by Laura Arney and Robert Siegel

Think about it…..“Every time you turn on lights here in Rochester, explosives go off in the hills of Appalachia.” This is the message that Julia Bonds, leader of Coal River Mountain Watch, had to tell when she and Patty Sebok came to Rochester to talk about the mountain top removal (valley fill) method of mining coal that is polluting valley headwater streams, dislodging and cracking homes, and changing well water quality. Three million pounds of explosives are used every working day to get coal for electric power generation.

The Sierra Club, Environmental Justice, and other groups are involved in this issue in Tennessee and West Virginia. Our Rochester Regional Group helped support Julia and Patty’s visit to Rochester on April 14th when she spoke at Corpus Christi. They also showed a terrific film about the issue “Black Diamonds.” We hope to screen it later this year. Very few people appreciate the environmental and social devastation that the coal industry has wreaked upon the Appalachian region.

This is not to mention the tremendously harmful impact of coal burning on our global climate. For every ton of coal burned, approximately three tons of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere. And there are a lot of tons burned, over a billion annually. This is why, according to an EPA report released this week, coal-fired power plants contribute 40% of America’s carbon dioxide emissions, more than all of our cars and trucks combined.

This is not just a problem in Appalachia. Russell Station, in the town of Greece burns coal and is in fact one of the dirtiest coal plants in America. RG&E just announced that they plan to invest $500 million in Russell Station rather than shut it down. According to RG&E spokesman Bob Bergin, a new plan calls for Russell Station to be redeveloped as a “modern, efficient and more environmentally sensitive plant.” But it will still be burning coal in the future in spite of using a new supposedly “clean-coal” technology.

So-called “clean coal” refers to a series of technical options ranging from gasification to scrubbers that remove sulfur and nitrogen oxides from the effluent. In general, they do little to reduce greenhouse gases, except by virtue of any efficiency improvements they realize. There has been speculation that carbon sequestration could be added later, if necessary, but this is a ploy that the coal industry is using to get these plants built now before regulations become more strict, as they must. Sequestration has not been proven. No one knows if it can be done at all, never mind economically. There is no other human activity more detrimental to the looming climate crisis than burning coal.

Yes, America’s energy demands are high, too high, in fact, especially when compared to European countries with comparable living standards. And yes, we have a lot of coal here. But a recent report by the American Solar Energy Society demonstrates that all of our demands can be met with a combination of renewables and efficiency, never mind good old-fashioned conservation. Burning coal was yesterday’s solution which begat today’s problem. It also does nothing to help people who are living with the dirty methods of extracting coal. Learn more at www.mountainjusticesummer.org/facts/steps.php .