By Paul J. Nyden
The Charleston Gazette

WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Tuesday he will vigorously oppose new greenhouse-gas rules proposed last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

During a speech at the John Amos Power Plant near Winfield, Manchin stressed the importance of national energy independence and the impact coal, gas and other energy resources have on creating good-paying jobs.

Today, Manchin said, coal generates 45 percent of all energy used in the United States and "is projected to produce the lion's share of energy decades into the future."

Between 2006 and 2011, Manchin said Tuesday, AEP had as many as 3,200 construction workers at its John Amos plant, now one of the world's cleanest coal plants.

Those workers installed more than $1 billion worth of scrubbers and other equipment to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by up to 90 percent, he said.

"Between 2006 and 2011, at AEP power plants in West Virginia, you created 27.7 million work hours on environmental construction projects," Manchin told his audience.

"This plant is an example that when government works as a partner, not an adversary, we can put thousands of people back to work, and find the balance between the economy and environment."

By: Whitney Burdette

Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said he is not going to sit idle while the Environmental Protection Agency continues its "war on coal."

Last week, a 4^th Circuit judge struck down the EPA's revocation of a mine permit in southern West Virginia. It was also last week that the EPA released new standards for coal-fired power plants that would restrict carbon dioxide emissions. In response, Tomblin issued a news release on Monday, April 2, containing a letter to the EPA that lays his ground plan for confronting the agency, which he said hurts jobs.

"We've had enough of your war on coal, because it's a war on our jobs here in West Virginia," Tomblin said in the letter. "While Americans clearly want to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, you're killing off the source of 42 percent of America's electricity, power that comes from coal we mine right here in the USA."

Tomblin went on to say that the new rule is not only bad for jobs, but also energy independence.

"This rule is bad for jobs and it's bad for energy independence," he said in the letter. "It's bad for West Virginia and it's bad for America. Kill this rule before it kills our jobs and our communities."

In the wake of the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the West Virginia Coal Association has been hitting the airwaves and taking to print to put the decision into perspective.

WVCA President Bill Raney released an op-ed this week that discusses the decision and refocuses the effort to pass HR 2018 in the U.S. Senate, which would end the EPA’s war on coal once and for all. Raney will also be a guest on WOWK-TV’s “DecisionMakers” this weekend where he will be discussing the same issue.

WVCA Vice President Jason Bostic will be on WV Radio’s WCHS 580 weekly radio show, “Business Matters” on Saturday morning discussing this decision and other EPA actions.

Excerpts from the op-ed and a news release issued on the decision have been picked up in various newspapers around the state and the region. And a new radio spot will begin airing next week on WV Radio Network channels discussing the decision and the need to pass HR 2018 in the Senate.

“This decision, while it is clearly important in and of itself, must be seen as reinforcing the need to pass HR 2018, the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011, and expanding on it to end this radicalized EPA’s assault on the mining industry – on ALL industry – to an end,” said Raney. “America needs jobs. We need to be creating new jobs and not destroying the ones we have in some myopic pursuit of a political agenda.”

The importance of the coal industry to the people of West Virginia was on display this week in a very clear way and in a forum most people would have found surprising. An online poll in the Charleston Gazette newspaper’s e-edition, saw 2/3rds of respondents agreeing with the U.S. District Court’s decision to overturn the EPA’s veto of the Spruce Mine.  The poll question has been active and on the web page for most of the week.

As of 2 p.m. on Friday, March 30, the results were:

Question:

Do you agree with the federal judge's decision to overturn EPA's veto of the Spruce Mine Permit?

1. Yes                  1788 votes / 62%
2. No                   1112 votes / 38%

The day after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released far-reaching new standards for power plants that could have a crippling effect on West Virginia’s economy, U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall (D-WV), top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, grilled EPA officials at a House hearing before the Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment.

“Some time ago, it had long been my belief that the EPA could be a positive force in the permitting process for surface coal mining in West Virginia.  After years of battles in courtrooms that left coal miners and coal communities in a long, tenuous limbo, this EPA had an opportunity to help achieve a center point that would provide for both energy development and environmental preservation.  But it has utterly failed,” said Rahall.  “Instead, this EPA took an extra-legal approach, choosing to step over the bounds of the law to promote an ideological agenda and, in so doing, to push opposing parties even further from the balance we have all sought for so long.”