Last week, I gave a talk at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, titled “Resistance in the Pennsylvania Coal Country: Past and Present,” although in reality, I talked more broadly about Appalachia in the second half of the talk. Anyway, it was filmed and is here if you want to watch it. I can’t seem to embed […]
Tag: Coal
Coal billionaires are the best people: Coal mines owned by billionaire James Justice II have been cited for more than 250 environmental violations in five states with unpaid penalties worth about $2 m
Coal companies are openly cheating the system that monitor for coal dust that leads to black lung, misleading Mine Safety and Health Administration monitoring programs. There are so few good jobs in W
I have a piece up at Bill Moyers’ site connecting the exploitation that led to the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 with coal companies exploitation of labor and degradation of nature today: In recent years, American mining companies have undermined the effectiveness of many of these reforms. West Virginia mandates that the state legislature must approve […]
Republicans may hate national parks, but they love dumping coal waste into streams. The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow coal mining companies to return to an ol
On February 26, 1972, a Pittston Coal Company slurry dam collapsed in Logan County, West Virginia. The ensuing flood of coal slurry would kill 125 people and demonstrate once again the horrific contem
Plumer has a good summary of one of the nation’s most underreported energy/environmental problems–coal ash storage. Storing this nasty stuff safely is a real problem. Environmentalists have pushed for new regulations, but the Obama Administration has moved very slowly. What’s the risk of coal ash? One big worry is a sudden catastrophic spill like the […]
Why doesn’t West Virginia have decent environmental regulations? Because the state legislature has to approve each one! West Virginia imposes an unusual hurdle for its Department of Environmenta
The true meaning of freedom is Freedom Industries declaring bankruptcy immediately after its chemical spill made water unsafe for 300,000 West Virginia residents. Freedom owes $3.6 million to its top
Sure am glad the relevant agencies declared West Virginia water safe now after the Freedom Industries chemical spill: “What we are seeing when we talk to our partners in hospital systems are people with skin and eye irritation, rashes, nausea, upset stomach and diarrhea,” Rahul Gupta, health officer for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department said. The […]
I now see why the Republicans passed the bill to gut Superfund. It’s clearly unnecessary, what with a company actually named Freedom Industries taking care of the good people of West Virginia. S
In yesterday’s post on the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, Joe B in comments pointed us out to the official MSHA statistics on mine deaths between 1900 and 2012. It’s remarkable.