The West Virginia Coal Association joined with the West Virginia Coal Forum in three statewide events this week in Charleston, Wheeling and Beckley billed as “Stop the EPA’s War on Coal”. The forums were designed to bring attention to EPA’s anti-coal regulatory agenda and to encourage more public action and support for the industry.
The Coal Forum program featured Governor Tomblin, all three Congressional representatives, both U.S. Senator’s offices, key members of the WV Legislature and industry and labor leaders. This week’s forums targeted several recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rule proposals addressing utlity MACT and green house gas emissions. Organizers say the various rules either set the bar too high or go into effect too soon to allow coal-fired plants to adapt.
Setting the tone for the meetings, WVCA Senior VP and co-chairman of the Coal Forum Chris Hamilton pointed to the myiad of challenges facing the industry and how serious and threatening. “They are not technical in nature but political in nature driven by political agendas requiring political solutions, we all need to elevate our game, the times simply call for all hands on deck. There’s not a coal-powered plant in this country that can meet these regulations as proposed,” Hamilton said.
Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said at Tuesday’s forum: “The state’s leaders are united in support of the coal industry and are working to delay or change the EPA’s proposed rules. It’s not just a West Virginia issue, it’s not a Republican or Democrat issue - it’s an issue for all of us across the country.”
Capito emphasized the need for a realistic, common-sense approach to regulating the coal and coal-fired power industries. She said the nation needs to develop a comprehensive energy plan that includes coal. “We cannot shut down this resource,” she said.
“We need a solution based on reasonable regulation,” said Roger Horton, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Coal organization. “Without coal, America is going to fail - it’s that simple.”
During Wednesday’s meeting at Oglebay Park’s Wilson Lodge, Senate President and WV’s Lt. Governor Jeff Kessler shared the forum with Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) & Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH). “I have an idea ... maybe the power companies should just turn their switch off for a day,” said Rep. Johnson. “Then maybe the world would understand the importance of coal.”
West Virginia Senate President Jeff Kessler, D-Marshall, lamented his support for coal and suggested a specific day for an organized power outage. “Let’s shut down electrical plants on Super Bowl Sunday,” he said. “If people couldn’t watch their televisions, they would realize the influence West Virginia plays on the energy of the nation.”
Rep. David B. McKinley, R-W.Va., said the nation would “better understand what the middle class is up against” as the EPA seeks to impose new rules setting environmental standards he said no existing coal-fired power plant can achieve.
One of these rules would classify fly ash - a by-product of burning coal - as a hazardous substance, he noted. McKinley has placed an amendment in the proposed federal transportation bill rejecting the rule.
At the Forum in Beckley, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said America depends on coal and reminded the attendees of his administration’s legal battles against the EPA. “The EPA has waged an outright war on coal and everyone who works so hard to keep the nation’s lights on,” he said. “The EPA is trying to cripple the lifeblood of our state. Unelected bureaucrats are no strangers to overstepping authority.” Tomblin pointed out that a federal judge recently ruled in favor of the state in its lawsuit over the rejection of the Spruce permit — one the EPA originally approved a decade ago — in what the governor termed “a whole new level of arrogance.”
Calling the proposed greenhouse emission rule “the most expensive” one ever sought by the EPA, he said the higher costs of meeting the standards will be passed on to businesses and consumers alike. “They have no scientific backing at all, but they have the great potential to devastate coal,” he declared. “I’m on your side. I’ve been fighting the EPA since the day I took office. And you can be assured, I will not back down.”
US Representative Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., flatly accused the EPA of breaking the law with its implacable enforcement of rules. Rahall, likewise, scorned the WorkForce report on additional mining jobs as “rosy reports in the media.” “While I don’t bemoan any job that exists in our state, especially new jobs, those figures are rather misleading,” he said. “Those figures, in my opinion, are ignoring what has happened in recent months and the repercussions of actions today and what they mean in the months ahead and years ahead for our coal industry,” the 3rd District congressman said.
“Most importantly are the regulations that are now barreling down on us, the so-called train wreck scenario, the mounting consequences of what EPA’s relentless efforts to read into the Clean Water Act, the timetable and criteria and legislative direction that simply were never contemplated by the Congress and were never there,” Rahall said.
“The EPA is going around the law to do what they’re doing. ”What’s more, Rahall said, the figures don’t consider the massive backlog — estimated by Coal Association Vice President Chris Hamilton at 1,000 — of mining permits the EPA is using as “a stranglehold” on the industry.
“Jobs have grown with demand price, but cannot be sustained if there are no permits to mine and no power plants that will burn coal,” he said.
WVCA President Bill Raney said that not only have mining permits been held in abeyance by the EPA, but now the agency is threatening to put a stranglehold on coal-fired power plants with new greenhouse gas emission standards. “Some people are trying to give credit to the Obama administration because we’ve got more people working with an increase in employees,” Raney said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Our people are working today in spite of the Obama administration.”
Actually, he said, the industry mapped out an initiative last November to add 2,000 miners to the payroll, “so it’s no secret and certainly should be no surprise to anyone that we needed more people and wanted more people and we set out to get them.” But with the strident attacks by the EPA, he wondered, can existing jobs be sustained over the long haul?
“I call it an army of occupation, that began on Inauguration Day,” he said, taking a hard jab at Obama and the EPA.
Fred Tucker, representing the United Mine Workers of America’s as the co-chair of the Coal Forum, likened the EPA’s fickleness to a football official pushing the goal line 25 yards further away after a receiving team takes a kickoff and returns the ball to midfield and saying, “You got to go 75 yards to score a touchdown.”
“That’s what the EPA is doing to us,” he said.
“I don’t mind being competitive, if I’ve got a chance to win. But I’m not going up against Michael Jordan and expect that I’m going to win a basketball game.”
Another UMWA official, Roger Horton, admonished his audience to start spreading the word across the nation of coal’s critical importance in supplying electricity, saying, “It’s up to us to get off our butts, folks, quite frankly, and tell everybody what coal is all about.”
“If we don’t, we’re going to fail as a nation, as a state, and then begin wringing our hands.”
Like the others, Horton portrayed the EPA as a presumptive bureaucracy which has sidestepped the will of Congress.
“These bureaucrats who made these decisions do so without the consent of Congress and without thinking, and will tell you they don’t think about the jobs,” he said.
“That’s so damn wrong. I’m sick and tired of it.”
You can send letters to our U.S. Senators, Rockefeller and Manchin, urging their support of pending legislation that will curb the EPA’s assault on coal by accessing the West Virginia Coal Association website tool at www.wvcoal.com.