Jeremy Richardson ~ senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists

From an Article by Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette Mail, October 13, 2021

PHOTO ~ Marion County native Jeremy Richardson, a senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is pictured during an online event Wednesday touting the release of a report he coauthored calling for full remediation of coal ash disposal sites in the Ohio River Valley. The analysis relies on public documents from utility closure plans, coal ash site conditions, economic modeling and alternative closure plan development.

Regional and national clean energy advocacy groups united Wednesday (10/13/21) to release a report suggesting that cleaning up hazardous coal ash in the Ohio River Valley could benefit the area economically as well as environmentally.

The new report “Repairing the Damage ~ Cleaning Up Hazardous Coal Ash Can Create Jobs and Improve the Environment” makes the case that fully remediating coal ash disposal sites would create more jobs and protect communities as more coal plants close in the region amid the nation’s clean energy transition.

The economic analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national science advocacy nonprofit, and the Ohio River Valley Institute, a Johnstown, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit think tank, cited case studies of two coal ash sites in Kentucky and Ohio finding that full remediation of the sites would create more than $100 million in additional economic activity in each state.

“My excitement about the report is because you just have so much of an opportunity to create so much benefit to the people in the communities that we’re talking about,” said Marion County native Jeremy Richardson, a senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists who coauthored the report.

Those communities are economically vulnerable coal communities where coal ash — waste left behind when coal is burned to produce electricity — is a common threat to human health.

Approximately 102 million tons of coal ash was produced in 2018 alone, according to the American Coal Ash Association, an organization that promotes the environmentally responsible use of coal ash as an alternative to disposal.

Coal ash contains contaminants like arsenic, cadmium, chromium and selenium associated with cancer, heart disease, liver and kidney damage. Coal ash is frequently disposed of in surface impoundments or landfills or released into nearby waterways, often under a plant’s water pollution permit.

The analysis notes that more than one out of every five coal ash disposal sites nationwide can be found at operating or retired coal-fired power plants in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

The report calls for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen its enforcement of a 2015 rule that established closure requirements for coal ash disposal sites under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and finalized minimum criteria for groundwater monitoring and corrective action.

The report emphasizes holding utilities and coal ash disposal site owners responsible for fully remediating such sites. “[R]atepayers should not bear the costs without reaping the economic value of full cleanup,” the report says.

The WV Public Service Commission on Tuesday approved $448.3 million in rate recovery for Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power for coal ash disposal and other environmental upgrades federally required to keep three in-state coal-fired power plants operating past 2028.

The report also calls for prioritizing dislocated workers in hiring. Representatives from the Ohio River Valley Institute, nonprofit environmental law group EarthJustice, left-leaning nonprofit think tank Policy Matters Ohio and the ReImagine Appalachia coalition of environmental and community organizations across the region highlighted the report in a press conference and webinar Wednesday.

“Pollution cleanup is essential to ensuring that these areas become places where people can safely live and work,” Amanda Woodrum, senior researcher with Policy Matters Ohio, said.

Memorial to workers of coal ash cleanup in Kingston, TN

From an Article by Travis Liller, AP News, May 30, 2022

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — In 2013, the first of more than 200 workers who labored to clean up the nation’s worst coal ash spill filed a suit against the contractor, blaming Jacobs Engineering for illnesses they believe were caused by exposure to heavy metals and radioactive particles in the ash. Nearly a decade later, not a single case has made it through the court system.

As the cases drag on, dozens who believed their work for the contractor made them sick have died.

They include people like Ansol Clark, who arrived at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant just hours after the Dec. 22, 2008, spill, and got to work. He labored long hours in the coal ash sludge with few or no days off for months at a time until he became too sick to work in 2013. He died last year from a rare blood cancer that he believed was caused by exposure to the ash.

“Ansol never lived to see any justice,” his wife of almost 50 years, Janie Clark, said. “He never did — on earth.”

Over the years, Jacobs has made repeated attempts to have the suits thrown out. The Tennessee Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments on Wednesday in Jacob’s latest challenge to the workers’ lawsuits. The company wants a judge to dismiss most of the plaintiffs for failing to follow a procedure outlined in the Tennessee Silica Claims Priorities Act.

The law requires anyone pursuing claims for exposure to silica or mixed dust to file a doctor’s report concluding that the exposure is a “substantial contributing factor” to the patient’s illness. For plaintiffs bringing wrongful death claims on behalf of a loved one, they must also show the worker was exposed to the dust for at least five years. Workers with lung cancer are subject to the five-year provision too and additionally must show that their cancer was diagnosed at least 10 years after their first exposure to the dust.

In court filings, Jacobs said the vast majority of plaintiffs either didn’t file the doctor reports, filed inadequate reports, or didn’t meet the time restrictions. For example, one worker died from lung cancer in 2015, less than seven years after the spill, so should not be allowed to sue, according to Jacobs.

Attorneys for the workers argue the silica law was never meant to apply to cases like theirs. The act specifically refers to silica, which is just one component of coal ash. The components they believe caused the worker injuries include arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury and radium, but not silica. The law also refers to claims for very specific injuries — silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis — that are not at issue in this case.

In addition, the workers’ attorneys say it is simply too late to bring this challenge. The case already went through the first part of a two-part trial in 2018, when a Knoxville, Tennessee, jury found that Jacobs breached its duty of care to the workers. The jurors said Jacobs’ actions were capable of making the workers sick. Whether those actions actually did make them sick, and thus eligible for monetary damages, was left for a subsequent trial or trials.

Jacobs’ attorneys have said the company did its best to manage the cleanup in a way regulators said was safe. It has not been proven that Jacobs — or even coal ash — is to blame for any illnesses, and the EPA classifies coal ash as nonhazardous.

After the 2018 trial, the federal judge in the case ordered mediation, alluding to workers’ urgent need for medical care. Mediation was unsuccessful, but a new trial date has not been set as Jacobs continues to pursue legal challenges. Twice, the company has asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to find that it is immune from being sued because it was acting on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency. The court has ruled against Jacobs both times, most recently this month.

Doug Bledsoe didn’t live to see that small victory. Bledsoe was called to work at Kingston just days after the 2008 collapse of a six-story earthen dam released more than a billion gallons of coal ash sludge. The spill was so massive it knocked nearby homes off their foundations. As the sludge slowly dried over the yearslong course of the cleanup, it turned into a fine dust that had to be constantly watered down but still filled the air, especially on windy days, according to trial testimony.

Bledsoe drove a water truck there until 2014. In 2018, he was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. He died two years later, leaving behind his wife of 38 years, Johnnie Bledsoe. The two began dating when she was 14 and Doug Bledsoe was her “whole world,” she said.

“Everything we done, we done together,” Johnnie Bledsoe said. “We raised cattle together. We had a farm together. All that’s stopped.” Last year Johnnie Bledsoe and Janie Clark received an American flag that had flown over the U.S. Capitol to honor the coal ash cleanup workers. Clark said it is the only official acknowledgement they have received of the suffering they’ve endured.

Before he died Ansol Clark built a wooden cross that he placed near the Kingston plant as a memorial to the workers. Janie Clark said she plans to go there this weekend to change the flowers, as she does regularly.

“I’ll be doing that as long as I can get up the hill,” Clark said. “I do not intend to let this be forgotten.”

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See Also: Coal Ash Is Hazardous. Coal Ash Is Waste. But According to the EPA, Coal Ash Is Not “Hazardous Waste” ~ Jeff Turrentine, NRDC On Earth, September 6, 2019

Coal ash, a catchall term for several kinds of waste left over at power plants that burn coal, typically contains a number of substances harmful to human health—arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury among them. Coal ash is incredibly dangerous. Short-term exposure can bring irritation of the nose and throat, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and shortness of breath. Long-term exposure can lead to liver damage, kidney damage, cardiac arrhythmia, and a variety of cancers. Every year hundreds of American coal plants generate about 110 million tons of the stuff. Most of it gets mixed with water and stored in sludgy basins commonly known as coal ash ponds, which have an unfortunate tendency to leak or flood or spill, sometimes in catastrophic amounts.

A few days before Christmas in 2008, more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry poured out of a Kingston, Tennessee, power plant, spilling into local waterways and swamping 15 homes after the six-story earthen dam that had been containing it collapsed. The incident remains, to this day, the largest industrial spill in American history. More than 900 workers were quickly dispatched to clean up the mess, a massive effort that took five years. When those same workers began to get sick and even die under conditions that strongly suggested coal ash poisoning, 200 of them sued the contractor that had employed them, alleging that they had been greatly misled about the dangers of their exposure. A Tennessee jury last November found that the contractor had indeed jeopardized the health of its workers through its actions, but the case is ongoing, and no monetary damages have yet been paid.

Despite the protests of many whose lives have been affected by this demonstrably toxic substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has for years refused to classify coal ash as hazardous waste. Instead, the agency continues to regard coal ash as solid waste — the same designation, believe it or not, given to household garbage.

OMG: Maybe the Bible is a Chinese hoax?

Climate of Capitulation — An Insider’s Account of State Power in a Coal Nation

Book By Vivian E. Thomson, University of Virginia (MIT Press), April 2017

Overview –

The United States has pledged to the world community a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 26–28 percent below 2005 levels in 2025. Because much of this reduction must come from electric utilities, especially coal-fired power plants, coal states will make or break the U.S. commitment to emissions reduction. In Climate of Capitulation, Vivian Thomson offers an insider’s account of how power is wielded in environmental policy making at the state level. Thomson, a former member of Virginia’s State Air Pollution Control Board, identifies a “climate of capitulation” in state government—a deeply rooted favoritism toward coal and electric utilities in states’ air pollution policies.

Thomson narrates three cases involving coal and air pollution from her time on the Air Board. She illuminates the overt and covert power struggles surrounding air pollution limits for a coal-fired power plant just across the Potomac from Washington, for a controversial new coal-fired electrical generation plant in coal country, and for coal dust pollution from truck traffic in a country hollow.

Thomson links Virginia’s climate of capitulation with campaign donations that make legislators politically indebted to coal and electric utility interests, a traditionalistic political culture tending to inertia, and a part-time legislature that depended on outside groups for information and bill drafting. Extending her analysis to fifteen other coal-dependent states, Thomson offers policy reforms aimed at mitigating the ingrained biases toward coal and electric utilities in states’ air pollution policy making.

About the Author–

Vivian E. Thomson is Professor in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Politics and Director of the Environmental Thought and Practice BA Program at the University of Virginia.

Review Commentary –

“Vivian Thomson kicks ash and names names in this no-holds-barred exposé on the coal industry and its efforts to seize control of the environmental policy apparatus. Climate of Capitulation is a must-read at a time when entrenched fossil fuel interests have strengthened their hand and pose a heightened threat to efforts to avert dangerous climate change.”

—Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Penn State University; coauthor, with Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles, of The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy

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“Voluntary commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Climate Convention will only be implemented if they are in the self-interest of the parties involved. It would seem, for now, that national authorities in the United States fail to perceive their strong self-interest in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, emission reductions in the United States may depend mostly on action at the state and local levels. Vivian Thomson shows, in this book, how these problems are considered at the state level and what can be done to facilitate state-level action.”

—José Goldemberg, former President, University of São Paulo; former Secretary of State for Science and Technology, Brazil; Time magazine “Hero of the Environment”

EIA: Year over Year Change in Coal Production

A career in coal geology says WV must bank on new industries

From the Opinion-Editorial by C. Blaine Cecil, Charleston Gazette-Mail, April 15, 2017

Over the past couple of years, I have followed claims about the restoration of the coal industry in the Appalachian region. As a native West Virginian and someone who still has a strong allegiance to the state, I feel compelled to offer a different perspective on the future of coal.

I am a retired geologist who has invested most of my professional career to the study of coal geology in Appalachia. These studies included, but were not limited to, geologic controls on the origin of coal and coal-bearing strata; geological and chemical characteristics of coal that effect coal cleaning; and mineral and chemical characteristics of coal and coal-bearing strata that effect mine drainage water quality. These, and other studies, were always related to coal resources (the amount of coal in the ground) and coal reserves (the amount of mineable coal).

As a result of those studies, it became evident many years ago that the amount of coal resources and reserves are finite; reserves will not last forever.

As far back as the mid-1970s, a coal company executive who was responsible for coal exploration in Southern West Virginia told me that mineable coal was getting “dirtier and deeper (and thinner)” meaning that the best coal reserves had already been mined. Since that time, newer mining technologies (such as mountaintop surface mining) have continued to deplete coal reserves. As a result of reserve depletion, it is highly unlikely that coal mining (and jobs) can be restored in a significant and sustainable manner; recovery of remaining reserves will be increasingly difficult and expensive, thereby resulting in a steady and rapid decline in coal production and associated jobs.

Much of the remaining coal resources occur in beds that are thin, discontinuous, often deeply buried and uneconomical to mine, and that will never be included in reserve calculations. If these resources are ever to be recovered, it will most likely be through underground (in situ) gasification rather than conventional mining methods.

Unless some unknown factors intervene, coal production and mining jobs in Appalachia are unlikely to recover because of the following:

Reserve depletion. Coal reserves are nearly depleted; increases in coal production will only accelerate reserve depletion and hasten the end of a significant coal mining industry in Appalachia. This is particularly true of southern West Virginia.

Electricity demand. The demand for electricity from coal-fired power plants has slowed because many major industrial consumers (e.g., steel, aluminum, and chemical manufacturing) have closed most of their plants in the United States, giving rise to the “rust belt.” The demise of these industries can also be attributed, by in large, to resource/reserve depletion of raw materials.

Natural gas replacement. Coal is being replaced by natural gas in the generation of electricity because recently discovered natural gas is now abundant, relatively inexpensive to produce, cleaner to burn and has higher heat content than coal (on a BTU/pound basis). Natural gas-fired power plants are also cheaper to build and operate than coal-fired power plants.

Energy transportation. Natural gas is easier, cheaper, and more energy efficient to transport (via pipelines) to power plants located near points of consumption (e.g., large metropolitan areas) relative to transportation of electricity over power lines from mine-mouth power plants to major markets. In addition, gas is cheaper and more energy efficient for home heating than electricity. Simply put, natural gas is currently a cheaper source of energy than coal.

In summary, economic recovery and sustainability in coal-producing regions in Appalachia must refocus economic development on commercially viable activities other than coal production. The nearly total collapse of the coal industry in Great Britain and Germany in the latter part of the 20th century is a stark reminder that coal reserves become depleted.

Readers who wish to further explore the future of coal mining in Appalachia may consult resource and reserve data that are available online from both federal and state agencies.

>>> C. Blaine Cecil, of Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, originally from Moundsville, is an adjunct professor of geology at WVU, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution and a research geologist emeritus for the U.S. Geologic Survey.