as before it the House plan, the so-called Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011 (HR 2018), which would restrict the EPA's ability to veto permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers. Janet Keating, executive director of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, attended and referred Manchin to what he'd said on CNN, that there is no clear evidence of human health impacts from MTR. She then handed him copies of the 18 studies showing or suggesting health impacts. Manchin told Keating that at the time the CNN show was taped, these studies were not available.
Huh? I had copies of those studies. Surely a US Senator and former governor has as much access to published information as I do?
The health and economic problems caused by coal may explain why we're not buying the attacks on the EPA. A majority of voters in four Appalachian states want their water protected and disapprove of mountaintop mining. The same day Manchin was in Huntington, Lake Research Partners and Bellwether Research & Consulting released the results (pdf) of a poll commissioned by Appalachian Mountain Advocates, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club. Of 1,315 people interviewed in Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and Virginia, "Three-quarters support fully enforcing – and even increasing protections in – the Clean Water Act to safeguard streams, rivers and lakes in their states from mountaintop removal coal mining … Just 8% of voters oppose it. Support for this proposal is far-reaching, encompassing solid majorities of Democrats (86%), independents (76%), Republicans (71%) and Tea Party supporters (67%)."
The reaction to the poll from Jason Hayes, the communications director for the American Coal Council?
"They're doing a numbers job. They need to frighten people. They need more membership dollars … It's all very frightening if you don't understand what's going on."
What's going in is that this is an industry that spends money for fancy websites to "dispel myths" – for instance, by telling you that "reclamation" returns the mountainsides to their original state. For a more typical picture of reclamation, you might want to check out the PBS film "Razing Appalachia". And speaking of coal dollars, they appear to be benefiting our local politicians, including Manchin. As Manuel Quinones and Elana Schor pointed out:
"Senator Joe Manchin (Democrat, West Virginia) is more than just a supporter of his state's influential coal producers – he's a full-fledged industry insider. On his financial disclosures for 2009 and 2010, Manchin reported significant earnings from Enersystems Inc, a coal brokerage that he helped run before his political star rose. In the 19 months before winning his Senate seat in a hard-fought special election, Manchin reported operating income of $1,363,916 from Enersystems. His next disclosure showed $417,255 in Enersystems income."
Of course, Manchin says his investments are in a blind trust, but do you think he doesn't know that what's good for the coal industry is good for Joe Manchin? As filmmaker Mari-Lynn Evans has said of the CNN programme referred to by Keating:
"Mountain top removal mining is not an issue of jobs v the environment. It is an issue of corporate profits and corrupt politicians v the health and safety of human beings living under MTR sites in Appalachia. WVU scientists estimate over 11,000 people die in Appalachia each year because of coal. MTR mining provides less than 4,000 direct MTR jobs in West Virginia. Does that mean, for every MTR job, we must accept that those jobs will cost each of us the lives of two or three of our friends and loved ones? This is jobs v genocide. If you don't understand that, then you don't understand the story."
And the rest of us are paying, too, if not to the same extent. Air and water pollution travel past the immediate region. Social costs to the environment and health are not payed by the coal industry, and thus artificially lower the cost of coal energy and encourage its consumption. As economists Todd L Cherry of Appalacian State University and Jason Shogrenb of the Univisty of Wyo