some of the first steps that some states and cities are taking to increase energy efficiency, and how to determine how well your state is doing. This webinar is an introductory overview of energy efficiency - future webinars will dig in more on specifics of energy efficiency policies and programs. So, if you want to be able to talk with stakeholders about how energy efficiency can help stop climate change, then this is the perfect webinar for you. If you are already an energy efficiency expert - this webinar will be a general refresher. This webinar is for 100 people - first come first serve! *Title:* Energy Efficiency 101: Using efficiency to retire coal *Date:* Tuesday, January 17, 2012 *Time:* 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM EST After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. *System Requirements* PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 7, Vista, XP or 2003 Server Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.5 or newer -- Becki Clayborn Beyond Coal Campaign Internal Capacities and Communications Coordinator Chicago, IL 312-251-1680 -- Becki Clayborn Beyond Coal Campaign Internal Capacities and Communications Coordinator Chicago, IL 312-251-1680 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/ -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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Fwd: Every dollar donation matched to help CMD fight fracking
by Paul Wilson 31 Dec '11

31 Dec '11

something on Fracking for CMD. fyi, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Lisa Graves <editor(a)prwatch.org> Date: Sat, Dec 31, 2011 at 1:57 PM Subject: Every dollar donation matched to help CMD fight fracking To: pjgrunt(a)gmail.com ** <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=dCOcoeMODl5pdsLxCs%2…> Help Us Expose the Fracking Truth and Every Donation Will Go Twice as Far December 27, 2011 *Dear Friend of the Center for Media and Democracy:* *Over the past two years, CMD has been exposing the gas industry's PR campaign to gloss over the real costs of the boom in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for "natural" gas across the U.S.* We've been at the forefront of debunking swift-boat smear funder T. Boone Pickens and other gasbags that new drilling operations in people's backyards are all about "national security" when in reality the gas industry is exporting more of America's gas to other countries than ever before, while spoiling more and more wells and waterways with the toxic waste of their largely unregulated drilling and distribution operations. *Click here to support our investigations of the gas industry.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mTPX1reU7nBcCOcDJEiG…> * *CMD has received a special challenge grant in which every donation, up to $50,000, will be matched dollar for dollar to help expose the facts about fracking.* We need your help to dig even deeper into fracking game. To help tell that story, we've created dossiers on the biggest fracking companies and the money they've been spreading around to politicians to limit regulation of fracking. We've been tracking corporate-funded groups, like "Energy in Depth," which has attacked those who object, as well as the astroturf activities of so-called "Energy Citizens," corporate employees dressed up to look like a grassroots movement demanding that we basically "drill, baby, drill" with even fewer protections for health and safety. *Click here to have your donation to investigate energy front groups doubled through this matching grant.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=vYrYGGnUWmGZk2TgeBni…> * *We've also been analyzing the Koch connection with their massive pipeline business and history of pipeline leaks.* CMD's historical analysis of the billionaire Koch Brothers has been featured in *The Nation* magazine, on Democracy Now!, and in the work of Brave New Films and other outlets. Our breakthrough coverage of the Wisconsin protests and the corporate players, like David Koch's greed-is-good group, "Americans for Prosperity," helped open people's eyes across the nation. We need your support to document more about the role of the Koch brothers in the industry, in energy speculation, and in influencing politicians. *Click here to help us expand our efforts to expose the Kochs and their buddies in the global gas and oil industry.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=lD%2B%2F4qiGMGVQ0AD2…> * *As you know, in 2011, we also launched the unprecedented effort to expose the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)* by analyzing and making available nearly 1,000 "model" bills secretly voted on by global corporations and politicians behind closed doors. The way we approached this investigation has inspired hundreds of news stories illuminating this secret distortion of our democracy. We have new reporting coming in January about the focus of ALEC corporations and politicians on fracking. Major funders of ALEC's recent conferences that have a stake in this big business include BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chesapeake Energy, EnCana Corporation, and CN (Canadian National Railroad). *Click here to have your support matched $1 to $1 for our future investigations of the fracking corporations.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=Zh59dq6MCv1zdWBjFprk…> * *We're also examining how ALEC politicians in Wisconsin and elsewhere are pushing to mine fracking sand akin to mountain-top removal in which whole hills are destroyed.* ALEC by the way, has promoted the "blueprint" to pre-empt local democratic efforts to regulate companies, in addition to its efforts to strip the EPA of key regulatory powers. And, now in Pennsylvania, we even have seen an effort to pre-empt the Pittsburgh city council's ban on fracking based on its in-depth examination of the impact of the drilling. * * *Will you help us expose the facts about fracking by donating today?<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=qPXXjd7R1phX8xUHuYUI…> * Every dollar you contribute will be doubled, up to $50,000. Sincerely, *Lisa* Lisa Graves Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy *P.S. Citizens across the country, in New York and elsewhere, are waking up to the devastating consequences of gas leases they signed filled with fine print that leaves them, and us, with spoiled water and spoiled land. In some states, like Pennsylvania, the government has even used "homeland security" powers and dollars that were supposed to protect against foreign terrorists instead to investigate law-abiding citizens who dare to speak up. Some in the gas industry have even launched PR counter-offensives to use "counter-insurgency" strategies against concerned Americans, treating them like enemies in warzones. That's why investigative journalism on these issues is even more crucial than ever. Please click here to make a donation in any amount.<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=c17EkLBz%2B%2FWq3h%2…> * [image: Donate Now!] Fight Corruption! [image: Donate today!]We need your help to expose the corporate and CEO money corrupting our democracy. 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Click here to donate today! <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=ZcBYjDzMgxgAl0UWOG6i…> [image: Donate Now!] About the Center for Media and Democracy [image: About the Center for Media and Democracy]PR Watch<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=KdtzrIkMWxnRoODjtOkU…>, SourceWatch<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=PfW6xBvkk3BzX8cKZ7yb…>, BanksterUSA<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=91pcOpNvGeOfubjUg6xP…>and ALECexposed<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=AVjxUzsszNiumNhIsl4w…>are projects of the Center for Media and Democracy<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=xTtVQ2uJQmKRGMwK17V7…>, a non-profit investigative reporting group. CMD does not accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies, but relies on concerned citizens like you. Please donate today<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=TER%2F%2BUhkOnL8B7Vg…>to support our coming investigations! CMD is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, and contributions are tax-deductible. Please send any questions to editor(a)prwatch.org. Center for Media and Democracy 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 Madison, Wisconsin 53703-4929 Phone: 608-260-9713 | Fax: 608-260-9714 Email: editor(a)prwatch.org Privacy Policy<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=AHCZXic46Up%2BKvjggN…>| Unsubscribe<http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=18Jyslc3gJoDfnmmKtLv…> [image: empowered by Salsa] <http://www.salsalabs.com/?email> ** -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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renewable energy trade war
by Frank Young 30 Dec '11

30 Dec '11

BlankWe know that renewable energy is coming of age when trade wars breaks out among the various international players in the industry. ------------------------------------- "U.S. manufacturers of wind turbine towers jumped into a growing renewable energy trade war Thursday, asking the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission to investigate and slap tariffs on Chinese and Vietnamese manufacturers for dumping towers in the U.S. market below cost." http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/12/us_wind_tower_makers_s…

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Fwd: GA Chapt Victory! -- Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation's Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant
by James Kotcon 27 Dec '11

27 Dec '11

The Georgia Chapter invited me down in 2006 to talk about air pollution from this plant. Congrats on their victory. Jim Kotcon From: FRED [mailto:CONS-FRED@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG] On Behalf Of Paula Carrell Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 11:13 AM To: CONS-FRED(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Subject: GA Chapt Victory! -- Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation’s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant allies too, of course when I first met GA Chapt Director, Colleen Kiernan, this coal plant fight was on her plate as a national organizing staffer in GA . . . so it's been a while to Triumph "hang in there" is a big part of the message here pc For Immediate Release: December 12, 2011 Contact: Bobby McLendon, Friends of the Chattahoochee, (229) 308-6782 ( tel:%28229%29%20308-6782 ) Justine Thompson, GreenLaw, (404) 659-3122 ( tel:%28404%29%20659-3122 ) Colleen Kiernan, Sierra Club, (404) 607-1262 x 224 ( tel:%28404%29%20607-1262%20x%20224 ) Longleaf Defeat Marks End to Nation’s Longest Running Fight Against Coal Plant Agreement Marks Milestone of 160 Coal Plants Canceled Atlanta, GA - The country’s longest-running campaign against construction of a new coal plant ended today as LS Power, a New Jersey-based power company, announced that it will cancel plans to build the Longleaf Energy Station in Blakely, GA. Sierra Club, Friends of the Chattahoochee and GreenLaw have been organizing against the Longleaf coal plant since it was first proposed in 2001. This victory comes as part of a legal agreement between LS Power and Sierra Club. This victory marks the 160th proposed coal plant canceled since Sierra Club launched its Beyond Coal campaign in 2005. This victory is particularly noteworthy because the struggle lasted for a decade and involved numerous hearings and appeals, and sustained local opposition by hundreds of Georgia residents. Longleaf was one of the very first plants proposed when, in 2001, the coal industry attempted to block clean energy development by building more than 150 new coal plants across the US, a move which would have effectively locked the nation into dependence on coal-fired electricity for the foreseeable future. Longleaf was one of the last remaining new coal projects proposed anywhere in the United States, counting 160 proposals that have now been defeated or abandoned in the past decade. Several times over the past decade it looked like LS Power would move forward with its proposed coal plant, but local residents continued their opposition through multiple tactics, including holding a call-in day this past June when more than 250 Georgians called LS Power asking the CEO to cancel the proposal. “This is not just a victory for the individuals and organizations fighting this plant, but also for all Georgians, who are now safe from a major new source of toxic air pollution,” said Colleen Kiernan, Director of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This victory represents our best work: combining the power of the courts, the power of the people and the power of the press.” Sierra Club and Friends of the Chattahoochee were represented by GreenLaw, an Atlanta-based nonprofit law firm, in a series of legal challenges to the permits issued for the plant. The legal battle over the Longleaf coal plant made national and international news when Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore issued a ruling that the plant’s air quality permit was illegal because it failed to provide any limits on emissions of CO2. While Judge Moore’s decision was later overturned, the United States Environmental Protection Agency adopted much of the legal reasoning of the decision in promulgating rules to limit CO2 emissions from larger industrial facilities. “Longleaf’s cancelation is one of dozens that have swept the nation, which raises the question – when will state officials finally learn that Georgia’s citizens deserve better than coal?” said GreenLaw’s Executive Director, Justine Thompson. “Georgia has a promising future – but to be a serious player in the global economy while also ensuring that we have clean air and water, Georgia needs to embrace energy efficiency and more renewable sources of energy.” The announcement comes as part of a nationwide agreement with Sierra Club that also requires LS Power to abandon its proposed Plum Point 2 coal plant in Arkansas and imposes strict new limits on air pollution from the new Sandy Creek coal plant in Texas. The agreement requires the company to withdraw all requests for permits in Georgia and Arkansas, and that any issued permits be rescinded or revoked. Local residents, who would have been most significantly affected by the plant’s construction, were active in opposing the plant. “When we found out the truth about what this plant would do to our lives, we had no choice but to oppose it. We were just regular people who want our grandchildren to breathe clean air,” said Bobby McLendon, President of Friends of the Chattahoochee. “Helping to stop this plant is probably the most important thing I have ever done for my family, my community and the Earth.” If built, Plant Longleaf would have contributed 88 pounds of toxic mercury per year, 1938 pounds of lead per year, and more than 8000 tons of soot and smog per year, to Georgia’s atmosphere and water system. Mercury pollution can cause neurological disorders and birth defects in babies, and soot and smog contribute to respiratory illness and trigger asthma attacks. Sierra Club, GreenLaw, and several other environmental and public health organizations continue to fight the two remaining coal plant proposals in Georgia proposed by POWER4Georgians in Central and Southeast Georgia. These groups’ work to transition Georgia off of imported coal and onto homegrown clean energy like wind and solar is part of a national effort involving unprecedented collaboration by more than a hundred organizations nationwide. Over the past decade this national campaign has stopped 160 proposed coal plants and secured record investments in clean energy. Since November 2008 only one coal plant has broken ground anywhere in the United States, a highly-subsidized project in Mississippi. A timeline, avoided emissions, and other documents related to Longleaf can be found at: www.greenlaw.org/Longleaf. ### Friends of the Chattahoochee seek to protect the Chattahoochee River and the environment. A multi-state, non-profit organization that opposes any new industry that will adversely impact the Chattahoochee River watershed, it monitors existing industry to ensure that all environmental regulations and safeguards are being adhered to. www.friendsofthechattahoochee.org GreenLaw is dedicated to preventing air and water pollution that endangers human health and degrades Georgia’s natural resources. GreenLaw achieves these goals by providing free high quality legal and technical assistance to environmental organizations and community groups throughout Georgia. www.greenlaw.org The Sierra Club works to protect our communities and the planet. Inspired by nature to contribute and participate, our members and supporters number more than 1.3 million friends and neighbors. The Sierra Club is America's largest grassroots environmental organization. www.sierraclub.org and www.georgia.sierraclub.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the CONS-FRED list, send any message to: CONS-FRED-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the CONS-FRED list, send any message to: CONS-FRED-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp To view the Sierra Club List Terms & Conditions, see: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/terms.asp

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Fwd: Mary Anne Hitt column: Today's AEP/SWPEPCO victory
by James Kotcon 27 Dec '11

27 Dec '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Heather Moyer <heather.moyer(a)sierraclub.org> Date: Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 12:56 PM Subject: Mary Anne Hitt column: Today's AEP/SWPEPCO victory To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org Hi folks- Mary Anne's got a second column this week, it's all about today's victory in the south. Please share it via Twitter, Facebook, etc... And please comments on / recommend it on these sites: Compass: http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2011/12/a-clean-air-christmas-another… Grist: http://www.grist.org/article/2011-12-22-a-clean-air-christmas-another-beyon… Daily Kos: www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/22/1047940/-A-Clean-Air-Christmas:-Another-B…! Alternet: http://blogs.alternet.org/maryannehitt/2011/12/22/a-clean-air-christmas-ano… Huffington Post (up within 24 hours): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-anne-hitt FULL TEXT: A Clean Air Christmas: Another Beyond Coal Victory to Close the Year! Well, we certainly are closing out this year with lots of good news to report. Today, the Sierra Club and Audubon are announcing a legal settlement with American Electric Power/Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP/SWEPCO) that will retire a dirty coal plant and bring us lots of new clean energy. If all you wanted for Christmas this year was clean air, then you are in luck! The deal will retire Welsh 2, a dirty coal plant upwind of Arkansas in northeastern Texas. It requires AEP to install 400 MW of clean energy – the equivalent of a medium-sized coal plant. It includes $2 million to support increased energy efficiency programs in Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, which will help lower electric bills for families at a time when every penny counts. It prevents siting of transmission lines in sensitive natural areas. And it sets aside $8 million for land and habitat conservation in the region, which will go to the Nature Conservancy. The settlement will also allow AEP to finish construction on the nearly-complete Turk power plant in Arkansas, which the Sierra Club and allies have been fighting for four years. As Glen Hooks, our Sierra Club campaign representative in Arkansas, put it, "While we'd prefer that the Turk plant not be built, today's settlement brings some very good news for Arkansas, which would not have been possible without years of citizen opposition to dirty coal plants." For details about the settlement, you can read our press release ( http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=223281.0 ). This settlement continues a trend that is underway nationwide – old, dirty coal plants are on their way out, and clean energy is on the rise. In 2011, we saw the largest-ever solar investments, and the second-largest investments ever in wind. Since January 2010, over 10% of the nation's coal plants have been slated for retirement. And since we launched our Beyond Coal campaign in 2002, we have defeated 161 new coal plants, leaving the door open for the clean energy revolution that is now taking center stage. This holiday, I'm thankful for all the allies and activists that helped make this happen, including amazing legal work by the Environmental Integrity Project. This AEP settlement is one more landmark victory along the way towards a clean energy future. Have a happy holiday season – here’s to making 2012 a banner year for clean air, clean water, and clean energy! -- Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaig ( http://beyondcoal.org/ ) --- Heather Moyer Senior Media Writer 202-675-6276 ( tel:202-675-6276 ) Sierra Club 50 F Street, 8th Floor Washington, DC 20001 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/

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Fwd: Link to mining article from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org)
by James Kotcon 24 Dec '11

24 Dec '11

Take the time to read this one. Or at least look at all the pretty pictures! This shows the very strong correlations among mining, TDS, selenium, and impacts to aquatic communities. JBK >>> <jkotcon(a)wvu.edu> 12/24/2011 10:28 AM >>> James Kotcon (jkotcon(a)wvu.edu) has sent this article to you from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Cumulative impacts of mountaintop mining on an Appalachian watershed http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/12/05/1112381108.full.pdf+html -------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought you might be interested in the article I found in the publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -------------------------------------------------------------------- This is sent to you as an email-a-colleague feature from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at http://www.pnas.org

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Re: [EC] Cumulative impact of mountaintop mining documented
by Paul Wilson 24 Dec '11

24 Dec '11

This was in the Science Daily e-newsletter.follow the link... fyi, paul Cumulative impact of mountaintop mining documented<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/TFI…> Posted: 12 Dec 2011 12:31 PM PST Increased salinity and concentrations of trace elements in one West Virginia watershed have been tied directly to multiple surface coal mines upstream by a detailed new survey of stream chemistry. Researchers who conducted the study said it provides new evidence of the cumulative effects multiple mountaintop mining permits can have in a river network. -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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Fwd:Longview Power Plant up and running
by James Kotcon 22 Dec '11

22 Dec '11

More news. JBK >>> "Donald C. Strimbeck" dcsoinks(a)comcast.net> 12/22/2011 4:10 AM >> ( mailto:dcsoinks@comcast.net ) DOMINION POST Thursday 22 December 2011: UPDATE Longview Power Plant up and running $2B facility producing 700 megawatts a day BY ALEX LANG The Dominion Post Longview Power Plant, is now just that — a power plant. General Manager Charlie Huguenard said the plant, north of Morgantown, reached substantial competition last week, meaning most of the work is done. Crews will continue to do minor work, testing and repairs as needed, Huguenard said. But, the Longview power staff has taken control of the coal-to-electricity facility. The facility cost about $2 billion to build. The plant is generating electricity 24 hours a day, Huguenard said. Each day, 700 megawatts — enough to power 7 million 100-watt bulbs — go into the electrical grid. The plant sells its energy to PJM Interconnection. There was a delay in reaching substantial competition as the contractor had to fix a few issues, such as problems with the boiler, Huguenard said. As part of the commissioning process, the plant performed emissions tests, which Huguenard said went smoothly. To get a permit, the state’s Department of Environmental Protection gave it the lowest permitted air emissions rating to date. The plant is the lowest airemissions plant in the state, if not one of the lowest in the country, Huguenard said. Not everybody was pleased with the plant, however. Chairman of the state’s Sierra Club Executive Committee, Jim Sconyers, said the group battled the plant, but lost. Despite the company’s environmental claims, Sconyers said people should be concerned about the emissions from a coal facility. “You can only be so clean, if you’re burning coal to make electricity,” Sconyers said. There is a bit of a bright side, he added. As part of the settlement with the Sierra Club, the Longview Power Plant will begin to donate $500,000 to nonprofit organizations to cover the costs of helping to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions and to take care of local waterways. The plant has 96 full-time workers who are based in Morgantown, Huguenard said. The company estimates the plant will increase state and local revenues by roughly $7.9 million a year and boost annual labor income in local counties by $43 million. Now that the plant has reached substantial completion, Huguenard said he plans to remain with the project to oversee the transition from construction to operations. Longview Power acquires plant 12/22/2011 3:32 AM Longview Power has accepted ownership of the 695-megawatt, coal-fired plant it constructed in Monongalia County, W.Va., just south of the Greene County border. The company accepted ownership from the plant's main contractors after it was the determined the plant had achieved "substantial completion," said a news release issued by the company. The main contractors on the $2 billion project were Kvaerner North American Construction Inc. and Siemens Energy Inc. The plant had begun producing electricity in May and since that time has been going through numerous tests in preparation for commercial operations. "During the development, construction and commissioning of this complex facility, we have successfully met highly rigorous standards and requirements for operational performance, environmental compliance and safety," said Charlie Huguenard, Longview general manager. "We look forward to productive and sustained commercial operation of the facility for decades to come," he said. The plant was first proposed in late 2002, and after all permits were received, a process that included lengthy legal challenges to its air-quality permit, groundbreaking was held in May 2007. The plant will operate under the lowest permitted air emission limits imposed by West Virginia for a coal-fired plant, the company said. At full load, the plant will burn about 6,600 tons of coal a day, most of it mined in Greene County at mines owned by Mepco LLC, a parent company of Dana Mining Co. The coal is conveyed to the plant by means of a 4.5-mile coal conveyor belt constructed from Dana's 4 West Mine near Bobtown to the power plant. The plant also will use water for cooling drawn from the Monongahela River and treated at a plant the company constructed near Poland Mines. The Longview plant is the largest privately funded project in West Virginia history. It is staffed by 96 full-time employees and generates an additional 500 indirect jobs in the region, the company said. Copyright Observer Publishing Co. EPA acts to make air cleaner New rules force oil-, coal-fired power plants to lower pollutants periling health Thursday, December 22, 2011 By Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In one of its most significant initiatives in 20 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced final health-based rules Wednesday for controlling mercury, acid gases and other air toxics from oil- and coal-burning power plants. The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will save 11,000 lives and prevent 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 childhood asthma attacks a year by 2016, according to the EPA, while reducing respiratory ailments, birth defects and cancers. And, according to the Electric Power Generation Association of Pennsylvania, while the new standards may contribute to the retirement of eight to 10 small, old, coal-fired power plants in the state, it likely will not cause any power blackouts and should open the way for development of more natural gas-fueled power plants. The first national emissions controls on utilities will reduce emissions of mercury -- a potent neurotoxin -- arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel and acid gases from power plants by 91 percent. Every dollar spent to reduce power plant pollution, the EPA said, will result in up to $9 in public health benefits, and the total health and economic benefits resulting from the long-awaited standards could be as much as $90 billion annually. "By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health -- and especially for the health of our children," EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in Washington, D.C. "With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another action that will benefit the American people for years to come." Ms. Jackson said the toxics pollution controls could increase utility bills by $3 to $4 a month for consumers. The rules might also cause utilities to close some of the nation's oldest and biggest polluting power plants. The new standards were not welcomed by many in the utility and coal industries. Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utilities that lobbies on electric power issues in Washington, D.C., and Steve Miller, president and chief executive officer of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said the EPA's rules will increase the cost of power, cause job losses, and have few health benefits. The rules, however, were praised by environmental, health, science, sportsmen's, investment, sustainable business and religious organizations, and even some electric utilities. Some called the rules "long overdo" and "monumental" and "historic" in their positive impacts on public health, the environment and the economy. "As a result of the new standards, we will begin to see some relief from the power plant pollution that harms our health," said Deborah Brown, president and CEO of the American Lung Association of Pennsylvania. "This action is a significant victory in the fight for healthy air." Bill McLin, president and CEO of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, a not-for-profit health organization advocating for asthma sufferers, said the 20 million Americans with asthma, including 6.7 million children, will breathe easier because of the EPA's decision to control power plant emissions. Coal-fired power plants are the largest sources of mercury, arsenic and other hazardous air pollutants. After intense industry lobbying, coal- and oil-fired electric power generators were exempted from 1990 Clean Air Act regulations governing toxic air emissions from other industrial operations. Today, about 44 percent of the nation's more than 440 coal-fired power plants continue to operate without any pollution controls and are responsible for 99 percent of mercury emissions from the electric power industry. The new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, contain two rules. The first establishes numerical limitations for mercury, airborne particles or soot, hydrochloric acid and metals. The second rule tightens limits that new coal-fired power plants must meet for airborne particle, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions. The new rules, based on more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific and health studies, give power plants that don't use controls three years to install the equipment, with a possible additional one-year extension. In addition, the rules provide for case-by-case extensions where necessary to ensure that electricity supply reliability is maintained. According to the EPA, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards and the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which was issued earlier this year, are the most significant steps to clean up pollution from power plant smokestacks since the Acid Rain Program of the 1990s. Combined, the rules annually could prevent up to 46,000 premature deaths, 540,000 asthma attacks among children and 24,500 emergency room visits and hospital admissions. Power plant mercury controls already exist in 17 states, but not in Pennsylvania, where a mercury rule was declared unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2009. A Natural Resources Defense Council report in July listed Pennsylvania as having the second-worst toxic air emissions in the nation, behind Ohio, and Pennsylvania's mercury emissions are second to Texas. Mark Baird, a spokesman for GenOn, owner of 18 power plants in Pennsylvania, said the company wouldn't comment on the rules until it has an opportunity to examine them in detail. FirstEnergy, which owns four coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania, including Hatfield's Ferry power plant in Greene County and Bruce Mansfield power plant in Shippingport, Beaver County, also said it is reviewing the rules. When the rules were proposed earlier this year, FirstEnergy estimated compliance costs at $2 billion to $3 billion. "Over the next few months we'll evaluate things and look at our individual units to determine what they need to do to meet the regulations," said Ray Evans, environment executive director for FirstEnergy. "We have scrubbers on most all of the units but some might need retrofits." Mr. Segal, of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, and Mr. Miller, of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said the EPA's rules will also make electricity less reliable. And just two months ago, Gov. Tom Corbett joined 10 other Republican governors in signing a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to withdraw the rules because of power supply reliability concerns. But most national studies don't support that blackout warning, and Doug Biden, president of the Electric Power Generation Association in Pennsylvania, a Harrisburg association representing power producers statewide, said such an occurrence is very unlikely in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden said he does expect eight to 10 coal-fired power plants to close in the next few years, reducing Pennsylvania's power output by 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts, from its current total output of about 50,000 megawatts. He said he doesn't know which individual plants might close. "I do expect significant retirements of coal power plants, but I'm not blaming the EPA's air toxics rules ...," Mr. Biden said. "When you look at everything together, the new rules, historically low natural gas prices and stubbornly high coal prices due to overseas demand, all of that makes it very difficult for companies to justify operation of small, older power plants." Don Hopey: dhopey(a)post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983. First published on December 22, 2011 at 12:00 am Charleston Gazette Thursday 22 December 2011: December 21, 2011 Engineers hired to develop Kanawha cracker plant By Paul J. Nyden ( http://www.wvgazette.com/News/contact/cwalqra+jitnmrggr+pbz+return=/News/20… ) CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Richard Neely, a Charleston lawyer and former state Supreme Court justice, announced Wednesday that two experienced engineers are working with him on his plans to design and build a cracker plant near Montgomery to process natural gas. Neely recently incorporated Invictus LLC, whose cracking plant will produce a variety of products, including diesel fuel, gasoline, naphtha and ethylene -- a major product used by the plastics industry. The two engineers are: * Rob Proffitt, who lives in Winfield, was project manager for Union Carbide when it built a $1.3 billion ethane cracker plant in Alberta, Canada, between 1996 and 2001. The Alberta plant was a joint venture between Carbide and Nova Chemicals. * Cyril B. Tellis, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering from Northwestern University, was a research and development manager for Carbide's facilities that produced and refined ethylene and propylene, as well as a number of chemical derivatives. Neely said Tellis, who now lives in Charleston, worked for a variety of projects, including a major cracking plant in Saudi Arabia that supplies ethylene for plastics throughout Europe and coal-to-gas Sasol plants in South Africa. Sasol Ltd. is a South African company involved in mining, energy, chemicals and synfuels. During the apartheid era, when many countries boycotted trade with South Africa, Sasol produced petroleum and diesel products from coal and natural gas. Neely estimates it would cost $1.5 billion to build a cracking plant that produces high-quality products for the chemical industry and $3 billion for a plant that produces gasoline and diesel fuel from natural gas. The proposed plant could possibly get wet natural gas reserves pipelined to Kanawha County from both Marcellus Shale reserves in northern West Virginia and Utica Shale reserves in Athens County and surrounding areas in eastern Ohio. "People are going after oil in Utica Shale reserves. They are not looking for gas," Neely said. "And Ohio will not let you flare natural gas [to eliminate it] after 30 days from the time you open a well." CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Richard Neely, a Charleston lawyer and former state Supreme Court justice, announced Wednesday that two experienced engineers are working with him on his plans to design and build a cracker plant near Montgomery to process natural gas. Neely recently incorporated Invictus LLC, whose cracking plant will produce a variety of products, including diesel fuel, gasoline, naphtha and ethylene -- a major product used by the plastics industry. The two engineers are: * Rob Proffitt, who lives in Winfield, was project manager for Union Carbide when it built a $1.3 billion ethane cracker plant in Alberta, Canada, between 1996 and 2001. The Alberta plant was a joint venture between Carbide and Nova Chemicals. * Cyril B. Tellis, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering from Northwestern University, was a research and development manager for Carbide's facilities that produced and refined ethylene and propylene, as well as a number of chemical derivatives. Neely said Tellis, who now lives in Charleston, worked for a variety of projects, including a major cracking plant in Saudi Arabia that supplies ethylene for plastics throughout Europe and coal-to-gas Sasol plants in South Africa. Sasol Ltd. is a South African company involved in mining, energy, chemicals and synfuels. During the apartheid era, when many countries boycotted trade with South Africa, Sasol produced petroleum and diesel products from coal and natural gas. Neely estimates it would cost $1.5 billion to build a cracking plant that produces high-quality products for the chemical industry and $3 billion for a plant that produces gasoline and diesel fuel from natural gas. The proposed plant could possibly get wet natural gas reserves pipelined to Kanawha County from both Marcellus Shale reserves in northern West Virginia and Utica Shale reserves in Athens County and surrounding areas in eastern Ohio. "People are going after oil in Utica Shale reserves. They are not looking for gas," Neely said. "And Ohio will not let you flare natural gas [to eliminate it] after 30 days from the time you open a well." "We will be willing to take that gas, wet gas, which has to go to some kind of a plant," Neely said. "People might come and beg us to get rid of their gas." Invictus has already acquired the rights to 1,456 acres of land to build its cracking plant and related facilities near Coalburg, between Montgomery and Cabin Creek. Most of the facilities will be built on land that was previously a mountaintop removal coal mine. The Kanawha Valley, Neely said, is a good place to develop the cracking plant, especially with its long chemical-industry history. "We have everyone from smart blue-collar guys to chemical engineers with PhDs. We will also provide union-wage jobs. "Here, there is a far greater reserve of people who know about the chemical industry than farther north, where they have steel and aluminum plants and other heavy industry." Neely said the CSX railroad, which has tracks between the Kanawha River and the proposed location of the new Invictus plant, will make it easy to ship the plant's products to Newport News, Va., for export. "CSX also connects to places throughout the industrial Midwestern heartland to cities like Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Gary." The cracking plant will also have access to a river dock that can handle eight barges. Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...(a)wvgazette.com ( http://www.wvgazette.com/News/contact/cwalqra+jitnmrggr+pbz+return=/News/20… ) or 304-348-5164. "We will be willing to take that gas, wet gas, which has to go to some kind of a plant," Neely said. "People might come and beg us to get rid of their gas." Invictus has already acquired the rights to 1,456 acres of land to build its cracking plant and related facilities near Coalburg, between Montgomery and Cabin Creek. Most of the facilities will be built on land that was previously a mountaintop removal coal mine. The Kanawha Valley, Neely said, is a good place to develop the cracking plant, especially with its long chemical-industry history. "We have everyone from smart blue-collar guys to chemical engineers with PhDs. We will also provide union-wage jobs. "Here, there is a far greater reserve of people who know about the chemical industry than farther north, where they have steel and aluminum plants and other heavy industry." Neely said the CSX railroad, which has tracks between the Kanawha River and the proposed location of the new Invictus plant, will make it easy to ship the plant's products to Newport News, Va., for export. "CSX also connects to places throughout the industrial Midwestern heartland to cities like Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Gary." The cracking plant will also have access to a river dock that can handle eight barges. Reach Paul J. Nyden at pjny...(a)wvgazette.com ( http://www.wvgazette.com/News/contact/cwalqra+jitnmrggr+pbz+return=/News/20… ) or 304-348-5164. THE STATE JOURNAL: EPA announces new clean air standards for coal and oil power plants Posted: Dec 21, 2011 11:26 AM EST Updated: Dec 21, 2011 5:18 PM EST By Pam Kasey New limits on power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxics and a three-year compliance timeline remain essentially as proposed in March in a long-expected U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule issued Dec. 21. "With these standards that were two decades in the making, EPA is rounding out a year of incredible progress on clean air in America with another action that will benefit the American people for years to come," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. "The Mercury and Air Toxics Standards will protect millions of families and children from harmful and costly air pollution and provide the American people with health benefits that far outweigh the costs of compliance." The MATS rule — also known as the Hazardous Air Pollutants rule for utilities and the Utility Maximum Available Control Technology rule — establishes the first national standards to limit toxic air emissions from power plants. The rule is expected to cut mercury emissions by 90 percent and also to cut emissions of arsenic, chromium, nickel, and acid gases including hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid. The technology that controls those emissions also will reduce fine particulate matter. Mercury is a neurotoxin to which fetuses and children are particularly susceptible, while other targeted emissions cause cancer, chronic and acute respiratory disorders, and other illnesses. The compliance deadline is Jan. 1, 2015. Changes in the Final Rule The rule was issued several days after it was expected on Friday, Dec. 16, leading to speculation that it was being weakened in the final hours. Changes, however, were minor and kept the emissions limits and the three-year timeline essentially as proposed. Most notably, estimated costs and benefits dropped — from costs of about $11 billion per year in the proposed rule and benefits of up to $140 billion, to $9.7 and up to $90 billion in the final rule — but that's not the result of weakening, according to Jackson. Costs dropped due to efficiencies suggested by some of the 900,000 commenters on the proposal, she said. Benefits were reduced because analysis showed that some of the benefits will be realized through the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule issued earlier this year. MATS benefits occur primarily through as many as 11,000 premature deaths avoided per year but also through the avoidance of 4,700 non-fatal heart attacks, 130,000 cases of respiratory illness including aggravated asthma and acute and chronic bronchitis, and 540,000 days of missed work, according to the EPA. In addition, the EPA's jobs analysis finds a net gain of 46,000 short-term jobs as pollution control technologies are installed and 8,000 long-term jobs to operate and maintain those technologies. Plant Closures Expected Based on the draft rule and other environmental rules expected or already out, utilities have said they would close some plants that are too small and old to merit expensive retrofits. More than 30 plants in a dozen states likely will be retired and another 34 may retire, according to an Associated Press survey based on the draft rule and reported on Dec. 19. In West Virginia, AEP has said it expects this rule, with other EPA regulations, to lead to the closure of its Philip Sporn plant in Mason County, Kanawha River plant in Kanawha County and Kammer plant in Marshall County. Those three plants amount to 2,200 megawatts of older coal-fired generating capacity — 12 percent of the state's generating capacity but only about one-tenth of 1 percent of generation in 2010. FirstEnergy has not yet announced its plans. "We would need some time to evaluate what the final rules are and how they might impact our operations," said FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin. "At this time, no final decisions have been made on the future of our fossil generating plants." A state regulator has suggested that FirstEnergy's small, old Albright, Rivesville and Willow Island plants may be retired. Those total about 600 megawatts of capacity and represented much less than one-tenth of one percent of generation in 2010. Utilities, regulators and electric trade organizations raised concerns that the combined capacity of plant retirements expected from the proposed rule and the tight timeline could lead to reliability problems. The AP concluded after its survey that the concern likely was overblown; however, the EPA provided in its final rule for a fourth compliance year for technology installations and further flexibility for localized reliability problems. Reactions The National Mining Association belittled the flexibility as inadequate. "The modest adjustment to the compliance timeline in the MACT standard merely papers over a deeply flawed rule," said NMA President and CEO Hal Quinn in a media release. But PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid in a 13-state region that includes West Virginia, supported the flexibility measures. "We at PJM are pleased that the EPA administrator has included the key elements of our proposed process to preserve reliability into documents accompanying the final rule," the organization wrote in a media release. The Sierra Club applauded the rule as a "milestone." And the sustainability advocacy group CERES said the rule would "unleash investment" in infrastructure and create jobs up and down the supply chain. Soon after the EPA made its announcement, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., issued a statement in which he said he had "serious concerns" about the new rules. "In fact, I have voted in Congress to prevent their implementation in the near term. The rules are likely to drive up energy prices for American consumers and result in the loss of jobs for coal miners while doing nothing to address the growth in global emissions," he said. "It certainly makes more sense to me to be investing in American-made technologies to help American utilities upgrade to more efficient, cleaner ways of using domestic coal, rather than putting the rulemaking hammer to American plants and forcing our coal to be shipped overseas where emissions will be even greater. From the standpoint sufficiency of our energy supply and protection of our global atmosphere, we ought to be looking creatively at coal power, rather than instituting policies that force coal out of our energy sector." Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., also was critical of the rules. "Today's announcement of yet another onerous rule by the EPA completely ignores the devastating impact these regulations will have on jobs and our economy, not only in West Virginia but across this nation," he said. "The Utility MACT Rule, combined with the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule that was finalized earlier this year, are two of the most expensive regulations ever to be imposed, and every American should be concerned about their effect on energy prices, the reliability of our power supply, our coal mining industry and most importantly our families," Senator Manchin said. "I believe we can find a responsible and reasonable balance when it comes to the environment and our energy needs as a nation. My desire to achieve this balance is why my Republican colleague Dan Coats of Indiana and I introduced the Fair Compliance Act – a commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation that would create a fair timeframe to comply with new rules. I hope that Congress will address these regulations, and take up the Fair Compliance Act as soon as possible, to prevent the potential loss of a million jobs, increased utility rates, and more damage to our economy." W.Va. developing incentive plan to attract ethane cracker Posted: Dec 21, 2011 11:38 AM EST Updated: Dec 21, 2011 11:47 AM EST By Jim Ross West Virginia could be about to up its bet in the game to win a $2 billion ethane cracker plant. Keith Burdette, West Virginia secretary of commerce and head of the West Virginia Development Office, says he may ask the Legislature to consider an incentive plan that would nearly eliminate personal property taxes on crackers and related developments that involve an investment of $2 billion or more. Existing law allows the state to reduce the personal property tax rate to 5 percent for a maximum of 10 years. Burdette says he may ask the Legislature to extend that cut to 25 years. Incentives come into play because West Virginia is trying to land one or perhaps two ethane crackers to take advantage of development of Marcellus shale gas fields. At least three companies — Shell Chemicals, Dow Chemical Co. and Brazil-based Braskem SA — have been named in news reports as having interest in building new cracker plants in the United States. Shell has said it wants to announce its preferred site for a cracker in the Appalachian region by the end of January. Shell has also said its January announcement will not be the final decision on where it wants to build its cracker. Burdette said a second company that's looking at West Virginia will not announce its preferred site until it is further along in its due diligence. Bayer is offering property it owns in Kanawha and Marshall counties as sites for one or two crackers. Ohio is offering a $1.4 billion incentive package to land a cracker. "We think we can create a package that's competitive with any place," Burdette said this week. A cracker takes ethane, a byproduct of drilling for gas, breaks it down and reassembles the elements into products that are used in plastics industries. A cracker could mean thousands of construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs. According to Greenwire, a national energy and environmental news service, ethane is harder to move around than natural gas itself, also known as methane. Thus, ethane is usually cracked close to the wells that produce it. Burdette said he could not provide an estimate on how much his proposed incentive package would save an ethane producer, as personal property tax rates vary from county to county. But he did say he thinks incentives are only one part of the state's attractiveness to Shell and other companies. "It's not all about incentives. It's about sites. It's about infrastructure. It's about work force. It's about the expandability of the site itself. The incentive piece is the icing on the cake" he said. Planned Pipeline Would Fuel Power Stations From ShaleDecember 22, 2011 By CASEY JUNKINS Staff Writer , The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register CLARINGTON - Natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus shale formations may fire some American Electric Power plants across eastern Ohio, via a new pipeline network. "One of the areas of fastest growing demand is natural gas-fired power generation, as facilities either switch to cleaner-burning natural gas or are built to run on it," said Wendy K. Olson, spokeswoman for Spectra Energy Corp., the Houston, Texas-based pipeline developer. Spectra announced its intention to build the new pipeline - capable of transporting 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day - Wednesday. At the same time, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its report that will likely lead to the closure of many coal-fired power plants across the county, including AEP's Kammer Plant in Marshall County. AEP serves much of the Upper Ohio Valley, except Hancock, Brooke, Wetzel and Tyler counties. Natural gas "is 45 percent cleaner than coal and 30 percent cleaner than fuel oil. It's efficient and reliable. And now with the abundance of supply being brought online thanks to developing shale plays, it's now more affordable than ever," added Olson. Olson said the proposed pipeline would originate in Carroll County, Ohio, which lies to the north of Cadiz in Harrison County and west of East Liverpool in Columbiana County. This north-south running line would wind through Harrison and Belmont counties, before intersecting with the east-west running Texas Eastern pipeline near Clarington. The pipeline will only be built if Spectra receives additional supply commitments, but Olson said the line's projected in-service date is November 2014. "As environmental demands increase for cleaner power generation, natural gas is a fuel of choice to meet these needs - and it's a domestically abundant resource that helps increase our energy independence and bring jobs and revenue to our local communities," she added. AEP spokeswoman Melissa McHenry said her company committed to use about 10 percent of the pipeline's supply capacity, which would equal roughly 100 million cubic feet of gas per day. She said the gas would travel to the company's power plants that already run on natural gas. These AEP plants include: McHenry emphasized the planned pipeline is still in its very early stages, but said AEP is optimistic about the possibilities. Bill Yardley, group vice president of Spectra Energy Transmission, Northeast, is upbeat about the project. "At a time when there is growing environmental need for cleaner power generation, this new infrastructure will deliver clean, affordable and much-needed energy to Ohio, the Midwest and South," he said. Chesapeake Energy, which holds about 1.5 million net acres in the Utica play, is pursuing capacity on the Spectra pipeline as well. "Chesapeake has made a preliminary agreement to negotiate for the transportation of a yet-to-be-determined volume of natural gas through the pipeline, but will not make a capital investment in the project," said Chesapeake spokesman Pete Kenworthy. "Having access to multiple markets is beneficial for the development of the Utica." EPA Tells Power Plants To Clean Up Their ActsNew rules on mercury will force many shutdownsDecember 22, 2011 By DINA CAPPIELLO Associated Press Writer , The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register WASHINGTON - Clean up or shut down. That's the decision facing hundreds of the nation's oldest and dirtiest power plants under an Environmental Protection Agency rule announced Wednesday that will force plants to control mercury and other toxic pollutants for the first time. The long overdue national standards rein in the largest remaining source of uncontrolled toxic pollution in the U.S. - the emissions from the nation's coal- and oil-fired power plants, which have been allowed to run for decades without addressing their full environmental and public health costs. The impact of the ruling will be greatest in the Midwest and in the coal belt - Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia - where dozens of units likely will be mothballed, according to an Associated Press survey. The majority of facilities will continue to run, and find ways to reduce pollution. About half of the 1,200 coal- and oil-fired units nationwide still lack modern pollution controls, despite the EPA in 1990 getting the authority from Congress to control toxic air pollution from power plant smokestacks. A decade later, in 2000, the agency concluded it was necessary to clamp down on the emissions to protect public health. At a press conference Wednesday at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the regulation was the Obama administration's "biggest clean air action yet", trumping an agreement to double fuel economy standards for vehicles and another rule that will reduce emissions from power plants that foul the air in states downwind. The administration was under court order to issue a new rule, after a court threw out an attempt by the Bush administration to exempt power plants from toxic air pollution controls. "Before this rule, there were no national standards limiting the amount of mercury, arsenic, chromium, nickel and acid gases that power plants across the country could release into the air that we breathe," said Jackson, listing the contaminants linked to cancer, IQ loss, heart disease and lung disease that are covered by the rule, and that also pollute lakes, streams and fish. In a video released Wednesday afternoon, President Barack Obama said the decades of delays caused by special interest groups that resulted in standards never being put into place for power plants "was wrong." "Today, my administration is saying, 'Enough,'" he said. When fully implemented in 2016, the standards will slash mercury pollution from burning coal by 90 percent, lung-damaging acid gases by 88 percent and soot-producing sulfur dioxide by 41 percent. Power plant operators will have to choose between installing pollution control equipment, switching to cleaner-burning natural gas, or shutting down the plant. None of those choices come cheap - the EPA estimates the rule will cost $9.6 billion annually, making it one of the most expensive the agency has ever issued. Some power producers intensely lobbied the Obama administration to weaken the rule and to delay it, and Republicans in Congress passed legislation to do so, saying it would threaten jobs and the reliability of the power grid, and raise electricity prices. To ease those concerns, the administration will encourage states to make "broadly available" an additional fourth year to comply with the rule, as allowed by the law. Case-by-case extensions could also be granted to address local reliability issues, according to a presidential memorandum sent Wednesday to Jackson. In the memorandum, Obama directs the EPA to ensure that implementation of the rule "proceed in a cost-effective manner that ensures electric reliability." Environmentalists said Wednesday that the added flexibility did not jeopardize the public health benefits of the regulation. "After more than two decades of delay, dirty coal-fired power plants are going to be cleaned up in short order," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, who said the EPA "bent over backwards" to accommodate concerns about reliability. For those in the industry, and some in Congress, the concessions didn't go far enough. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate's environment committee, said he would file a joint resolution, a rarely used Congressional tactic, to get the rule overturned. Some in the industry pushed for an automatic delay, or "safety valve," to make sure that plants that have to run to ensure reliability aren't found in violation of the rule and too many plants don't close down at once. Park Drilling ClearedBrooke Hills Board Signs With ChesapeakeDecember 21, 2011 By WARREN SCOTT , The Intelligencer / Wheeling News-Register The Brooke Hills Park board, at its regular meeting on Tuesday, entered into an agreement allowing for the park to receive royalties for natural gas drawn from nearly 100 acres there. Bill Watson, the board's legal counsel, noted the board, formally known as the Brooke County Park and Recreation Commission, had entered into a lease agreement with Chesapeake Appalachia allowing the company to drill for natural gas under park grounds. But park officials said later they learned mineral rights for much of the property belonged to descendants of the Gist family, who donated the land to the county more than 40 years ago. That resulted in the park being poised to receive royalties for 22 acres only, though the park commission received a $750,000 signing fee for the lease. Watson didn't go into detail at Tuesday's meeting but said the situation has changed, and the park can receive royalties on gas drawn from nearly 100 acres as projected originally. At a Brooke County Commission meeting in September, park officials hinted that mineral rights for the Gists' descendants could expire this year. Watson couldn't be reached for comment following the meeting. Walter Ferguson, the board's newly elected president - who was called for comment - said specific details about the agreement should be directed to Watson. But he confirmed crews with Chesapeake have drilled a vertical well at the park and hope to begin a horizontal one soon. Since September crews have been working in a wooded area at the rear of the park near Pierce Run Road. They had hoped to access the site from Pierce Run Road. But that would require them to cross the creek, so they have built a road to the park's main road instead, scheduling their hauling around such fall events as the Brooke County Fair and Brooke Hills Spooktacular. Natural gas drilling involves a controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing. It entails blasting the underground Marcellus shale with water, sand and chemicals, some of them toxic, to release the natural gas. Gas industry officials say the drilling occurs thousands of feet below water tables and wells are heavily sealed with concrete and steel to prevent the fluid from leaking into the ground. Opponents point to incidents in which wastewater from the process was spilled outside the wells or methane from abandoned coal mines was released, resulting in fires. Park board members said in January officials with Chesapeake have assured them the park won't be harmed. They noted the lease will be a major source of revenue for the park, which has struggled financially in recent years. Asked how the board will use the signing fee or royalties paid for the gas tapped there, Ferguson said the board has made plans to hire an architect to aid it in developing a plan for improvements. He noted replacing the park's aging swimming pool with a water park and adding an ice skating rink are ideas that have been suggested. Chesapeake also has approached the park commission for an easement allowing it to build an underground transmission line to transport the gas from the site. Ferguson said the board is still negotiating for the easement and construction of the transmission line is still a few years away. Pittsburgh Tribune Review: $500 million to expand natural gas shipping By Bloomberg News Thursday, December 22, 2011 Spectra Energy Corp. plans to spend about $500 million in Ohio to expand shipping capacity on its Texas Eastern pipeline system to handle rising natural-gas production from the Utica and Marcellus shale formations. American Electric Power Co. and Chesapeake Energy Corp., the largest holder of Utica Shale leases, signed an agreement to develop 70 miles of new lines, Houston-based Spectra said on Wednesday in a statement. The addition in Ohio will raise shipping capacity by 1 billion cubic feet a day, or about 18 percent, Wendy Olson, a Spectra spokeswoman, said in an e-mail today. Production from U.S. shale deposits, where water and chemicals are pumped underground at high pressure to break apart dense rock and release gas, more than doubled from 2007 to 2009, according to Energy Department data. American Electric, the largest U.S. coal burner, is pursuing pipeline capacity for gas-fired power plants, Spectra said. The utility owner, based in Columbus, Ohio, has estimated that tighter U.S. air-pollution restrictions may force it to close some coal-burning plants. "We do anticipate more than one plant will attach" to the new gas lines, Olson said. Chesapeake is pursuing additional shipping capacity for its production, Spectra said. The Oklahoma City-based company is the largest oil and gas leaseholder in the Utica shale with 1.4 million net acres. Spectra rose 1.6 percent to close at $30.50 in New York, the highest since it was spun off by Duke Energy Corp. in January 2007. American Electric shares rose 2.3 percent to $40.85, its highest since July 9, 2008. Chesapeake shares rose to $22.99. The project is slated to begin operating in November 2014, according to the statement. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Beth Little" <blittle(a)citynet.net> To: <blittle(a)citynet.net> Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 4:03 PM Subject: FW: [MarcellusGasInfo] Fracking Is ZERO Tolerance (an unpublished P&S Guest Viewpoint) Here's a provocative idea from NY. Substitute Tomblin for governor and think about it. -----Original Message----- From: marcellusgasinfo(a)googlegroups.com [mailto:marcellusgasinfo@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rich Kellman Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 1:45 PM To: Subject: [MarcellusGasInfo] Fracking Is ZERO Tolerance (an unpublished P&S Guest Viewpoint) This is a paraphrased, modified version of a Guest Viewpoint I sent in but has not gotten published- I'm not holding my breath.The ideas are the same: Many,or all, supporters of fracking contend that it can be, and will be, done safely. Do these folks have a portal to the future which we frack-opponents have somehow been unfortunate enough to have missed? If Governor Cuomo and his subordinates at the DEC, as well as other governmental bodies which have a stake in drilling do, in fact, have these sure fire- precautions nailed down, then why haven't other states where drilling has been underway been beating down the DEC doors to get this information? Then they could put an end to at least some of the worst very well documented disastrous results that the environment, habitat, and humans have been forced to suffer for much too long. Fracking has no room whatsoever for error. Hopefully Mr. Cuomo will also learn this lesson. If we can imagine the following scenario which might "illuminate" some of the pressing fracking realities and consequences for him: Mr. Cuomo, as the State leader, should exhibit more leadership by example. The land, homes and properties surrounding the Governor's mansion and his private residence(s) would be taken by eminent domain. A 5 acre, or so ,drill pad would then be constructed by bulldozing ,trenching, and digging up everything that is in the way of this "technology". Mr.Cuomo would live in the mansion/residence(s), other than his work time, while all stages of the drilling process are carried out. He'll be asked to only use the same health/safety/living precautions that most of the other residents of New York are able to afford. At the end of this "experiment", the Governor will then be publicly asked "What do you think now?"District gets $628K for drilling lease 12/22/2011 3:33 AM SAXONBURG (AP) - A Pittsburgh-area school district has finalized a lease agreement with a gas drilling company and received $628,000 up front. The Valley News Dispatch reported Wednesday that Phillips Exploration's lease with South Butler School District also carries an 18 percent royalty from any gas that is produced and sold from the acreage. Phillips Exploration is owned by Texas-based XTO Energy, which is owned by ExxonMobil. The newspaper reported that the lease requires district officials to approve the site of any well before Phillips drills, and any well or pipeline must be at least 500 feet from a district structure. The school board approved the five-year lease with a 6-2 vote in September. It covers about 165 acres the district owns. Copyright Observer Publishing Co. Corner Cupboard receives $16K donation from Consol 12/22/2011 3:33 AM By Jon Stevens, Staff writer jstevens(a)observer-reporter.com WAYNESBURG - Corner Cupboard Food Bank on Rolling Meadows Road received an early Christmas present Wednesday when Consol Energy presented the organization with an additional $16,000 raised through the employee sale of Pittsburgh Penguin T-shirts. The employee donation brings Consol Energy's gift to Corner Cupboard to more than $49,175 this holiday season. To kick off the companywide effort before Thanksgiving, Consol sponsored the fourth annual Corner Cupboard Holiday Food Drive at the Greene County Courthouse Nov. 15. Consol employees and food bank volunteers collected nonperishable food and monetary donations from those who attended as well as from area businesses. "In addition to the $20,000 we invested in-kind to the food drive event," the $8,175 collected at the event and Consol's $5,000 cash donation, "I am pleased to present an additional $16,000 from Consol's employees," said Laurel Ziemba, director of community relations for Consol. "Consol's annual contributions allow the Corner Cupboard Food Bank to double our funding to help the community's most vulnerable," said Jan Caldwell, executive director of the food bank. "We are especially grateful during the winter holidays when there is a substantial jump in the number in need of food assistance." Last year, Consol presented Caldwell with a large envelope containing checks totaling $35,680 from the T-shirt sales, prompting Caldwell to remark, "You guys are just awesome. I am speechless. This is just over the top." Consol began its holiday food drive in 2008, a year the food bank had to include chicken breasts as a substitute for a turkey in many of its Thanksgiving baskets. Those who would still like to donate money or food or are interested in volunteering with the food bank may call the food bank at 724-627-9784. Those who would like to send donations may direct them to Corner Cupboard Food Bank, 511 Rolling Meadows Road, Waynesburg, PA 15370. Copyright Observer Publishing Co. Don Strimbeck, Sec/Treas Upper Mon River Assoc UpperMon.org MonRiverSummit.org WVU t-shirts & prints - FindHarri.com 109 Broad Street, P. O. Box 519 Granville WV 26534-0519 304-599-7585 (fax 4131) dcsoinks(a)comcast.net

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Re: [EC] DRassessment12 16 11.doc
by Allan Tweddle 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

Jeff There are several changes that I would recommend. First, thanks to WVU and several other independent medical research organizations, there is more than ample scientific evidence that the financial and social impact on health care, including premature death, loss of productivity and inability to work due to diseases like heart disease, cancers, and asthma caused by pollution from coal fired power plants are significant. But this report does not appear take into consideration these "legacy" costs when evaluating the economic comparatives of coal to renewable energy. As one who has a fiduciary responsibility to they State and Legislature for all our positions as a member of the PEA, I must go on record demanding that the true cost be identified in any economic analysis. As you know from my often offered, and to some, an irritating report, the Province of Ontario has in their annual Provincial Budget BOTH the generation/distribution of electric power from several generating methods, and the Province wide universal health care plan known as OHIP. The Provincial Government completed several years ago a detailed study to determine the true cost of coal fired power and included the cost of health care directly attributed to pollution from their coal fired power plants. Their 2 year study led them to conclude that renewable energy is less costly when the total cost is honestly added up, so they are on track to shut down ALL of their coal fired power plants by 2012. While the economics of BOTH power generation/distribution and health care are undoubtedly different between Ontario and West Virginia, we must, in all honest to the State Legislature, report the true cost of coal as it is understood today...and not by living in the past. Secondly, I note the Coal Association is asked for input data, but what about asking renewable energy industry sources, like WV Wind Working Group, environmental organizations like, but not limited to, the WV Chapter and National Sierra Club, OPEC, WV Environmental Council, and health care professionals who deal with these health impacts on a daily basis. Solar Energy, both photovoltaic and concentrated solar power technologies in particular, have been coming down in total costs significantly, some industry literature reporting 50% drop in the last year for some systems. Qualified industry sources should be consulted and asked to supply the current economics of these rapidly growing energy technologies. Third, the fact that the power industry has stated that they do not need to construct any renewable energy systems to me illustrates the illusion of this Alternative Energy Standard. No other jurisdiction that I am aware of has such a phony approach...we need a clean renewable energy standard period...20% by 2020. And the reason for that is that since the original standard was written, climatology scientists around the world have observed the impacts of climate change, and have determined that their original models for predicting the rise of temperature and impacts of climate change were too conservative. They clearly are warning that we are moving much more rapidly to a crisis level of GHG emissions. As the Durban South Africa meeting has just concluded and illustrates, the world IS coming together to address climate change, and we must too. But the opportunities for job creation are the plus side of solving this crisis, hence our State Energy Plan must be more aggressive in cutting GHG emissions that will create jobs in doing so. There are numerous studies supporting this statement, and we are foolish to ignore the global trends...as we do so at our economic peril. Finally, there should be a far more aggressive incentive program for net metering and distributed power. Respectfully Allan Tweddle From: Herholdt, Jeff F Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 8:57 AM To: Randy.C.Huffman(a)wv.gov ; David Warner ; spettit(a)waco-trio.com ; Mike Ross ; allantweddle(a)msn.com Cc: Butler, Marie ; ahaden(a)psc.state.wv.us Subject: FW: DRassessment12 16 11.doc Gentlemen Last Monday (12/12) you were advised of the Public Service Commission and Division of Energy/ Public Energy Authority role in preparing a report on West Virginia's Alternative and Renewable Portfolio. In that email I shared with you information we provided to the PSC for use in preparation of the preliminary report. The preliminary report is to be submitted by the PSC by January 1 while the final report is due July 1, 2012. Attached is the draft preliminary report. Would appreciate your review and comments if any on this by Wednesday, December 21. Please feel free to contact me with questions. Jeff From: Haden, Amy [mailto:AHaden@psc.state.wv.us] Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 4:04 PM To: Herholdt, Jeff F; Hitt, Richard Subject: DRassessment12 16 11.doc Jeff, Attached is a draft of the assessment. Note that parts of the text are highlighted with notes for your review and editing. At 8-9, the section of the economic impact of the Act on coal and coal mining was simplified. The discussion of the displacement analysis did not appear to be responsive to the Q. about the impact on coal and coal mining and it was a little difficult to follow. After looking at it, Rick and I thought it might be better to leave it out with some language added about following up with more information in future Assessments. The copy will be revised for the table of contents pages, etc. after we finish the draft stage. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks, Amy

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Fwd: E&E: White House greenlights EPA power plant rules
by Jim Sconyers 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Fred Heutte <phred(a)sunlightdata.com> Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 2:17 PM Subject: E&E: White House greenlights EPA power plant rules To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org White House greenlights EPA power plant rules Gabriel Nelson, E&E reporter Published: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 U.S. EPA's new rules for toxic emissions from coal- and oil- burning power plants have been cleared for release by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Friday was the deadline for EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to sign the final standards, which would set the first federal limits on chemicals such as mercury, acid gases and dioxins. After a two-month review that included about 20 meetings at the White House, the agency has permission to release them, according to a change made today to a White House rulemaking database. That step usually signals the imminent release of a rule, and several sources briefed on the standards said they expect EPA to come out with them soon. Yet the agency has kept mum. "We will make details available when we are ready to make an announcement," an EPA spokeswoman wrote in an email. "As we have made clear, any standard will maximize flexibilities, while providing extensive public health protections from dangerous pollutants." The White House finished reviewing two rules Friday. One is the "appropriate and necessary finding," which says toxic emissions from coal- and oil-fired plants have measurable health effects that justify subjecting all plants to an emissions standard. After reaching that conclusion, which EPA first did in 2000, the agency must set emissions limits based on maximum achievable control technology (MACT) already in use. The White House also gave the agency permission to release the MACT standards, which have gotten push-back from some coal- burning utilities because they would drive hundreds of plants to undergo major renovations or shut down over the next several years. House Republicans passed a bill this fall that would delay the rules, loosen their requirements and give power companies more time to add pollution controls. Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who leads his party on the Environment and Public Works Committee, says he, too, will introduce a resolution to nullify the rules after their release. Paul Billings, vice president for national policy and advocacy at the American Lung Association, said he expects EPA to release the rules soon. Under the settlement, the agency has five business days from this past Friday to submit the finalized rule for publication in the Federal Register. EPA says curbing toxic emissions would have a wide range of health benefits, including stopping thousands of people from dying each year by cleaning up soot from power plants. "The rule should be released so the public can see the benefits," Billings said. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp -- Jim Sconyers jimscon(a)gmail.com 304.698.9628 Remember, Mother Nature bats last.

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Targeting First Energy Power Plants - Strategy Session
by Jim Sconyers 18 Dec '11

18 Dec '11

Folks - We are embarking on an exciting campaign, with a huge potential payoff. - First Energy's (Mon Power, Potomac Edison parent) Albright, Rivesville, and Willow Island coal-burning power plants are our target. - Retiring these plants is our goal. - Creating public awareness and support are essential. Some developments coming along mean that the time is now for us to get moving. We want to set a major public event for mid-January - which is a lot sooner than it sounds. You are invited - very warmly! - to a planning session. This is a new venture, and we *need* your ideas and energy to make this a success. Planning session: Sunday, December 18, 1:00 - 3:00 (+/-) PM Jim Kotcon's/Candice Elliott's home in Morgantown (414 Tyrone Avery Road). <directions below> This link is a google map just to show where these three First Energy plants are. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=216452375754882078896.0004a28d682… *Directions to Jim and Candice’s home* >From I-68, Exit 7, take Rt 857 North 1.0 mile. Turn right onto Tyrone Avery Road. Go 1.0 mile (watch for a sharp right followed by a sharp left at 0.7 miles, be sure to take that left). Look for 4 mailboxes and a utility pole on the right, just before our driveway. Come up the gravel drive to the second house on the right. If you need directions help day of the meeting keep this phone number handy: Jim Kotcon/Candice Elliot 304.594.3322 -- Jim Sconyers jimscon(a)gmail.com 304.698.9628 Remember, Mother Nature bats last.

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Fwd: Rep. Capito voted for Keystone XL
by Paul Wilson 15 Dec '11

15 Dec '11

fyi, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Elijah Zarlin, CREDO Action <act(a)credoaction.com> Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 11:07 AM Subject: Rep. Capito voted for Keystone XL To: Paul Wilson <pjgrunt(a)gmail.com> ** [image: CREDO Action] *Hold Rep. Capito accountable for voting for the Keystone XL end run.<http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> * [image: Take action!]<http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> * Rep. Capito needs to hear an earful for voting yesterday to force approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Call her now. Click here for an easy script and number to call. <http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> * [image: Take action now!]<http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> Dear Paul, Yesterday, House Republicans, including Rep. Capito, voted to force approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline — at the expense of working families and the unemployed. * With the clock ticking on the year-end deadline to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, Republicans are using this urgency to try to force approval of Keystone XL, and additionally to gut Clean Air Act protections against mercury and other toxic air pollution.* Even with everything we've seen from this congress, Rep. Capito's vote yesterday was a stunning declaration of her allegiance to the fossil fuel industry — and we need to hold her accountable. * Call Rep. Capito and hold her accountable for putting the dirty Keystone XL pipeline ahead of American families. Click here for an easy script and number to call.<http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> * The Republicans' are once again playing chicken with much needed benefits on the eve of their expiration by forcing these "poison pills" into the payroll-tax and unemployment benefits extension bill. To his credit, President Obama sent a strong message when he threatened to veto the bill before the vote, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also drew a line in the sand, telling Republicans that he would halt negotiations on another important year end-spending bill unless Republicans dropped their giveaways to Big Oil and King Coal. Even the State Department, which has restarted their evaluation of Keystone XL, condemned the Republicans' efforts, saying that the 60 days to issue a decision as mandated by Republicans would allow insufficient time to conduct their restarted evaluation of the project. * Still, Republicans are rabid to approve Keystone XL, no matter the cost — to our health, or to the economic stability of millions of Americas.* As negotiations move to the Senate, we need a massive show of opposition to hold Rep. Capito accountable for this irresponsible vote. Call her now: * http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT… * Thank you for fighting Keystone XL. Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets <http://act.credoaction.com/r/?r=11&id=32098-3414728-CygGTIx&t=7> [image: Take action now!]<http://act.credoaction.com/call?tg=FHWV_02&cp_id=182&id=32098-3414728-CygGT…> To remove yourself (Paul Wilson) from this list, please visit our subscription management page at: http://act.credoaction.com/s?i=32098-3414728-CygGTIx To change your email address or update your contact info, please visit: http://act.credoaction.com/subscrip/coa.html?id=32098-3414728-CygGTIx This is a message from CREDO / Working Assets. © 2011 CREDO. All rights reserved. Questions? Send us an email <info(a)credoaction.com> or write us at: 101 Market Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94105. -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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Fwd: From Greenwire -- OIL AND GAS: Protecting oil from water -- the history of state regulation
by James Kotcon 14 Dec '11

14 Dec '11

>>> <paula.carrell(a)sierraclub.org> 12/14/2011 1:35 PM >>> E-mail this story, sponsored by American Energy Innovation Council ************** OIL AND GAS: Protecting oil from water -- the history of state regulation (Wednesday, December 14, 2011) TOWANDA, Pa. -- A thin smile crept across Tony Tripp's face when reporters started asking him about the rules for gas drilling in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. "A lot of things aren't required in West Virginia," Tripp, foreman of the 92-foot drill rig rumbling a few feet away, told journalists on an industry-sponsored tour of drill sites here. "I kinda like working there." Randy Huffman, no doubt, would like to disagree. As secretary of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, he is the top environmental official in the state and an ardent defender of states' ability to regulate drilling. But even he has to admit West Virginia's laws are hopelessly out of date. SPECIAL REPORT A new wave of drilling, fueled by the practice some call "fracking," is promising prosperity and energy security for the country. E&E investigates whether anyone is ensuring it's done right. Click here to read the report. Standing in his shirt-sleeves in an elementary school cafeteria last June before a crowd of drilling opponents in Morgantown, W.Va., Huffman explained that the state's regulatory structure is 80 years old. It was designed with small, shallow gas wells in mind, not 5-acre industrial sites with hundreds of trucks hauling millions of gallons of water for hydraulic fracturing. "Quite frankly, our regulatory structure is not prepared to deal with it," Huffman said as the sun set on a pleasant mountain evening. "All of a sudden we have, basically, a brand new industry that shows up on the scene. We see a lot of things, that quite frankly, the state was not prepared for." It's not prepared, even though companies have been drilling the state's Marcellus Shale for six years now. Lawmakers failed to reach agreement on an update last spring. This week, they will try again in a special session. West Virginia is one of the starker examples of a state regulatory system developed before World War II trying to keep up, or catch up, with the drilling boom taking place across the United States. Eighty years ago, state officials were worried that water would pollute oil, not the other way around. Today, they are under increasing pressure to keep drinking water clean even as they promote the oil and gas production that delivers jobs and tax revenues amid a steady flow of economic woes. Today's drilling revival stretches from upstate New York to Southern California, bringing oil and gas production to new areas and more intense drilling to areas where it had been on the decline. The revival is being propelled by advances in the technology of hydraulic fracturing that enables operators to squeeze gas and oil from solid rock. Drill bits can burrow a mile below ground, then turn and tunnel sideways for another mile or more. Crews blast millions of gallons of chemical-laced water through the pipes to "fracture" the rock and release gas from the pores of the shale formation. In the last decade, there has been a twelvefold increase in shale gas production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Still, plays like the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia are in their infancy. Regulatory roots in 1930s oil boom Attempts by state oil and gas agencies to deal with the pace of this production have varied dramatically. Pennsylvania has repeatedly added new rules, often to address new problems that caused an uproar. New York, where opposition is the strongest, sought to avoid playing catch-up by putting a hold on development while it prepared for the industry. West Virginia headed off some of the problems that Pennsylvania had with disposal of the salty, sometimes toxic, wastewater created by the fracturing process. But it still lacks basic protections, such as requirements to line wastewater pits at well sites. In Texas, where drilling is marching toward suburbs and cities, a state legislative panel recommended a "fundamental restructuring" of the oil and gas agency. But the Legislature declined to act. In Colorado, a wave of drilling early in the last decade led to an overhaul of the state's oil and gas agency that reduced industry influence and spawned new rules. To understand the current state of oil and gas regulation, it is helpful to look back to the 1930s, when state and federal governments and some oil companies had a now-forgotten worry -- too much domestic production of oil. Drillers would often mob new oil finds. They would sink wells as fast as they could to prevent rivals from siphoning off the oil from a lease next door. When the oil stopped flowing fast, they would abandon the wells and leave the harder-to-get oil in the ground. That caused tremendous peaks and valleys in prices as new fields were discovered and depleted. After years of wrangling, state and federal government imposed a system of "conservation." At the time, that word wasn't the synonym for "environmentalism" it has become. Instead, it meant preventing "waste" of petroleum by getting it all out of the ground. States created "oil conservation commissions" to regulate production and prop up prices. Texas' panel, oddly enough named the Railroad Commission, would later become the model for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Regulators didn't worry about oil polluting the groundwater. "The focus was on protection of the petroleum resource from the effects of water incursion, and not on protection of water resources themselves," according to a history of oil and gas rules by the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC), an organization of state regulators that works closely with industry. "The protection of groundwater from pollution was carried as a secondary consideration in most regulations." The regulators didn't worry much about the people who owned the land over the oil, either. "Most oil producers of the early period [before 1935] believed that royalty payments to the landowner for the privilege of extracting oil or gas from beneath their land adequately compensated the landowner for any surface and water resource damages caused to the property," the GWPC report says. "Pollution of ground water ... was not a concept widely understood by the oil industry, landowners or state regulatory agencies." 'They are not environmental agencies' After World War II and through the 1960s, the report says, environmental protection efforts developed "sporadically." As the 1970s began, the environmental movement spurred state and federal governments to take a second look at the harm inflicted by industries, including oil and gas. That is when U.S. EPA was created, major federal environmental laws were passed and many states created their own "environmental protection" or "environmental quality" departments. But the '70s also marked the decline in domestic oil production, as oil majors headed offshore and overseas to find new supplies. In the years since, the oil and gas industry won exemptions from portions of several landmark federal environmental laws, arguing that states had the expertise to adjust for local conditions. At the state level, oil and gas agencies took responsibility for enforcing many of the environmental and health laws, both federal and state, as they applied to petroleum production. "The industry argued, 'We already have an agency that understands well spacing, and other technical aspects,' so they ought to take care of this as well," said Jacqueline Lang Weaver, a law professor at the University of Houston and co-author of a treatise on Texas oil and gas law. "They are not environmental agencies. That's not what they're set up for." Today, many of those agencies that were in charge of controlling production are now responsible for protecting people and the environment from the industrial hazards of the industry. In the 1990s, some updated their rules on waste pits and well construction. Oklahoma and others formalized their penalty systems to address repeat offenders. And many states set up programs to cap abandoned wells. The GWPC report, released in 2009, asserts that state regulators had environmental oversight of oil and gas in hand. "Although current state oil and gas regulatory programs for water and environmental resource protection vary in scope and specificity," the report says, "they invariably have the common elements necessary to ensure the development of oil and natural gas resources is accomplished in a manner designed to protect water resources." But two years later, states such as West Virginia have not developed ways to protect their roads or their air or to assess the full range of effects that come with large-scale drilling. "Our program has not really evolved, not many in the country have evolved to a point of considering the total impact of all the activity that's going on in a given area," West Virginia environment chief Huffman told the crowd in Morgantown. "That would be a pretty significant shift in our way of thinking, but I think it's the place that we're headed." In Texas, a review by a state legislative panel found the Railroad Commission took enforcement action on less than 1 percent of water-protection violations and said the agency had a history of lax enforcement against drillers. In Pennsylvania, the heart of the boom, state officials raised fees, more than doubled the number of well inspectors and created new rules to control where drillers got water for fracturing and how they disposed of it. But state geologists have testified they spend as little as 35 minutes on each well permit and are not familiar with requirements to look at how the operation might affect nearby streams. And Pennsylvania moved to prevent radiation-laced wastewater from getting into streams only after a New York Times story prompted EPA to start asking questions (Greenwire, March 8). Review program languishes Despite the boom in drilling, one of the most widely touted methods for states to improve their regulatory program is suffering from disuse. A program called STRONGER, for "State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations," is designed to serve as a sort of peer-review process for state regulators. It also includes representatives of industry and environmental groups. But STRONGER hasn't conducted a full review of a state regulatory program since 2007. Reviews are voluntary, and the organization's leaders say states have been unwilling to put themselves under the microscope. Instead, it has concentrated on narrower reviews of a few states' rules on the hydraulic fracturing process. West Virginia has not been reviewed since 2003. Pennsylvania had its fracturing rules evaluated in 2010. But its full oil and gas program hasn't been looked at since 2004, before the first Marcellus well was drilled. "There's been a real reluctance to be reviewed," said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist from Louisiana who sits on the STRONGER board. Industry itself is reducing its use of controversial "wastewater pits." Landowners don't like them, and in the less-than-arid climate of the Northeast, they tend to fill up with rainwater. And at some sites, with wellbores extending for miles, there is just too much stuff to bury it all. It is not states requiring well operators to use such methods as the "closed-loop" system on Tripp's rig, which stores drilling fluids in steel tanks instead of open pits. "They figure it's coming," explained Tripp, who has been drilling oil and gas wells for decades. In West Virginia, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) imposed new "emergency" rules on drilling a few weeks after Huffman spoke in Morgantown. The rules required public disclosure of fracturing chemicals and ordered public notice to be given when companies propose wells in incorporated cities and towns. That responded to some of the complaints Huffman was confronted with in June. The school was just uphill from a new Marcellus Shale well that was going up within the city limits of Morgantown, surprising many city leaders concerned about the purity of their water supply. But the emergency rules did not offer public notice for wells in unincorporated areas. And they did not address what happens when property owners have conflicts with drilling companies. This week, they will try to move from emergency rules to permanent laws. Tomblin called a special session of the Legislature to pass a bill initiated by a special subcommittee. The governor's bill would increase permit fees and require wells (but not well pads) to be 650 feet from homes, instead of 200 feet. If it gets through, the measure will be the first major revision in the state's oil and gas law since the Marcellus boom began. In an interview, Huffman said that when the process is viewed in a historical context, the state is moving relatively rapidly to deal with its new industry. "This is as responsive as you've ever seen to a new technology," Huffman said. "We mined coal for 70 years before we regulated it. We're ahead of the game."

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Fwd: Alpha agrees to $50 million for selenium treatment
by Paul Wilson 14 Dec '11

14 Dec '11

kudos to JIm S for a great quote. fyi, paul ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Verena Owen <verena_owen(a)prodigy.net> Date: Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 5:44 PM Subject: Alpha agrees to $50 million for selenium treatment To: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS(a)lists.sierraclub.org Alpha agrees to $50 million for selenium treatmentDecember 12, 2011 by Ken Ward Jr. <http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/files/2011/06/ALPHA627.jpg> This just in from the Sierra Club: *Today, a coalition of conservation and environmental groups completed a legal settlement with Alpha Natural Resources over high levels of selenium output at several of the company’s West Virginia coal mines. The settlement requires that the coal mining company – formerly Massey Energy — begin construction of selenium treatment facilities with an estimated construction cost of over $50 million, and to pay penalties of $4.5 million. The suit was brought by the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and Coal River Mountain Watch.* *“This settlement will require Alpha to pay their due and start addressing the damage done to West Virginia waterways,” said Jim Sconyers, Chair of the West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club. “This settlement reflects another step in our fight to ensure that coal companies act responsibly in regards to the health of surrounding communities and West Virginia’s wild lands.”* *The settlement requires Alpha to immediately begin installing treatment technology to bring selenium discharges within acceptable levels. The proposed date of final compliance for the settlement is July 1, 2014 for all mines affected to ensure Alpha has time to install treatment facilities and make any necessary adjustments. Alpha will be subject to significant penalties for any violations that occur after the compliance date for each source of pollution. The vast majority of the penalties will go to the West Virginia Land Trust.* *“This settlement, which follows recent agreements with Arch Coal<http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2011/10/03/details-of-arch-coal-selen…> and Patriot Coal,<http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2010/08/31/judge-chambers-orders-patr…> proves that coal mines in West Virginia have the ability to treat their selenium problems,” said Dianne Bady with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “Now it’s time for all coal companies to take similar actions.”* *“Although treatment may be sufficient to address these existing selenium problems, ultimately the industry and regulators need to recognize that it’s not appropriate to mine coal seams that are high in selenium,” said Cindy Rank with the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.* *Selenium, a toxic element that causes reproductive failure and deformities in fish and other forms of aquatic life, is discharged from many surface coal-mining operations across Appalachia. At very high levels, selenium can pose a risk to human health, causing hair and fingernail loss, kidney and liver damage, and damage to the nervous and circulatory systems.* *“The West Virginia DEP should be ashamed that citizen groups are doing what the agency should have done years ago,” said Vernon Haltom, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch. “Instead, it’s left to citizen groups to take action to protect West Virginia’s streams and communities.”* *The settlement was lodged with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia<http://wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/AlphaSeleniumConsentDecree.pdf>. The U.S. government will have an opportunity to review the settlement before its terms take effect.* * * <http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&username=xa-4d2b47597ad291fb> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To unsubscribe from the COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS list, send any message to: COAL-CAMPAIGN-ALERTS-signoff-request(a)LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG Check out our Listserv Lists support site for more information: http://www.sierraclub.org/lists/faq.asp Sign up to receive Sierra Club Insider, the flagship e-newsletter. Sent out twice a month, it features the Club's latest news and activities. Subscribe and view recent editions at http://www.sierraclub.org/insider/ -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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re; 10 Greediest Americans in 2011 and guess who rolls in on the Number 2 spot?
by Paul Wilson 13 Dec '11

13 Dec '11

http://www.otherwords.org/articles/the_10_greediest_americans_of_2011 -- Paul Wilson Sierra Club 504 Jefferson Ave Charles Town, WV 25414-1130 Phone: 304-725-4360 Cell: 304-279-1361 "There is no forward until you have gone back" ~Buddha "In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous" ~ Aristotle

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