The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) today released the result of its investigation into coal leasing practices at the Bureau of Land Management, which confirmed earlier reports that coal companies have taken advantage of a lax bidding process for leasing coal on publicly owned lands, resulting in nearly $30 billion in loss for U.S. taxpayers. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) echoed […]
By Tina Casey Yep, you read that right. Almost two weeks after a storage tank was discovered to be leaking 7,500 gallons of the coal-washing chemical Crude MCHM into the Elk River/water supply for nine counties in West Virginia, company officials finally disclosed yesterday that 300 gallons of another chemical, “PPH, stripped,” was also part […]
In the same days an entrepreneur went on federal trial for fraud over an unproven “clean coal” scheme, President Obama’s Department of Energy (DOE) gave a game-changing approval for a $1 billion gift to continue the unproven FutureGen “clean coal” boondoggle in Illinois. Kind of ironic, ain’t it—if it weren’t so tragic. On the heels of the West Virginia coal-cleaning chemical disaster, […]
By Matt Wasson It took a few days after a state of emergency was declared across nine West Virginia counties—and one-sixth of the state’s population was told not to drink or bathe using their tap water—for the national news media to discover a story of national importance occurring in the political backwaters of Appalachia. Filings by the West Virginia […]
Do you take sugar in your morning coffee? How about 4-methylcyclohexane methanol? A large spill of a chemicals used to remove impurities from coal occurred Thursday in Charleston, WV, contaminating the Elk River less than a mile upstream of the intake for the state’s largest drinking water treatment plant. As many as 300,000 West Virginia […]
By Kiley Kroh Residents of nine counties in West Virginia have been told not to use or drink their water after a chemical used by the coal industry spilled into the Elk River on Thursday. Gov. Tomblin (D-WV) declared a state of emergency as more than 100,000 customers, or 300,000 people, are without safe drinking water. The […]
Major Australian coal projects risk losing value due to falling demand from China, where leaders are increasingly concerned about growing public anger over severe air pollution, a new analysis from Oxford University has found. Australia’s coal investments, like this open pit mine in Victoria, risk becoming stranded if China implements new energy policies. Photo credit: Marcus Wong […]
Four years after the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s frank admission that “most members of Congress, like most Americans, oppose the practice” of mountaintop removal mining, “and we may not yet fully understand the effects of mountaintop removal mining on the health of our citizens,” West Virginia residents traveled to Washington, DC to make a special appeal to […]
By Don Lieber There are many reasons to reject fossil fuels now, after 200 years of their reign as society’s primary energy source. History will articulate both the benefits provided to human society derived from fossil fuel energy technologies from 1750 to the present—and the extensive costs. In addition to transportation, electricity, industrial power, military […]
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