EPA Weighs in on Mountaintop Permits

  • In mountaintop removal mining, explosives are used to get at coal that's close to the surface. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

The Environmental Protection
Agency has approved one
mountaintop removal coal
mining operation. But, Lester
Graham reports, it’s asking a
federal court to delay another
mine in the same state:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection
Agency has approved one
mountaintop removal coal
mining operation. But, Lester
Graham reports, it’s asking a
federal court to delay another
mine in the same state:

The Environmental Protection Agency says it supports permits for one mine in West Virginia because operators agreed to some environmental protections.

But the EPA is asking a federal court to delay a decision on another mine. The Spruce Number One mine – owned by a subsidiary of Arch Coal – is one of the largest mountainop removal mines ever proposed in the area.The EPA says it’s concerned the mine would bury streams and contaminate water.

Bill Raney is the President of the West Virginia Coal Association. In a recent interview he said regulators are changing the rules.

“And it’s punishing the people here with uncertainty, not knowing what the future holds as to whether you’re going to get the next permit and are you going to be able to mine the coal, are you going to be able to use it in the power plant.”

The EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, said in a statement, the EPA is actually bringing clarity to the process.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Coal Ash Contamination

  • 2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants flooded over nearby farmland and into the river. (Photo courtesy of the Tennessee Department Of Health)

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

Transcript

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants. That’s how much
contamination flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.

That comes
from a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Eric Schaeffer is the
project’s Executive Director and a former official with the Environmental
Protection Agency. He says 2.6 billion pounds is more than the total
discharges from all U-S power plants last year.

“The toxic metals, once they get into the environment,
and especially once they get into sediment, are notoriously difficult to
clean up.”

Difficult and expensive. The Tennessee Valley Authority puts the price tag
at about a billion dollars.

The EPA was supposed to propose tougher
disposal standards for toxic ash by the end of 2009. But the agency delayed
that decision.

For The Environmental Report, Im Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Part 3: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Fracturing has increased available domestic natural gas supply by 35%. (Photo source: TheSilentPhotographer at Wikimedia Commons)

A new wave of natural gas drilling
is spreading across the country.
But the process is on hold in New
York state while regulators and
citizens debate the issue. Samara Freemark reports
that some New Yorkers see drilling
as a way to save the economy of a
particularly depressed part of the
state. But others say it could ruin
the economy for good:

Transcript

A new wave of natural gas drilling
is spreading across the country.
But the process is on hold in New
York state while regulators and
citizens debate the issue. Samara Freemark reports
that some New Yorkers see drilling
as a way to save the economy of a
particularly depressed part of the
state. But others say it could ruin
the economy for good:

When Kathy Colley heard that natural gas drillers were coming to upstate New York, it was kind of like someone had told her that the whole region had won the lottery.

“Here we have this wonderful god given opportunity. This is a blessing.”

That’s because Colley and her neighbors had learned that they had natural gas beneath their land.

New York State’s natural gas was supposed to be untappable- it was too far down, and it was suspended in tiny bubbles in shale rock. But a new technique called hydraulic fracturing made drilling possible in those kinds of shale fields. Fracturing has increased available domestic natural gas supply by 35%.

Drillers started moving into New York State last year. But officials there put a moratorium on the practice while regulators debated whether to allow fracturing.

For Kathy Colley, it’s a no-brainer. Drilling means saving a dying regional economy.

“It’s been such a depressed area. It’s struggling. The farmers are dying here. This is a time when it would just give people a life. Billions of dollars. Thousands of jobs. This is an opportunity to get healthy.”

A lot of local officials all across the country feel the same way. Gas drilling can mean tax revenues, and jobs, and economic development.

But some people say that while drilling may bring in some money at first, in the long run it’s a lousy way to develop a local economy.

“It’s an unsustainable form of economic development.”

That’s Adam Flint. He works with the Binghamton Regional Sustainability Coalition in upstate New York.

“However much gas is under the ground, it is unrenewable.”

And when the gas runs out, the jobs will go. So will the tax revenue. Flint estimates New York would get a couple of decades of gas production before the state’s fields are tapped dry.

That kind of boom and bust cycle is what Wes Gillingham is worried about. Gillingham is a farmer and environmentalist who heads an organization called Catskill Mountainkeeper. I met up with him and his family at his farm house.

He showed me a banjo he had bought cheap in Casper, Wyoming in the 1980s, at the end of an oil boom.

“I had never seen a place in my life that had so many pawnshops. And the pawnshops were just stuffed to the ceiling with really nice stuff- really nice stuff, at really cheap prices, cause everyone was just pawning everything they had.”

He’s afraid the same thing will happen in upstate New York.

“I always think about this when people say, ‘but we need the gas.’ Prices go up, companies come in, they put more rigs out, and there’s this huge influx of money and activity and then when the price drops back down they shut it all down. That has huge impacts on the community.”

And it’s not just the boom and bust. There are also environmental impacts like a legacy of water pollution, abandoned infrastructure, and habitat destruction.

Adam Flint says those kinds of problems would prevent upstate New York from ever developing any kind of stable long-term economy.

“It’s a question of which road to travel. We can have gas production and turn upstate New York into a major industrial zone. Or we can have tourism, agriculture, a green economy, alterative energy, jobs that all those things create. We can’t do both.”


New York state officials are almost certain to approve gas drilling this year – 2010. When they do, there’s a long line of community and environmental groups ready to challenge the state in court.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Shutting Off the Heat

  • Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year. (Photo by Elizabeth A. Sellers, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:

Transcript

Millions of families had their heat
or electricity shut off this year.
Rebecca Williams reports that happened
even though government assistance
for energy bills doubled:

Record numbers of Americans are having trouble paying their heating or power bills.

Mark Wolfe is with the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association. He represents the state agencies that help people pay their energy bills.

He says when families use up their allotment of energy assistance, things can get tough.

“It’s pretty awful – they go to payday lenders, pay high interest rates to get extra money, they borrow from relatives, they cut back on medicine, they turn the heat down to dangerous levels. These are families that’ve already gone from steak to chicken to rice. They don’t have a lot of choices.”

Four million homes had their heat or power turned off this year.


Wolfe says unless the economy improves next year, the number of families needing help with their bills could be even greater.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Part 2: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Frackers dig mile-deep wells and pump them with millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals. (Photo by Vera Scroggins)

Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than
oil and coal, so a lot of people are
excited about gas’s role in a greener
energy sector. But drilling for natural
gas? That’s not quite so green. Samara Freemark tells us that
as a new kind of drilling spreads across
the country, so do environmental
concerns:

Transcript

Natural gas burns a lot cleaner than
oil and coal, so a lot of people are
excited about gas’s role in a greener
energy sector. But drilling for natural
gas? That’s not quite so green. Samara Freemark tells us that
as a new kind of drilling spreads across
the country, so do environmental
concerns:

It’s been about a year and a half since drilling companies first broke ground on natural gas wells in Dimock, Pennsylvania, in the northeastern corner of the state.

The drillers used a recently developed technique called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. Frackers dig mile-deep wells and pump them with millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals.

Right now, fracking isn’t regulated by the federal government – though Congress is considering changing that.

So the process has generated a lot of concerns about pollution – in particular, fears that gas and chemicals could leach out into aquifers and groundwater.

Which is probably what happened in Dimock. Vera Scroggins is an anti-drilling activist who lives nearby.

“It started to happen pretty quickly because as they went down there, as they went through the aquifers they broke through the rock where the gas pockets are, and the gas got released into the aquifers and then it got into the water wells. So people started to notice like blackish, yellowish, bubbly water. So it’s been about 11 months that they haven’t drank their water.”

Since fracking started, Dimock has been plagued with environmental problems – chemical spills and leaks, gas found in drinking water, and fish kills in nearby streams. Dimock residents have filed suit against Cabot Oil and Gas, which controls most of the wells around Dimock.

And Scroggins says state authorities have penalized Cabot for spills and leaks.

“Cabot has been fined several times, even since September. They were closed down for two weeks for three spills in a two-week period. So it’s one accident after another.”

The drilling company says that doesn’t mean the problems were caused by drilling.

Ken Komoroski is a Cabot spokesman. He says the company is looking in to the incidents, but they haven’t found proof that fracking caused any problems.

“The company has not come to any conclusion as to whether or not its operations did cause contamination. It’s possible that it has, it’s also entirely possible that it has not.”

Many gas companies maintain that no one has ever proved conclusively that spills and leaks have harmed anyone. And it is hard to pin down figures on fracking accidents, since there’s no centralized database to keep track of incidents.

But problems have been reported at drilling sites across the country.

Many of the complaints center around the chemicals frackers mix with their pumping water.

Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Eric Goldstein showed me a list of those chemicals at an anti-drilling demonstration in New York City. The list was seven pages long – some 260 chemicals in all. Some seemed pretty harmless. But others were more troubling.

“I’m sure you could find a couple out of the 260 that you wouldn’t mind drinking. But you wouldn’t want to take any naphthalene, for example. Or petroleum naptha. Or any of the things we can’t pronounce here. You wouldn’t want to drink talc. Wouldn’t want to drink benzene. Why don’t we just stop right there. Ethyl benzene. That’s a known human carcinogen.”

Drilling companies say that while those chemicals might be dangerous, they’re used in such small quantities that they’re not harmful to people. And companies say they’ve developed protections that keep the chemicals from leaching out into aquifers. For example, drillers line their gas wells with cement casings to keep fracking fluid contained.

But Vera Scroggins – the activist from near Dimock – says she doesn’t believe companies have figured out how to drill safely.

“As they go along, they’re learning things. So we’re being experimented on.”

Until they’ve learned how to prevent all dangerous leaks and spills, Scroggins says, companies shouldn’t be allowed to drill at all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Part 1: Hydrofracking for Gas

  • Fracking has made billions of cubic feet of natural gas available. That’s fuel that can be used for cooking, heating, and some transportation. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

A new technique for extracting
natural gas is making it profitable
to drill in new gas fields all over
the country. The technique is
called hydrofracking, and it has
raised the nation’s natural gas
reserves by 35%.
But hydrofracking is not without
its critics. Samara Freemark tells us why some people
say the industry is moving faster
than regulators can keep up:

Transcript

A new technique for extracting
natural gas is making it profitable
to drill in new gas fields all over
the country. The technique is
called hydrofracking, and it has
raised the nation’s natural gas
reserves by 35%.
But hydrofracking is not without
its critics. Samara Freemark tells us why some people
say the industry is moving faster
than regulators can keep up:

Ten years ago the American natural gas market wasn’t looking too hot.

“In theory, America was running out of natural gas.”

That’s Susan Riha. She’s a professor of earth sciences at Cornell University. Riha says underground pools of traditional natural gas were starting to dry up.

But there’s another kind of gas – ‘unconventional’ natural gas. It’s suspended in tiny pockets in shale formations, like water in a sponge. And there’s unconventional natural gas all across the United States, especially in the Western states and Pennsylvania and New York.

But recovering large amounts of natural gas from shale formations was until recently, pretty much impossible.

“In the past, it’s been extremely difficult to get that gas out of that rock. They drill down, but the gas is only going to flow from right where they drill. But people began to put effort in to figuring out how to get this gas out. And maybe starting about a decade ago they began to get economically viable ways of recovering shale gas.”

The technique that drillers developed is called hydraulic fracturing – or fracking. Frackers dig mile-deep, L-shaped wells and blast them full of millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals. That solution holds open tiny fissures in the shale so the gas flows out.

The process raises some eyebrows in the environmental community, but we’ll get to their concerns in a second.

First let’s look at the upside.

Fracking has made billions of cubic feet of natural gas available. That’s fuel that can be used for cooking, heating, and some transportation.

And natural gas is a domestic energy source. It burns a whole lot cleaner than coal and oil. A lot of people say it could be a crucial part of the transition to greener energy.

Which is the point Thomas West made when I met up with him at a public hearing on gas drilling. West is a drilling advocate and attorney who represents gas companies in New York State.

“You have to realize that the shale plays, these unconventional resources, have changed the game in the United States. We now have a hundred years of capacity, which means we no longer have to rely on Mideastern oil. Gas is very usable, it doesn’t take much to make it usable, and it has a dramatic impact on air quality.”

But critics say fracking is a mixed bag.

“Things too good to be true, usually are.”


That’s Al Appleton. He’s an environmental consultant, and he says hydraulic fracking can cause all kinds of environmental problems – water contamination, ecosystem destruction, noise and air pollution.

And Appleton says the process is essentially unregulated. In 2005, Congress passed a law specifically exempting fracking from almost all federal environmental regulations.

“Basically what the law said is that things like the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Hazardous Waste Materials Act, the Clean Water Act, and other significant pieces of federal environmental legislation were not to be applied to the natural gas industry. So in essence, what your local dry cleaner has to comply to all sorts of regulations, the natural gas industry, they don’t have to follow these.”

Some members of Congress are trying to change that. They’ve introduced legislation to repeal fracking’s exemption, give the Environmental Protection Agency authority over the process, and require the industry to disclose what kinds of chemicals it injects into wells. As you might expect, the fracking industry is fighting the bill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Testing the Smart Grid

  • A smart grid diagram from the US Department of Energy. (Photo courtesy of the US Departmen of Energy)

Some electric companies are working
to put smart meters on our homes.
They want to change how we use
electricity hour by hour. Eventually,
power companies will charge more
when demand for electricity is highest.
Mark Brush reports on a new study
that looks at how people are responding:

Transcript

Some electric companies are working
to put smart meters on our homes.
They want to change how we use
electricity hour by hour. Eventually,
power companies will charge more
when demand for electricity is highest.
Mark Brush reports on a new study
that looks at how people are responding:

Connecticut Light and Power tested the smart grid on about 3,000 of it’s customers. Half of them residential and half of them business customers.

They found that people did respond to high rates during high periods of demand – such as from noon to eight pm.

Jessica Cain is with Connecticut Light & Power. She says there seems to be a limit to how much they’ll change. For example, doing laundry late at night seemed to be a non-starter.

“Doing your laundry after 8pm would be a barrier. And we heard that from customers, both from a residential customer side and then from a business customer side. We heard that changing their business hours outside of that twelve to eight window would be very difficult.”

The power company found the most energy was saved when the utility itself used the smart meter to shutdown things like air conditioners during periods of high demand.

The customers said they liked the “set it and forget it” approach – so long as they could override the system if they needed to.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Mountaintop Mining Protest

  • One of the organizers of the rally opposing mountaintop removal coal mining scheduled the protest to coincide with the first day of climate talks in Copenhagen. (Photo by Sandra Sleight-Brennan)

World leaders are in Copenhagen,
Denmark where the debate over
what to do about climate change
is getting loud sometimes. But
in West Virginia coal country, the
debate is even louder. Lester
Graham reports:

Transcript

World leaders are in Copenhagen,
Denmark where the debate over
what to do about climate change
is getting loud sometimes. But
in West Virginia coal country, the
debate is even louder. Lester
Graham reports:

When the West Virginia Coal Association heard about plans for a rally to protest mountaintop removal coal mining, it issued an email. The Associaiton wanted supporters of the coal industry to hold a counter protest to the quote, “liberal enviro-whacko’s rally.”

(sound of protest and truck horns)

The coal mining supporters not only showed up, but they brought in some big trucks, horns blaring to try to disrupt the protest speakers at the rally in front of the offices of West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality.

The Coal industry’s message was simple. Coal means jobs. Jobs mean paychecks.

But the protestors against mountaintop removal coal mining say there are more important things.

One of those speakers was Maria Gunnoe. She’s a coal miner’s daughter who’s worked against the environmental damage of blowing off the tops of Appalaichan mountains to get to the coal. The blasted debris has been dumped into valleys, damaging streams and water supplies.

“I challenge you. You think it’s hard to live without a paycheck? Try living with nothing to give your children to drink. Paycheck’s not important when you don’t have water to give your children.”

Maria Gunnoe has been there. She lives in a valley just downhill from a debris fill. She testified against the coal companies in a court case to stop them from dumping debris in streams. Let’s just say she’s not a popular figure among the pro-coal folks.

Bo Webb lives in Coal River Valley. He’s one of the organizers of the rally opposing mountaintop removal coal mining. He scheduled the protest the same day climate talks in Copenhagen started. He’d liked to see the people where he lives get something from those negotiations.

“I’m hoping what comes out of Copenhagen for here would be a message that some of these miners could start understanding and stop manipu- allowing- themselves to be manipulated by a coal industry that’s got one concern, and that’s profits.”

At the counter-rally, many of the coal mining supporters did not want to talk to news people. One guy who would talk is Gary Finley. He’s from Ohio and sells equipment to the coal mining industry.

“You know, this industry is regulated, heavily regulated, now. It has been since, what, 1977? (Yep.) So, you know, we’re doing everything that’s dictated by law in the mining of coal.”

When asked about the future of coal, Finley hesitated.

“Well, (laughs) right now I’m uncertain. I can tell you what I hope it’ll be. I hope it continues. You know, we’ve got a lot of coal in these mountains. I don’t believe the people in this country realize how important coal is to the economy of the eastern United States, people realize when they go into their homes and turn on their light switch and the electric comes on, if we don’t mine coal, that’s gonna be- it’s done.”

The protest was a lot of passionate speakers, a lot of booing, and a lot of truck horns.

But what irritated the coal mining supporters more than anything seemed to be the idea that outsiders were coming to West Virginia to tell them what to do. And the liberal outsider that aggravated them most was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Junior. Kennedy calls fossil fuels a deadly addiction that’s wrecking the country, and says mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying communities.

“And, you know, we need to figure out ways to power our country that don’t compromise the aspirations of future generations, don’t compromise their potential for prosperity, for wholesome, dignified communities.”

In the end, nothing was settled in West Virginia, just as nothing will be settled in Copenhagen.

But at the local level and the international level, people are talking about fossil fuels differently. Some see a bright future in renewable, sustainable energy and preserved forested mountains, while others feel their lives and their livelihoods threatened.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

The ‘Tres Amigas’ Project

  • The project would send power - like wind or solar - across three electricity networks. (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:

Transcript

Wind and solar power farms are sprouting
up, but they have reliability problems.
Wind doesn’t always blow, and sun doesn’t
always shine. To keep the lights on,
utilities want to grab power from any
solar and wind farm that is working.
Shawn Allee reports one transmission
project could help out:

It’s not easy to send California’s solar power eastward. Same goes for sending Texan wind power westward.

A proposed transmission project called Tres Amigas hopes to change that.

It would let utilities send power across three electricity networks.

Michael Giberson researches utility economics at Texas Tech University. He says the Tres Amigas project could go in just the right spot.

“The area where it’s locating in Eastern New Mexico close to the Texas borderr, is an area where there’s great renewable energy potential and this is gonna make it much easier for the grid to accomodate that.”

The Tres Amigas power project would need federal approval. It would also require Texas to link its grid with its neighbors’.

That’s something the Lone Star state might not do.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Interview: Doctors Call for Cleaner Coal

  • Dr. Alan Lockwood is a Professor of Neurology and Nuclear Medicine, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY (Photo courtesy of the Physicians for Social Responsibility)

A group of doctors, Physicians for
Social Responsibility, has issued a
new report called “Coal’s Assault On
Human Health.” It explains the
health impacts of burning coal, but
it goes beyond that. Lester Graham
caught up with the principle author
of the report – Dr. Alan Lockwood.
Lockwood is a professor of neurology
and nuclear medicine at the University
of Buffalo. He says their report also
looked at the possible health effects
of climate change:

Transcript

A group of doctors, Physicians for
Social Responsibility, has issued a
new report called “Coal’s Assault On
Human Health.” It explains the
health impacts of burning coal, but
it goes beyond that. Lester Graham
caught up with the principle author
of the report – Dr. Alan Lockwood.
Lockwood is a professor of neurology
and nuclear medicine at the University
of Buffalo. He says their report also
looked at the possible health effects
of climate change:

Dr. Alan Lockwood: Well, first of all, it would change the temperature. So, more people would have heat-related illnesses. Insect vectors that carry malaria and dengue will increase their distribution. The possibility of reduced crop yields and, secondarily, is starvation. And then, of course, there’ll be the increase in sea level, which will inundate many countries that have low-lying areas – such as Bangladesh and some other countries in the Pacific – will be totally under water. So, all of those things add up to making this an important element of the coal story.

Lester Graham: It’s often noted that the public health costs of power from burning coal is never really calculated into the overall cost of the energy – this report tackles that. And you use that to justify some of the recommendations – including no new coal-burning power plants, cutting other pollutants from existing plants. Realistically, do you think anyone is really going to go for that?

Dr. Lockwood: Well, unless you set the bar at the appropriate level, you’re never going to achieve the outcome that would be optimum. So, our position is that this is the target we’d like to see, and then we will work with people and do our educational mission in order to get as close to that target as is possible.

Graham: How do you expect this will affect the debate over the climate change bill in the Senate?

Dr. Lockwood: Physicians, according to polling information, have very high credibility. So we are a different voice that brings this argument to the floor. And, hopefully we’ll be a component of the legislative process and the input of information that comes to legislators as they grapple with tough decisions.

Graham: You’re talking about further reducing some of the pollutants caused by coal. But the EPA, in all of the government’s wisdom, has decided, ‘well, we are at a level where these exposures are safe to the public.’ Why do you dispute that?

Dr. Lockwood: No one has been able to demonstrate a level below which these pollutants are really completely safe. So, the general consensus is, that the lower they are, the less likely they are to effect health in an adverse manner – producing things like attacks of asthma, myocardial infarcts, strokes, things of that nature.

Graham: There’s a huge campaign going on right now by the coal industry touting the benefits of clean coal. I wonder if you think there is the possibility of clean coal, now or in the future, or if we have to find alternatives to coal altogether.

Dr. Lockwood: Well, we advocate alternatives to coal. The coal industry, first of all, is extremely well-financed. They’re working very hard to convince people that it’s possible to use coal in a manner that’s clean and doesn’t pollute the environment. But that’s a concept that’s more in the future – if it ever proves to be practical.

Graham: Sounds like you’re a clean coal skeptic.

Dr. Lockwood: I’m from Missouri.

Graham: The Show Me State!

Dr. Lockwood: Well, I’m a clinical neurologist and I’m a scientist. So I want to see proof and data rather than ‘pie in the sky’ claims.

Graham: Dr. Alan Lockwood is the principal author of the just released report ‘Coal’s Assault On Human Health’ from the Physicians For Social Responsibility. Thanks very much for talking time to talk with us.

Dr. Lockwood: Thank you for having me.

Related Links