Date: July 22, 2001
Source: Just Within Reach
With Permission from:
[email protected]
Dear Friends of JWR:
Many people have requested that we share environmental news by email until
our web site is up and running. To meet that need, we'd like to start by
sharing this article which just appeared in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.
It is somewhat technical but extremely educational and takes a good, hard
look at the coal industry and fossil fuels and the environmental damage being
caused, including global warming. It discusses a number of different issues.
It's quite long and AOL doesn't like long emails, so I'm sending it in two
parts. We won't send items like this often, but we thought this would be of
particular interest since this reporter took a flight over West Virginia much
like we and Kevin flew over Eastern Kentucky on June 19 to see the
devastation in the mountains of his home state. Kevin is working on a letter
to the editor of the Magazine in response to this article and will be posting
his flight experience on www.BackstreetBoys.com. Thanks again for your
interest and your support. We welcome your feedback on this story and if you
don't like what you read, contact your public officials and urge them to
enforce environmental regulations and explore renewable, Earth-friendly
energy sources. Thanks again!
Vicki Hanna, Programming and Public Relations
How Coal Got Its Glow Back
By Jeff Goodell The New York Times
Twenty-five miles south of Charleston, W. Va., the Appalachians look as they
must have a thousand years ago, rapturously folded against each other and
densely covered with trees. Down a gently sloping mountainside, a conveyor
belt angles toward four coal-storage bins that resemble farm silos. I exit
onto a roughly-paved road and arrive at a small white guardhouse near a
wooden sign: "Hobet 21."
It doesn't look like much. But in fact Hobet 21 covers some 12,000 acres,
almost all of it hidden from easy public view by foliage and mountain
ridges. Hobet 21 is owned by Arch Coal, America's second-largest coal
company, with mines throughout Appalachia and the West. Arch will dig up 100
million tons of coal this year, with six million coming from Hobet 21.
Almost half the coal Arch digs in Appalachia will be obtained by a
controversial method known as "mountaintop removal." Instead of digging the
coal out of the mountains in subterranean shafts, as miners used to do,
workers today -- with the help of enormous machines called draglines that
scoop 100 tons of earth and rock at a time -- simply remove the mountains
from the coal. It's hell on the owls and frogs and human beings who live in
the vicinity, but it's remarkably efficient.
At the guardhouse, I'm greeted by Larry Emerson, director of "environmental
performance" for Arch. A tall, rangy West Virginia native dressed in jeans
and a baseball hat, he is deliberate in his good cheer. "Welcome to our
world," Emerson says, pumping my hand firmly. "I hear you want to see where
electricity comes from."
I follow Emerson's Dodge 4 by 4 up the hill. Looking at the coal-handling
machinery -- the silos where coal is washed of impurities, the loading deck
where it is funneled into rail cars -- I feel as if I'm passing through a
theme-park exhibit about How Life Used to Be in America. All that's missing
are pickaxes and mules. I'm also amazed by the tall piles of glistening
rock; coal has a reputation as a filthy fuel, but in its raw state, it is
shiny and pitch-black lovely.
After a short drive, we suddenly come to a huge barren area -- a man-made
plateau. In the center of this wide-open field, near some rusty trailers, is
the mining office. It feels strangely exposed up here. West Virginia is all
hollows and shadows and twisting roads. This is a different planet.
We park near the office, and Emerson, who has supervised the planting of
trees on reclaimed mine land, hands me some P.R. material touting Arch's
environmental accomplishments. As we chat, a siren goes off in the distance.
A moment later, there's a boom. The earth trembles; a rabbit dashes across
the parking lot and dives under a bush. A plume of smoke rises on the
horizon.
"They're blasting," Emerson explains matter-of-factly.
Yes, they are -- blasting, booming and raking in the dough. Big Coal simply
can't believe its luck. For decades, the industry seemed to be dying. First,
the use of coal for industrial applications, like steel making, was phased
out. In the late 70's, utility companies began switching from coal to
natural gas, which was plentiful, more efficient and less of an
environmental nightmare. During the 80's and 90's, coal prices flattened.
Profits, if there were any, were measured in pennies per ton.
Then, unexpectedly, what one analyst has called "the Perfect Storm" hit the
energy industry. Rolling blackouts in California demonstrated that
electricity is not something that's created by wall outlets; the price of
natural gas shot up to $10 from $2.50 per million B.T.U.; and finally,
George W. Bush of Texas, the state that consumes more coal than any other in
the country, together with Dick Cheney, who hails from the largest
coal-producing state in the country, won the White House. Two months after
taking office, in an about-face that outraged environmentalists, President
Bush "clarified" his campaign pledge to begin regulating carbon-dioxide
emissions from power plants, effectively killing the international Kyoto
treaty on global warming. Considering that American coal-powered plants pump
2.3 billion tons of CO2 into the air each year -- twice as much as the
amount emitted by cars -- Bush's turnaround was a godsend. Then in May, the
administration announced an "energy plan" that openly championed coal,
positioning it as America's favored source of electricity generation for
decades to come.
To anyone who believes that technological progress moves in a straight line,
this has been a weird turn of events. It's as if a wormhole opened in the
cosmos and we slid back to the 1890's. Isn't this the dawn of the 21st
century? Why are we burning rocks to charge our cell phones?
Even before the boom, coal-fired power plants still produced more than 50
percent of the electricity in America. And Big Coal may soon have an even
bigger share: 22 new coal-powered plants have been proposed just in the last
few months. The price of coal has more than doubled since February, while
the stock prices of industry leaders like Arch and its rival, Peabody
Energy, have shot up like dot-coms of yore.
Flush with cash, Big Coal is now working to wipe some of the soot off its
image. The National Mining Association now refers to coal, which is formed
from ancient plant matter, as "buried sunshine." One industry-financed
advertisement features a kid standing on a pitcher's mound in a lighted
stadium, alongside the slogan "Electricity from coal: Essential, affordable,
increasingly clean." It's a deft phrase, considering that in 1999 American
coal-fired utilities filled the air with 18 million tons of sulfur dioxide
and nitrogen oxides, down from 21 million tons in 1990. (These chemicals are
the major cause of acid rain.)
Part of the new spin on coal is that it's the engine behind the New Economy.
Industry executives never tire of suggesting that, without coal, there would
be no semiconductors, no Internet. The first time I talked to Bill Raney,
the powerful president of the West Virginia Coal Association, he said,
apropos of nothing, "Did you know that it takes more energy to charge up a
Palm hand-held than it does to power a refrigerator for a month?" It turns
out Raney's claim is a bit exaggerated; a Palm is roughly 1,500 times less
power hungry than a refrigerator. But Big Coal loves such hyperbole. The
West Virginia Coal Association's Web site boldly claims that "the process of
ordering a book from Amazon.com uses about a half of a pound of coal" and
that computers and the Internet suck up 13 percent of the electricity in
America. In fact, the best studies suggest that such activities consume only
3 percent of the nation's electricity.
To Big Coal's critics, none of these exaggerations are surprising. "The coal
industry has been telling lies for years," says Carolyn Johnson, staff
director of the Citizens Coal Council, a Denver-based environmental group.
The notion that coal is "increasingly clean" galls David Hawkins, director
of the National Resources Defense Council's Climate Center. "When we tried
to pass acid-rain legislation, the industry fought us every step of the way
for 10 years," Hawkins says. "Now, because laws have forced sulfur-dioxide
emissions to go down, they're crowing about it as if it were their
accomplishment." To some, the sins of the coal industry go even deeper.
"Coal is not only wrecking my state," cries Larry Gibson, a local activist
whose ancestral home has been surrounded by mountaintop-mining operations.
"It is wrecking the planet! How much longer are we going to let them get
away with this?"
That's a question many people are asking, especially in the halls of
Congress. A series of political battles is shaping up that will outwardly be
about power-plant pollution and greenhouse gases but in fact will amount to
a kind of character test for the coal industry. The captains of Big Coal
want us to believe that they have turned over a new leaf, that the old days
of black lung and billowing smokestacks and the wanton destruction of nature
are over. They know that it's wise to adopt a public pose of reform. But now
that the Bush administration has placed them at the head of America's energy
table, Big Coal's top players are lobbying behind the scenes for a loosening
of regulations. The stakes in this largely ignored battle are enormous --
not only for the coal industry, but also for anyone who cares about clean
air and cheap electricity.
"This is an important moment for us," says Jack Gerard, president of the
National Mining Association, the industry's main lobbying group. "We have to
seize this opportunity and prove to the world that we are a new industry --
hopeful, open, technologically sophisticated and environmentally sensitive."
It's going to be a big job.
The National Mining Association Building squats on a prime piece of real
estate in Washington. The Mayflower Hotel, site of many power breakfasts and
illicit rendezvous, is right across the street. The building itself, a
square, solid box of black stone, was modeled on the headquarters of the
National Rifle Association and looks as if it could withstand nuclear
attack. Inside, it's freeze-framed from the 1970's, with harsh linoleum and
steel doors. Jack Gerard's office on the top floor has a few
power-politician touches, like a high-backed leather chair and a conference
room off to one side. A watercolor of a mining operation -- imagine coal
barges painted by a shopping-mall Monet -- hangs beside his desk. On the
windowsill sits a toy bulldozer and excavator. There is an industrial
frankness to it all; it's prespin America.
Gerard, 42, is friendly and warm, dressed in a crisply pressed white shirt
and expensive loafers. He has salt-and-pepper hair, a manly handshake and a
manner that's insistently familiar. "Excuse me, things have been a little
chaotic around here," he says, dashing out to hand some papers to his
assistant and double-check his afternoon schedule. A former high-powered
political consultant and legislative director for Senator James McClure,
Republican of Idaho, Gerard has been at this job for only about eight
months, and you get the feeling that this new coal-fired life is even hotter
than he expected. Earlier today, he had lunch with the owner of a Western
coal company who is thinking about the feasibility of building a new
coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and shipping the electricity to
California; this afternoon, he says he has been "keeping tabs" on what's
going on over in the House of Representatives, where the Commerce Committee
is beginning to mark up an energy bill.
But Gerard, despite all the nagging details of his day, really has his eye
on the big picture for the coal industry. And increasingly, that big picture
is focused on a tiny section of the Clean Air Act called New Source Review,
which prohibits power-plant operators from expanding old plants without also
installing state-of-the-art pollution-control devices. Later this summer,
the Bush administration may recommend the dismantling of New Source
Review -- and Big Coal is doing everything it can to make that happen.
While it sounds arcane, the conflict over New Source Review is in fact a
profound challenge to Big Coal. If the regulations are upheld and enforced,
satisfying their stringent environmental requirements could cost the
industry billions of dollars. More important, executives worry that if the
environmentalists win this battle, it could ultimately lead to a whole lot
less coal being burned in the United States. And less coal burned means less
coal mined, which is why Jack Gerard is concerned. "This is a big issue for
us," he says frankly.
The roots of this conflict go back more than 25 years. When the Clean Air
Act, which restricted pollution from smokestacks, was amended in 1977,
utilities fought for and won an exemption for their aging power plants. The
reasoning was that it would be too costly to upgrade older plants to meet
the Clean Air Act's strict requirements and that the plants would be retired
soon anyway. It didn't quite work that way. Many old belchers are still
running full tilt. In the mid-90's, regulators suspected that many
power-plant operators were evading the spirit, if not the letter, of the law
by installing new parts that prolonged the lives of the old power plants
while at the same time avoiding pollution upgrades. In 1999 and 2000, the
Department of Justice, on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency,
filed suit against a total of 51 power plants, charging them with violating
the Clean Air Act. A number of states, mostly in the Northeast, and various
environmental groups piled on with lawsuits of their own. Currently,
American Electric Power, one of the largest utilities in the country, is
being sued not only by the E.P.A., but also by eight states and 17
environmental groups.
"The effect of all this litigation," Gerard tells me, "was to chill the
industry. No one wanted to upgrade or maintain their power plants because
they were afraid of getting sued."
Meanwhile, Big Coal's aging power plants have cranked up the juice.
Electricity from old, heavily-polluting coal-fired power plants rose 15.8
percent between 1992 and 1998, an increase big enough to power California
for a year. In a single year, 1998, these old machines dumped 755,000 tons
of nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere -- the same amount of smog-forming
pollution emitted by 36 million cars. (Overall, the industry has increased
its CO2 output by 20 percent since 1990.)
Although the details are complex, the larger issue at stake in the battle
over New Source Review is straightforward: how long should these old power
plants be allowed to continue spewing pollution with impunity? As some
observers see it, the industry wants to delay reform indefinitely.
"These utilities have a deliberate strategy in place," one industry
consultant explains. "They're just going to keep running the plants as hard
as they can while fighting the lawsuits in court. They know that eventually
they will lose, but the longer they can drag it out, the more money they can
make."
Last summer, Big Coal got a break from an unexpected front: California, a
state that has long been anticoal. After the state's rolling blackouts hit,
suddenly everyone was talking about power plants -- not how filthy they are
but why there aren't more of them. Although California's troubles were in
fact caused more by half-baked deregulation than any shortage of generating
capacity (one recent study points out that the many blackouts occurred when
demand was only 75 percent of available supply), it's much easier to cry for
more power than it is to unravel the complex tangle of California energy
politics. The White House's trumpeting of the energy crisis helped to feed
the myth that America desperately needs additional sources of energy, clean
or no.
To take advantage of this fortuitous turn of events, the National Coal
Council, a federal advisory committee that critics claim is stacked with
coal-industry representatives, cranked out a "white paper" about how to
squeeze even more electricity out of those old power plants. Among the
conclusions the report reached was that the E.P.A. lawsuits had a "direct
and chilling effect" on the operation of the industry's coal-fired power
plants.
The Coal Council's paper was delivered to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham,
who passed it to Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy task force. In May,
when the White House unveiled its National Energy Policy, it was clear that
Big Coal's message had been heard. In the plan, President Bush directed the
E.P.A. and the Department of Energy to conduct a 90-day "review" of the
impact of Clean Air Act regulations on utility-generation capacity. The
report is due Aug. 17.
More important, Bush asked the Department of Justice to "review" all those
pending E.P.A. lawsuits against coal-fired power plants. (A report is
expected this fall.) To environmentalists, it was a disturbing example of
politics interfering with law enforcement, as well as a blatant attack on
the Clean Air Act. To Big Coal, it was sweet relief.
Gerard himself is definitely on the sweet-relief side. "I think the solution
here is fairly simple," he tells me, leaning forward in his chair. "We need
to go back to a pre-Clinton-administration interpretation of the law." As
Gerard explains it, the Clinton administration in the mid-90's began
wielding New Source Review as an ax against the coal industry. But Clinton
wasn't actually the first to do so. The initial crackdown on these
power-plant modifications came in 1988, under the Reagan administration.
The question now is what changes, if any, the E.P.A. will recommend in the
regulations on Aug. 17. Will the agency suggest that today's energy "crisis"
can be resolved only by giving Big Coal some major concessions?
Possibly. But Big Coal's dreams of turning back the clock to the
"pre-Clinton" era were dealt a blow by the recent defection of Senator Jim
Jeffords from the Republican Party. Jeffords's decision to become an
independent not only threw the Senate to the Democrats but also gave him the
chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. This
powerful position allows Jeffords, an ardent supporter of clean-air
regulation, to effectively block any legislation that makes life easier for
dirty-power-plant operators.
One measure of how much Jeffords's move has shifted the dynamic is that a
mere two weeks after his announcement, eight power companies involved in New
Source Review litigation announced that they had formed a lobbying group,
the National Electric Reliability Coordinating Council. The group hired
Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and
a high-profile lobbyist, to help apply pressure in all the right places --
in particular, one assumes, the office of Christie Whitman, administrator of
the Environmental Protection Agency.
As governor of New Jersey, Whitman was outspoken in her support of lawsuits
to limit power-plant pollution; to move away from that position now won't be
easy for her. "This review is not a back-door attempt to weaken Clean Air
legislation," she says. "It's a serious attempt to clarify a very complex
regulation." Whitman also points out that, while the review process is going
on, the Department of Justice has not stopped enforcing the law. "We just
reached a $20 million settlement with a major refinery, so we're moving
ahead."
Although New Source Review is obviously a regulatory and political battle,
it's also, in some dimension, a moral battle. Many clean-air advocates
believe that the utilities have been getting away with this, and other
flagrant abuses of the law, for too long. "If the administration rolls over
on this, it will be a shortsighted, callous move and another example of the
president's caving in to his friends in the energy industry," says Armand
Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based group.
"We're ready to kick up a firestorm."
So can Big Coal be made to behave? Gerard, for his part, has been meeting
privately with environmental leaders, trying to convince them that the
industry is not the Big Bad Wolf. But he tells me that a little gratitude
for what Big Coal has accomplished is in order. "What we're doing is good
for the country," says Gerard. "Without coal, America wouldn't be what it is
today."
Getting clearance to visit Hobet 21 required considerable negotiation. I
knew it was Arch's showoff mine, the place where they hold open houses for the
local community. But when I called Deck Slone, a spokesman for Arch, to ask
for a tour, he politely declined, saying, "We're just too busy right now."
Eventually Slone relented and set up a visit -- but only to the reclaimed
area, not the active mining site.
My visit to see reclaimed land is led by Larry Emerson, the "environmental
performance" official, and John McDaniel, an engineer. McDaniel is tall and
lanky and spookily resembles Abe Lincoln, with high cheekbones and a sly
smile. McDaniel is a third-generation miner and proud of it.
After a few minutes of chat at Hobet 21's bare-bones mining office,
McDaniel, Emerson and I pile into McDaniel's truck. McDaniel pops a Black
Sabbath disc out of the CD player so we can roll in pastoral silence across
the open grassy fields. Parts of the land here are scrubby, like a reclaimed
dump; older sections are more lush. We turn down a small dirt road, past
small stands of black alder and Virginia pine, into a grove of young black
locust trees. (Mining companies like locust trees because they suck up
nitrogen, one of the problem gases released by coal-fueled power plants.)
The grass here is waist high; wildflowers are blooming. A meadowlark sings
from above. It's so pleasant, and so well constructed, that I half expect an
animatronic deer to poke its head out of the woods.
"This was all reclaimed about seven years ago," Emerson explains. "As you
can see, the wildlife is beginning to return. In some cases, the habitat is
actually improved for many species." Emerson tells me that his wife is a
horticulturist and that he lives on four acres of land with a pond stocked
with catfish. "I won't tell you that we're improving on what God created,"
Emerson says. "But by opening more land, we're creating the building blocks
for a growing ecosystem. We're also making this hilly terrain more suitable
for commercial development."
We park on a high point overlooking a pond, and I'm getting comfortable with
the view, starting to enjoy it. That's when I'm jarred by the sight, just
over the ridge, of several 240-ton dump trucks grinding over the raw, dusty
hills. Goodbye, eco-paradise.
CONTINUED IN PART 2
Vicki Hanna
Programming & Public Relations
JWR Foundation
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