Planning is now underway for the 40th Annual King Coal Festival in Williamson later this summer. The Action in Mingo (AIM) group is continuing a series of meetings with the goal of creating an amazing four-day event marking the celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the birth of the King Coal Festival.

This fall, representatives of West Virginia’s mining industry will gather at the 2012 Miners’ Celebration to recognize everyone who contributes to the enterprise.  The conference will be held Oct. 4-5 at Tamarack in Beckley.

“West Virginia’s mining industry depends upon thousands of individuals in many different roles,” said Dr. Tony Szwilski, chairman of the conference planning committee and director of Marshall University’s Center for Environmental, Geotechnical and Applied Sciences. “Every one of these people—whether they are miners, safety engineers, environmental professionals, equipment suppliers, community leaders or teachers—contributes to each ton of coal produced.

By Pam Kasey

With its bill delegating the regulation of coal ash to the states stalled in the Senate, the House of Representatives added it on April 18 as an amendment to the Surface Transportation Extension Act.

"After fighting hard on this issue for over a year, I'm grateful for my colleagues' support," said Rep. David B. McKinley, R-W.Va., original sponsor of the coal ash bill. "The chance to save thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in costs now rests in the Senate's hands."

The House transportation extension, which would extend funding from the federal Highway Trust Fund through September, is the House's response to a Senate transportation bill.

The measure was approved by a vote of 293-127, with West Virginia's three representatives in voting in favor.

By Ivy Brashear
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

The scholar who has done the most to connect mountaintop removal coal mining with public health issues explained and defended his work last week during a lecture at Morehead State University.

The studies by Michael Hendryx and his colleagues at West Virginia University have become controversial because they show correlations between coal mining and public health, not that mining causes health problems. Showing the relationship between two separate things is correlation; showing that one thing causes another is causation.

United States Patent: 4838898

Since we have been, and will more extensively be, making report of the rather vast body of knowledge and established commercial technology that exists for the productive recycling and reuse of Coal Combustion Products, "CCP's", or, as we prefer, Coal Utilization Byproducts, "CUB's", as, for one recent example, in:

Coal Ash Can Reduce Construction Costs | Research & Development; concerning: "United States Patent 5,624,491 - Compressive Strength of Concrete and Mortar Containing Fly Ash; 1997; Assignee: New Jersey Institute of Technology; Abstract: The present invention relates to concrete, mortar and other hardenable mixtures comprising cement and fly ash for use in construction ... , concrete and mortar containing about 15% to 25% fly ash as a replacement for cement, which are capable of meeting design specifications required for building and highway construction, are provided. Such materials can thus significantly reduce construction costs. Government Interests: The research leading to the present invention was conducted with Government support under Contract No. DE-FG22-90PC90299 awarded by the Department of Energy. The Government has certain rights in this invention";