I read with interest your article on recent unfavorable rulings to the coal industry via decisions against the US Army Corp of Engineers. Your article provides some insight to the real cost of using coal as a generation source and is the most balanced piece I have seen on this issue in quite some time.

The popular game today is to position alternative energy, most notably solar, as much more expensive compared to the cost of fossil fuel based energy, as in the case of coal. But left off the table in such comparisons are the very environmental impact costs your article touches on. Also left off the table are the health costs associated with the burning of coal for electricity known to produce significant mercury emissions. Nor is any cost analysis given to significant energy exchange loss encountered when burning coal for electricity. Current estimates of energy loss detail that utilities deliver less then 50% of the energy in a ton of coal burned to electricity delivered to point of use. "Clean coal" has yet to prove itself in the energy industry.

If the coal industry believes that decimating the greater Appalachian region through strip/sheer top mining and filling in vital stream waterways which results in producing "flat land" for more Wal-Marts, McDonalds, gas stations and Dunkin Donuts is an exchange of significant value, it is not.

The American people need to demand more in order to deserve better from both industry and government.

A country that comprises only 5% of the world's population yet consumes 26% of the world's energy is going to feel significant energy price pain going forward. As energy becomes more expensive at the pump, in the home and in industry/commercial segments, it not going to negotiate the American life style. One only need look at New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina to learn that lesson. Yet another area where the US Army Corp of Engineers has insisted it has "everything is under control".

Alternative energy sources and conservation are neither enemies of nor mutually exclusive to fossil fuel based interests. Simply because we have significant coal reserves does not dictate their unbridled use as the coal industry would lead everyone to believe. It is a loss for all Americans that the unrelenting "profit motive" blinds coal industry and other fossil fuel based leaders.

The sooner we understand this reality, the better off we might be.

Bob Magyar
Managing Director
Power Ease

It is no more legitimate to use the phrase "the assault on coal" than it would be to use the phrase "coal's assault on the environment." Both expressions are loaded with prejudicial assumptions. Sure, maybe someone who is very attached to some part of the coal mining industry feels that coal is being assaulted, just as a person very attached to the heroin industry may think that heroin is being assaulted by laws limiting the sales of the drug. Someone living just downwind of a coal-burning power plant may think their land is being assaulted with excessive soot and mercury. And so on.


Back in the late 19th Century, there were political issues with smokestack emissions in the industrial cities of the eastern United States. There were controversies over the use of coal in London in a century or two earlier.


In different forms, the arguments continue. They cannot always be settled in favor of the coal industry, nor can they all be settled against it. The point is, the discussions are legitimate, with some rights and some important interests, both human and economic, on both sides.


By using the expression "the assault on coal," you are declaring that, rather than reporting news, you have picked a side and you expect your readers to be on the same side. The rest of your content shows this is exactly the case. Your interpretations of the damage done to the environment and the desirability of strip malls or schools on filled valleys are presented as facts, not interpretations. You allow mining spokesmen to speak for "opponents," but have no quotes from actual opponents.


In short, you are publishing propaganda, not news. I suspect you know that.


Art Myatt

When I first read the title of this editorial "Coal Assaults Continue" I was not sure if you were referring to the "Coal" as the victim or the perpetrator. As I read on, you made it explicit that you regard coal as the "victim."


I applaud you for accurately reporting the damage toll already exacted upon Appalachia by the coal industry: "1,200 miles of streams have been buried while at least 380,000 acres of local forestry have been devastated. "You failed to mention all the people whose properties and lives have been wrecked along with this environmental devastation. You failed to report the ruined water wells, cracked foundations, lost property values, and outright deaths from floods, flyrock, and coal trucks the coal industry has inflicted upon the coalfield residents. I find it curious that any objective commentator would use such loaded language to describe a multibillion-dollar industry that has caused more environmental degradation, death, and suffering than perhaps any other in the country as a victim.


I also applaud you for recognizing that four federal courts have ruled that mountaintop removal mining is illegal. Since when has the verdicts of our federal judiciary been characterized as "assaults?" True, these rulings have been overruled on appeals, but as you accurately pointed out, two of the appeals judges dissented quite strongly from the majority decision. I will only point out that many great social struggles such as the Civil Rights Movement have suffered repeated setbacks in the courts before finally prevailing. In the process of trying to portray the coal industry as an innocent victim you cited several myths that are demonstrably false. The argument that mountaintop removal mining generates flat land needed for economic development is one of the most egregious. True, Appalachia is very mountainous, but there has never been a shortage of flat land in Appalachia. The millions of tourists that travel through Appalachia each year are not there because they are pining for the middle of Illinois.


The myth that the coal industry is essential for the economic well being of the state is also ridiculous. If the wealth of Appalachians were even the tiniest bit proportional to the quantity of coal removed from the region then all of its residents should be as rich as the Saudi royal family by now. However, as is always the case, most of the wealth accrues to a small number of already wealthy executives and stockholders, most of them residing outside of Appalachia. The fact is the poorest regions of the country correlate almost perfectly with those producing the most coal. The coal industry's complaint that critics point only to the "active, not-yet-reclaimed sites in their pictures and articles" is also untrue. What the coal industry does not want the world to see is the reality of the "reclaimed" land: the hundreds of miles of buried streams and 380,000 acres of biologically rich and productive mixed hardwood forest will never return to the areas they have mined.


Your article also correctly points out that the coal industry should be concerned about global warming legislation. Coal fired electric generating plants produce 40% of all the carbon dioxide emissions of the largest carbon dioxide emitting country in the world -- the United States. They also produce the largest portion of many other air pollutants that are collectively thought to result in the premature death from respiratory diseases of thousands of people in the US. Lastly, coal fired power plant emissions are also the largest source of mercury emissions in the US. So while the Marshall University study that the coal industry generates 15,000 jobs and $2.4 billion in economic activity in West Virginia may be true, it omits how much that same coal industry is costing the state and the country? More importantly, who is really the victim in this debate?


Joe Schiller

 

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