Liquid Coal Will Be Costly, Too

Liquid Coal Will Be Costly, Too

In his Dec. 16 commentary, Roger Nicholson, a senior vice president

of International Coal Group (Sago* was theirs) said he wants his children to settle in this beautiful state. He figures that coal-to-liquid plants will make that possible. What he fails to mention is that those plants will increase already massive

mountaintop removal strip mining. With that increase there may be no beautiful West Virginia left for Nicholson’s children to find jobs. The beauty will be gone with the disappearance of even more mountains and the burial of even more streams.

Jeff Goodell says in his book Big Coal that about 3.5 barrels of water are consumed for every barrel of fuel made from coal. Nicholson backs Gov. Manchin’s goal of producing 1.3 billion gallons of fuel from coal every year. That will take about 5 billion gallons of water per year, 14 million gallons a day. Boy, that ought to dry up a bunch of streams, underground aquifers and water wells.

Goodell also says that the carbon dioxide produced in coal-to-liquid plants can be 50 to 100 percent higher than that in the refining of petroleum. Nicholson sloughs off concerns of reputable scientists about the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Nicholson tried to place negative labels on thousands of West Virginians who love the mountains just as they are. He called us extremists, alarmists, obstructive and a vocal minority. Nicholson becomes extreme and alarmist himself in the act of trying to scapegoat people who love mountains more than they do coal and money. For the coal industry to call anyone else extreme is a knee-slapper. It is hard to imagine what could be more extreme than the massive mountaintop removal strip-mining that will increase with coal-to-liquid plants.

Contrary to Nicholson’s mean-spirited labels, the people I know who love the mountains just as they are more easily fit the labels of gentle, kind, aware and intelligent. They are folks who are indeed alarmed at the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of West Virginia mountains. They are extremely angered by the burying of over a thousand miles of West Virginia headwaters. And the only thing they want to obstruct is the wholesale destruction of the environment, a very worthy obstruction. Thanks to the first amendment to our Constitution, we are all free to be vocal.

We are not a minority as Nicholson claims; far from it. Even if we were a minority, we still would have the right to be vocal, to express our opinions, to seek mercy from the courts. Vocal is good. Indeed, for democracy to survive we must be vocal when we see crimes against man and nature.

Predictably, Nicholson wraps himself in the flag. He uses the phrases “help our country,” and “our nation’s energy needs.” We are called upon to be patriotic, to remain silent, and to be a sacrifice zone for the rest of the country. Nicholson seems to be paraphrasing the infamous quote from the Vietnam War; we have to destroy the state to save it and the nation.

And jobs, they never leave out jobs, except at the mine site. When my dad was an underground miner there were over 100,000 miners in West Virginia. Now there are fewer than 20,000. As Larry Gibson says, if that is job-creation, I hope they stop before they run clear out of jobs. Whenever it will save money, coal miners will continue to be replaced with machines. No matter what smoke screens the coal companies put up, it is money they care about.

At permit hearings on mountaintop removal and other forms of strip mining, it is always the same. Speakers for the permit stand to make money from the destruction of the mountains. Those who speak against the permit are not there for the money, they are there for the mountains. Those who want more mountains destroyed are in it for the money.

Upton Sinclair said it best: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

^*On January 2, 2006 eleven coal miners died from carbon monoxide poisoning after an explosion in the International Coal Group’s mine in Sago, Upshur County, West Virginia

Giant Wind Turbines in Almost Heaven

Cruel Joke

I was outraged to see that an April 2008 article in Wonderful West Virginia, a Department of Natural Resources magazine, gave two whole color page photos to the Twisted Gun Golf Course in Mingo County. I have been there, and it is devastation surrounded by devastation. There is nary a tree in sight and all around a view of mountaintop removal strip-mining. The coal companies use that golf course in their propaganda as one of the ways they have “improved” our mountains, made them “better” than they were before. For Wonderful West Virginia to promote a coal industry ad campaign by including this hapless golf course is indeed sad. To wax poetic saying that the course is located on a “heath-like plateau” is a cruel joke.

Aerial Spray for Mountain Top Removal

The Charleston Gazette
The Gazette reported on July 18 that aerial gypsy moth suppression treatment is offered for the 77,904 West Virginia acres defoliated in May and June. We sure could use an aerial suppression treatment on the acres that have been de-mountained by mountaintop removal.