If you didn’t have my support before, Mr. Santorum, you really don’t have it now. I was by no means ready to vote for you, and I really tend to think you’re full of crap, but after the New Hampshire debate I am a very angry camper.
During tonight’s debate Rick Santorum made it clear that he is willing to fight alongside coal companies to fight cap and trade (which limits how much pollution plants are allowed to put into the air). Santorum does not believe in global warming and will work with coal (and steel) companies to be able to work at maximum production. Does Senator Santorum even care that these coal companies that are “losing money” by only being allowed to pollute the air so much are more concerned about maximum production and making money than the safety of the miners and the well-being of the people in proximity to mines?
29 coal miners were killed on April 5th, 2010 in Montcoal, West Virginia, when the Upper Big Branch Mine exploded. This explosion was the fault of both the coal company, which at the time was Massey Energy, and the Mine Safety Health Administration. If the mine had been kept up to the standards that are set by MSHA, the explosion never would have occurred. If Massey Energy had been punished for these violations, none of those men would have been killed. But the concern of the company was production and making money, not taking the time or money to fix safety hazards that ultimately cost these men their lives. This is only one instance of lives lost because of the greed of coal companies.
These coal companies are responsible for the deplorable health conditions that come with living in a coal mining area. Everything from asthma to gastrointestinal problems to issues with kidney failure are a result of mining coal. People living in a region with heavy coal industry are 25% more likely to suffer from kidney disease. The quality of both air and water are deplorable. In the mountains, where you think the air would cleaner and you should be able to see to the bottom of a mountain stream…you can’t. The Big Coal River is green and murky in several places (even at its shallow points), and the fish that somehow manage to live in the water are inedible. And a lot of those streams and headwaters are polluted with things such as mercury and other toxins because of run off and seeping from slurry ponds.
These same coal companies have no problem destroying the rich heritage of Appalachia. The variety of forestry and wildlife found in the Appalachian Mountains isn’t greater than anywhere else in the world except for the Amazon rain forest. Yet, strip mining is becoming evermore prevalent means of extracting coal. Yep. Exploding an entire mountain to get out a resource we have more than enough of, directly destroying the habitats of wildlife and all of the various plants and through debris destroying homes, is worth the lowered cost of extracting coal (and these are just the immediate effects…). Have a mountain that should be a historical landmark, like say a certain mountain where in the late summer of 1921 striking coal miners took on local law enforcement and the Army (including Martin MB-1 bombers), but is full of coal? They’ll blast that too. In fact, they will contest it even becoming a historical landmark because blasting it is worth more than preserving our nation’s history. They also have no problem coercing people out of homes they’ve probably had for generations because they want the land for one reason another.
This is just an overview of why supporting coal companies in their fight against cap and trade is infuriating. Rick Santorum is from Pennsylvania and continuously reminds voters that it is a state reliant on coal mining and steel. If this is the case, Santorum should know what it’s like to have problems breathing and to have water unfit to drink. The fact that he still supports making it easier for these companies to make money, knowing what these companies do, (on top of the gay and Muslim bashing and overall ignorance…) make it impossible to have any respect for him.
The senator from Pennsylvania says that these limits on emissions, and a decrease in the cap, will destroy a coal heavy state like Pennsylvania. But Mr. Santorum, if the people, the heritage, the wildlife, and even the mountains themselves are suffering so at the hands of coal companies, aren’t those states already being destroyed?
If you didn’t have my support before, Mr. Santorum, you really don’t have it now. I was by no means ready to vote for you, and I really tend to think you’re full of crap, but after the New Hampshire debate I am a very angry camper.
During tonight’s debate Rick Santorum made it clear that he is willing to fight alongside coal companies to fight cap and trade (which limits how much pollution plants are allowed to put into the air). Santorum does not believe in global warming and will work with coal (and steel) companies to be able to work at maximum production. Does Senator Santorum even care that these coal companies that are “losing money” by only being allowed to pollute the air so much are more concerned about maximum production and making money than the safety of the miners and the well-being of the people in proximity to mines?
29 coal miners were killed on April 5th, 2010 in Montcoal, West Virginia, when the Upper Big Branch Mine exploded. This explosion was the fault of both the coal company, which at the time was Massey Energy, and the Mine Safety Health Administration. If the mine had been kept up to the standards that are set by MSHA, the explosion never would have occurred. If Massey Energy had been punished for these violations, none of those men would have been killed. But the concern of the company was production and making money, not taking the time or money to fix safety hazards that ultimately cost these men their lives. This is onlyone instance of lives lost because of the greed of coal companies.
These coal companies are responsible for the deplorable health conditions that come with living in a coal mining area. Everything from asthma to gastrointestinal problems to issues with kidney failure are a result of mining coal. People living in a region with heavy coal industry are 25% more likely to suffer from kidney disease. The quality of both air and water are deplorable. In the mountains, where you think the air would cleaner and you should be able to see to the bottom of a mountain stream…you can’t. The Big Coal River is green and murky in several places (even at its shallow points), and the fish that somehow manage to live in the water are inedible. And a lot of those streams and headwaters are polluted with things such as mercury and other toxins because of run off and seeping from slurry ponds.
These same coal companies have no problem destroying the rich heritage of Appalachia. The variety of forestry and wildlife found in the Appalachian Mountains isn’t greater than anywhere else in the world except for the Amazon rain forest. Yet, strip mining is becoming evermore prevalent means of extracting coal. Yep. Exploding an entire mountain to get out a resource we have more than enough of, directly destroying the habitats of wildlife and all of the various plants and through debris destroying homes, is worth the lowered cost of extracting coal (and these are just the immediate effects…). Have a mountain that should be a historical landmark, like say a certain mountain where in the late summer of 1921 striking coal miners took on local law enforcement and the Army (including Martin MB-1 bombers), but is full of coal? They’ll blast that too. In fact, they will contest it even becoming a historical landmark because blasting it is worth more than preserving our nation’s history. They also have no problem coercing people out of homes they’ve probably had for generations because they want the land for one reason another.
This is just an overview of why supporting coal companies in their fight against cap and trade is infuriating. Rick Santorum is from Pennsylvania and continuously reminds voters that it is a state reliant on coal mining and steel. If this is the case, Santorum should know what it’s like to have problems breathing and to have water unfit to drink. The fact that he still supports making it easier for these companies to make money, knowing what these companies do, (on top of the gay and Muslim bashing and overall ignorance…) make it impossible to have any respect for him.
The senator from Pennsylvania says that these limits on emissions, and a decrease in the cap, will destroy a coal heavy state like Pennsylvania. But Mr. Santorum, if the people, the heritage, the wildlife, and even the mountains themselves are suffering so at the hands of coal companies, aren’t those states already being destroyed?
Reposted because of edits.
Massey Gets Away With Murder: Time To Revoke their Charter
Of the twenty-nine men killed, nineteen died as a result of carbon monoxide intoxication and ten as a result of injuries suffered in the explosion.
One week later, former Governor Joe Manchin asked J. Davitt McAteer, an assistant secretary of labor in charge of mine safety in the Clinton administration, to conduct an independent investigation into the causes of the disaster and issue recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
McAteer and his colleagues—experts in coal mining, mining law, mining communities and occupational safety and public health—released their report last month after conducting underground investigations for over six months and conducting more than 300 interviews. Eighteen corporate officials from Massey Energy and its subsidiary Performance Coal—which ran the UBB mine—invoked the Fifth, declining to be interviewed in order to protect from self-incrimination.
Although it received insufficient media attention, the 126-page Governor’s Independent Investigation Panel (GIIP)report released last month is damning in its conclusion: “Ultimately, the responsibility for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine lies with the management of Massey Energy. The company broke faith with its workers by frequently and knowingly violating the law and blatantly disregarding known safety practices.”
The investigation concludes that the explosion occurred when a spark—which occurs frequently when cutting coal due to friction—ignited an explosive accumulation of methane, causing a fireball. The fireball in turn ignited coal dust that had been allowed to build up, and the coal dust carried the explosion throughout more than two miles of the mine.
Massey’s blatant disregard for safety had created a perfect storm.
The methane and coal dust accumulated because of an inadequate ventilation system—the same one Quarles and so many of his co-workers had complained resulted in “no air” circulating where they were mining. The coal dust remained hazardous due to inadequate “rock dusting” which is used to render coal dust inert—Massey only had two men responsible for dusting the entire mine on a part-time basis, when the size justified a two-man crew assigned solely to rock dusting on at least two shifts every day. Finally, the fire spread due to Massey’s failure to maintain vital safety equipment—missing or clogged water sprays could have doused the fire at the point of ignition.
And Massey had ample warnings about these safety problems.
“Pre-shift examinations” between January and April 2010 identified 1,834 instances when rock dusting was needed, and only 302 times when it was performed—in fact, fireboss Michael Elswick, who was killed after just four days on the job, reported that the conveyor belts needed to be cleaned and dusted just one-half hour before the explosion. Also, in fourteen out of fifteen months preceding the disaster, UBB received citations from federal or state inspectors regarding rock dust issues, and nearly half of the forty federal citations were classified as “significant and substantial.” In the months leading up to the explosion, one Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) inspector pulled workers from a section due to inadequate airflow, a MSHA ventilation specialist warned Massey of “a dangerous situation,” and a foreman was told by management to “ignore a citation” the mine received for faulty ventilation. Finally, a foreman who stopped his crew from working for one hour while trying to address ventilation problems was suspended for three days due to “poor work performance” (the executive who suspended him, Jason Whitehead, refused to cooperate with the investigation and was promoted to Massey’s vice president of Underground Operations several months after the disaster).
Even the autopsy reports were stunning in terms of what they revealed about Massey’s reckless disregard for dust control—twenty-four victims were tested for black lung disease caused by coal mine dust, and seventeen came back positive. The national prevalence rate in the United States among active underground miners is 3.2 percent, and the rate in West Virginia is 7.6 percent.
* * *
Inadequate ventilation, poor rock dusting, shoddy maintenance—twenty-nine miners dead.
Where is the justice? Where are the jail terms?
So far, just Massey’s chief of security has been indicted—and that was for lying to the FBI and obstructing the criminal investigation. What about the top brass who insisted that the miners keep running coal even as they rightly feared that basic safety standards were being ignored?
Full article. Emphasis mine.
Read the report from the investigation.
Sign the Petition to revoke Massey’s Charter.
Coal company: 'Birth defects aren't from mining, they're because you're inbred hicks'
grist.orgBabies born in areas with mountaintop-removal mining have higher rates of birth defects — we know that from a study that came out last month. But, say coal companies, that doesn’t mean the mining CAUSES the birth defects! They could easily be caused by something else — like, say, rampant inbreeding.
A letter from law firm Crowell & Moring, representing the National Mining Association, rebutted the study’s findings by saying they failed to account for “consanquinity.” That is not a thing, but “consanguinity” is inbreeding. And inbreeding is a nasty (and false) rumor about West Virginia, where a lot of mountaintop-removal mining takes place.
I am so unimpressed and not surprised. I have no actual critique, I’m just pissed.
