West Virginia betrayed for 55 Cents

[Willinois]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-bigge...10454.html

55 Cents: The Cost of Big Coal Hubris, Disgraced West Virginian Pols and Betrayed Coalfield Residents
by Jeff Biggers

It doesn't get any clearer than this: Despite posting over $700 million in earnings for 2010, the second highest in company history, Arch Coal reportedly refused to consider paying an extra 55 cents a ton for coal in order to meet proper EPA and Clean Water Act standards for a controversial mountaintop removal operation in West Virginia.

Read that again: 55 cents. St. Louis-based Arch Coal has essentially turned their backs on West Virginia politicians for 55 cents.

In a blockbuster revelation today, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward uncovered a "secret" engineering report developed for the EPA by Kentucky-based Morgan Worldwide. Ward noted:

Arch Coal Inc. could have cut the stream damage from its proposed Spruce Mine in half without significantly increasing coal-production costs, according to a previously secret engineering report prepared for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Ward has filed additional follow-ups to his story on his indispensable Coal Tattoo blog.

But here's the kicker: With entrenched poverty and their coalfield communities in ruin due to a stranglehold on any economic diversification, in the face of a spiraling health care crisis and unflinching national condemnation for mountaintop removal mining devastation in the central Appalachian coalfields, disgraced West Virginian politicians--including Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and US Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV)--are paradoxically throwing a rally this Thursday to defend the St. Louis-based company's betrayal of their own state, in the guise of fighting the EPA's attack on "our way of life."

As one coal miner told me in Beckley, West Virginia last weekend: If the politicians are worried about our way of life, why isn't the governor or Sen. Manchin throwing rallies to protest how heavily mechanized mountaintop removal has led to massive job loss in the last 25 years, or to protest Arch Coal's shift of their jobs to Montana, or to rally for workplace safety and an end to the black lung disease scandal?

More so, why have the governor and senators from West Virginia refused to ever acknowledge or investigate the growing health care crisis from mountaintop removal mining?

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