Safety Awards for Big Polluters

  • Some say that workplace safety awards promote complacency. (Photo courtesy of the NIEHS/DOE)

The companies associated with the two biggest accidents this year both recently got safety awards from the government. Lester Graham reports.

Transcript

The companies associated with the two biggest accidents this year both recently got safety awards from the government. Lester Graham reports.

The Mineral Management Service announced BP was a finalist for a safety award in May. Then, the Deepwater Horizon exploded, killed eleven men, and spilled –who knows how much– oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Mine Safety and Health Administration gave the coal company Massey Energy three safety awards last year. Then the Upper Big Branch Mine exploded. 29 miners died.

In an opinion piece in The Hill , The President of the Steelworkers union, Leo Gerard, argued those awards promote complacency– a sort of ‘see we’re already doing it.’

David Uhlmann is a law professor at the University of Michigan. He served for seven years as Chief of the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section. He says awards can prod companies to do better… but…

“There’s always going to be some companies who cut corners, who put profits before safety, who put profits before their obligations to protect the environment.”

BP was to get its award in May. The safety awards ceremonies were postponed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Cleaning Up Coal’s Future

  • Lester Graham at the coal mine Shay #1 in Macoupin County, Illinois. He's interviewing the mine general manager Roger Dennison. (Photo courtesy of Phil Ganet)

The coal industry is hopeful
an old technology will help
them clean up an increasingly
unpopular fuel. Lester Graham
reports, without it, coal faces
an uncertain future:

Transcript

The coal industry is hopeful
an old technology will help
them clean up an increasingly
unpopular fuel. Lester Graham
reports, without it, coal faces
an uncertain future:

[Editor’s Note: The script for this story will be posted shortly.]

Related Links

Interview: A Pound of Coal

  • Coal train. (Photo courtesy of the Energy Information Administration)

When you turn on the lights,
there’s a pretty good chance
you’re burning coal. Almost
half of the nation’s electricity
comes from coal. Burning coal
causes the greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide. But, have you
ever wondered how much?
Lester Graham got a pound of
coal, and then talked to Ezra
Hausman. He’s
the Vice President of Synapse
Energy Economics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. The first question –
how long would a pound of coal
light up a hundred-watt incandescent
light bulb?:

Transcript

When you turn on the lights,
there’s a pretty good chance
you’re burning coal. Almost
half of the nation’s electricity
comes from coal. Burning coal
causes the greenhouse gas,
carbon dioxide. But, have you
ever wondered how much?
Lester Graham got a pound of
coal, and then talked to Ezra
Hausman. He’s
the Vice President of Synapse
Energy Economics in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. The first question –
how long would a pound of coal
light up a hundred-watt incandescent
light bulb?:

Ezra Hausman: Well, you haven’t told me where you got that pound of coal. Uh, it makes a big difference if it’s from the Appalachian region or the Western region, such as Wyoming in the United States. The Appalachian coal, Eastern coal, would burn a light bulb for about, uh, 10 or 12 hours. A pound of Western coal would only burn it for about 5 or 6 hours.

Lester Graham: There’s that much difference?

Ezra: There’s a big difference in the energy content of the coal, that’s correct.

Lester: And coal, a good portion of coal, is pure carbon. What kind of CO2 omissions would we expect from this one kind of coal?

Ezra: Well, a pound of coal is, let’s say, it’s about half carbon. So that would be a half a pound of carbon, but for every atom of carbon you add two atoms of oxygen from the air. So, you get for every 12 grams of carbon, you get 44 grams of carbon dioxide. That’s basically just how the chemistry works out when you burn carbon and oxygen; it produces carbon dioxide in that ratio.

Lester: So, this one pound of coal, would admit, by weight, more CO2 than I have in my hand here?

Ezra: That’s right; it would end up admitting about two pounds of CO2. Depending again on where the coal came from and how much carbon is in it.

Lester: Now my environmentalist friends would like to see no more coal plants built, no more coal burning power plants built, simply because of the CO2 emissions. The coal industry tells me they’re working on clean coal; there are experiments going on right now to find ways to sequester CO2 and other experiments going on how to store it underground. What do you think is the future of coal?

Ezra: Well, first of all, I think it’s important to say that there is no such thing as clean coal today. So in the first place, coal mining is an extremely environmentally damaging and dangerous process. The high volumes techniques that are now in use including strip-mining and mountain top removal have devastating consequences on mining regions. And secondly, while there are techniques in place that eliminate many of the regular pollutants such as sulfur and nitrogen from coal combustion, there is no current technology that can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted from power plants.

Lester: What do you see as the future of coal and power generation from coal in America in the future?

Ezra: Well, I think we really have no option but the phase out the use of coal for power generation over the next several decades. The problem with coal is not that each pound has so much carbon; the problem is that there is just a vast reservoir of carbon and potential carbon dioxide in the coal reserves under ground in the United States.

Ezra Hausman is Vice President of Synapse Energy Economics.
He talked with The Environment Report’s
Lester Graham.

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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

Dirty Gold

  • Mary Yeboa lives new Newmont's mine - an American gold mining company. (Photo by Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:

(Research assistance
provided by the Investigative Fund
of the Nation Institute.)

Transcript

Buying a piece of jewelry for
someone is often an emotional
celebration. But some people
are concerned about the damage
caused by mining that gold.
Anna Boiko-Weyrauch takes us from
the jewelry store to the gold mine:

“It is a white gold band, with a star sapphire in the middle.”

In New York City, Sarah Lenigan is showing off her engagement ring. She got married this summer in California. Nowadays some people like her are starting to wonder where the stuff they buy comes from, including their wedding rings.

“You know the idea of the blood diamond, and not just the movie but, you do think about these things when you think about real jewelry. And this is the first time we’ve bought real jewelry, so it was a whole new ball game, I guess.”

It’s hard to say exactly where the gold in Sarah’s ring came from. Gold isn’t like other commodities – it’s almost impossible to track. But more and more, gold like Sarah’s is coming out of Ghana, in West Africa.

(driving sounds)

We’re driving over a dam on the Subri river in Ghana. The country used to be called the Gold Coast and today it’s the second largest producer of gold in Africa. Most of the gold comes out of a number of large surface mines. They’re all owned by companies from abroad.

At this dam, the American gold mining company, Newmont, stores water and waste from its gold mine.

Adusah Yakubu is with me. He’s a member of a local advocacy group. One side of the dam is green forest and clear water. But the other side looks like the surface of the moon.

“It looks like there’s cement in the river. It’s very hard, and it’s very gray. (What is that?) It’s a tailings dam.”

A tailings dam is where mining companies put waste from processing gold. After the precious metal is extracted, you get a mixture of sand and water. It also contains cyanide. Now, the chemical is poisonous, but it’s used all the time in gold mining. And miners work to control it.

But there are also accidents. Some of that waste overflowed this fall at Newmont’s mine, and killed fish downstream. The company says it was a minor event.

For the people who live around Newmont’s mine, the operations have really disrupted their lives. This river used to be the main source of drinking water and food for nearby villages. Kwame Kumah and his wife, Mary Yeboa live by the dam. They say they used to rely on the river for a lot of things.

“There are so many different things we got from the river. You could even get food from it, like fish, crab. But nowadays we can’t get anything from it.”

Now they can’t go near the water because of security guards. Newmont gave the community a well to make up for it. But the villagers say the dam has brought more mosquitoes, and with the mosquitos, disease. Although the company sold them discounted mosquito nets, Mary Yeboa says she gets sick much more than before.

“Right now, my body hurts all over. As I’m talking to you I have a headache, it really hurts. I don’t feel well at all.”

The gold mining company, Newmont declined to comment for this story.

The company sells its gold on the world market. Some people might buy it as investments, others for manufacturing. Or, it could end up as jewelry, like Sarah Lenigan’s engagement ring. That’s actually where most new gold goes, to jewelry.

Soon jewelry consumers, who care about their impact might be able to get some guidance. Certification systems such as the Responsible Jewelry Council are looking at gold, from the mine to the store.

Council CEO, Michael Rae says they are trying to clean up the jewelry business.

“It looks at environmental performance, social performance, labor standards, occupational health and safety, child labor issues and also in business ethics.”

The system won’t guarantee that gold or diamonds are from a specific mine, but it will reveal whether retailers and miners are making an effort to play fair.

Many jewelry and mining companies have signed on to the code. Newmont, the owner of the mine in Ghana we visited, is not a current member.

For The Environment Report, I’m Anna Boiko-Weyrauch.

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

Tar Sands Get Tripped Up

  • Processing tar sands crude creates more air pollution than normal. (Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory)

American gasoline refineries are
expanding to process a dirtier kind
of oil. Shawn Allee reports
one company’s plans hit a snag:

Transcript

American gasoline refineries are
expanding to process a dirtier kind
of oil. Shawn Allee reports
one company’s plans hit a snag:

The BP fuel refinery in Northwest Indiana wants to process more Canadian tar sands oil.
Processing tar sands crude creates more air pollution than normal. The federal
government wants more air pollution figures from BP before signing off on an air
permit.

Groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council pressed the government to step in.
The NRDC’s Ann Alexander is glad BP’s tar sands project is getting scrutiny.

“If tar sands are going to be developed, we think it’s it’s critical they be developed in
a way that complies with the Clean Air Act, because the Clean Air Act is there to
make sure it’s not the community that pays for development of tar sands through
increased pollution and the health problems that result, but that it’s BP who pays
those costs.”

BP’s tar sands oil project in Indiana is just one of several going on in the Midwest.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Mountaintop Mining Applications Held Up

  • 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
is holding up nearly 80 permit
applications for coal mining projects
because of concerns about about water
quality. Tamara Keith
reports this is creating a different
kind of concern in Appalachian coal
country:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency
is holding up nearly 80 permit
applications for coal mining projects
because of concerns about about water
quality. Tamara Keith
reports this is creating a different
kind of concern in Appalachian coal
country:

The applications involve mountain top removal coal mining. Explosives are used to get at coal that’s close to the surface.

In the past, the mining companies have been allowed to fill in valleys with the leftover rock and dirt. But the EPA is concerned that streams are getting buried and polluted so the agency is now giving that practice a serious second look.

Carol Raulston is with the National Mining Association. She says holding up those permits have people in the mining towns of Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee worried about losing their jobs.

“You really can’t operate these mines and employ people at them unless you’re able to construct the fills and in many of these communities they are the sole employer.”

An EPA spokesperson says protecting drinking water and coal mining jobs are both important. The agency says both can be done.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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A Look Into Coal Country

  • The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And that takes coal. (Photo courtesy of Coal Country)

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Transcript

When the Senate picks up debate
on the climate change bill, it
will be – in part – deciding the
future of coal as an energy source
in the U.S. About half the nation’s
electricity currently comes from
coal. And a lot of it comes from
the Appalachian region. A new
documentary film sets out to show
how mining for coal affects the people
who live in Coal Country. Julie Grant
spoke with the film’s producers:

Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller set out to make the movie Coal Country
because they wanted to show how different people are affected by coal
mining.

They found lots of activists, and regular citizens, who would talk with
them. Plenty of people were willing to show the thick black water in their
toilet tanks. They wanted to show the black soot covering their cars.
They wanted to talk about the health problems they live with. And they all
blamed the coal industry.

Evans also wrote to coal supporters – to get their side of the story on
camera. The answer?

“No. That was their response. I sent out requests to the coal industry,
to coal companies and to suppliers of the coal industry.”

Evans brother is a coal miner. He supports mountain top removal.

(sound of explosions)

As we see in the movie, that’s when coal companies blow off the entire
top of a mountain to get to the coal. Many people consider it the most
polluting and environmentally devastating type of mining.

But Evans says not even her own brother would do an interview about it.

“And when I said, ‘why won’t you talk on camera? You feel so
passionately that coal is wonderful and mountaintop removal is actually for
the environment as well as the economy.’ And his response to me always
was, ‘oh I would never speak on camera without getting permission from
the company I work for.’”

The filmmakers heard that a lot. And no coal miners ever did get
permission to talk on camera.

In the movie, we do hear from Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy. He
spoke at a public hearing about the need to ease environmental restrictions
on coal mining.

“We had nearly 800 employees up ‘til Friday. We had to lay 8 off. I
think that might be just the tip of the iceberg if we don’t our rules
changed how we mine in the state.”

Anti-coal activists at the public hearing explain how the coal companies
use that kind of intimidation to control miners.

“I think people are scared that they will lose their jobs and be flipping
burgers. You look out and that’s all you see. You see mining and
flipping burgers. And, I argue, that the coal companies want it that way.
They want that to be the only option. That’s the only way they could get
support for how they treat their workers and how they treat this land.
This would never happen in a place that wasn’t poor. Never.”

In the movie, some coal miners stand up at the public meeting to defend the
companies they work for. One explains the coal industry has provided him a
good salary.

Miner One: “For the last 14 years, the coal industry has supported myself
and my wife and my 3 children.”

Miner Two: “When the last one of you so-called environmentalists leave
the state, when the rest of us leave for North Carolina, turn out the
lights. Oh, wait a minute, there won’t be no lights. No coal, no
lights.”

(music)

The filmmakers want more Americans to understand that when we flick on a
light switch – it is not a meaningless act. It takes electricity. And
that takes coal.

And, as anti-coal activist Judy Bonds says in the movie, coal is tearing
apart West Virginia.

“It is a civil war; it’s families against families. It’s brother
against brother.”

Or – in the case of filmmaker Mari Lynn-Evans – brother against
sister.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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