Here's the damage from a coal ash spill in Tennessee.A civil lawsuit filed last week in state court in Delaware charges Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. -- one of the world's largest power companies -- with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, leading to serious health problems for nearby residents.

Filed by a team of attorneys from law firms in New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, the suit alleges that between 2003 and 2004, AES Corp. and its subsidiaries dumped 100 million pounds of coal ash on the beach near the small village of Arroyo Barril and another 60 million pounds in the Port of Manzanillo near Montecristi -- and that serious health problems resulted:

Since the dumping, babies have been born with severe birth defects including missing limbs, missing organs, cranial malformations, and gastrointestinal deformities. Some of these children have died as a result of their injuries. A failed Siamese twin with two heads died shortly after birth. Many women have suffered miscarriages at various stages of their pregnancies. Today, in addition to the severe birth defects, men, women, and children of this proud and struggling community continue to suffer with respiratory illnesses and skin rashes.

The attorneys say half of the 42 nearby residents tested had unsafe blood levels of arsenic, a major contaminant of concern in coal ash. There is evidence that inhaled or ingested arsenic can injure the fetus.

A byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity, coal ash contains dangerous levels of known poisons that also include beryllium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and vanadium. Workers who handle coal ash at power plants typically wear respirators and other protective equipment.

The coal ash dumped in the Dominican Republic came from AES's coal-fired power plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico. According to the complaint, authorities there allowed AES to build the plant in 2002 only under the condition that most of the ash generated at the plant was deposited somewhere other than Puerto Rico. The company allegedly chose dumping the waste onto beaches in the Dominican Republic -- where some 30 percent of citizens live in poverty -- as the cheapest alternative.

The lawsuit also claims that AES and its partners misrepresented to the Dominican government the toxicity of the coal ash and how it would be handled. In 2004, that government found the AES dumping to be in violation of Dominican law as well as the international Basel Convention on hazardous wastes and pursued criminal and civil actions against AES and other responsible parties.

The Miami Herald reports that it was a contractor from Delray Beach, Fla. -- Roger C. Fina -- who hauled the coal ash to the Dominican Republic and dumped it on the beaches:

"He brings this rock ash into the country without any kind of controls or anything. A good portion of it fell to the sea,'' said Andrés Chalas, the Dominican Republic's top environmental prosecutor. "They got permissions to bring it in and said it was to do renovations of the port, but we investigated and there was no such project, not at Public Works or the Port Authority.''

Fina claims that the ash was supposed to be turned into asphalt and was never meant to sit on the beach for two years. The paper reports that after he and AES were sued by the Dominican government, the company paid $6 million to clean up the site, though contamination still remains. Fina says the case has ruined his life and left him out of work.

The lawsuit filed last week on behalf of the injured Dominicans seeks damages from AES and its companies for the human toll caused by the illegal dumping. It also seeks to compel AES to provide a comprehensive medical monitoring program for the plaintiffs during their lifetimes.

A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.

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Mark Warner

Sen. Mark Warner recognizes the need to take action on climate change, but wants to ensure that legislation will not negatively impact the economy.

Warner seems a safe bet to support the Kerry-Boxer climate bill. In recent months, he has underlined the severity of the climate crisis and the steps necessary to solve it. Speaking to the National Energy Summit and International Dialogue in September, Warner strongly emphasized the need to take immediate action: “The idea that we’re going to, for one more year, delay trying to take action on this critically important issue around energy would be a competitive, financial and potentially environmental disaster.” Soon thereafter, he stood with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as they unveiled their climate bill, signaling his support for the legislation..

As Warner told Grist during his 2008 Senate campaign, he favors a wide-ranging approach to energy issues: support for renewables and next-gen hybrids, much higher fuel-efficiency standards, a big boost for energy R&D, government-funded research into carbon-capture-and-sequestration technology, "a fresh look at nuclear," and expansion of domestic oil and gas production.

In this letter sent to a Grist reader in early November, Warner sounds generally supportive of climate legislation, but again emphasizes the importance of protecting the economy in the midst of the current downturn:

Dear [Constituent],

Thank you for contacting me about global warming and related legislation.  I appreciate hearing your views on this important issue.

In order to best protect America's citizens and environment, I believe that we need to develop a comprehensive energy policy that both reduces our emissions and utilizes alternative sources of energy.  Doing so would not only help to preserve the environment, but would also create green jobs and ultimately lower domestic energy costs.  Any discussion of our national energy policy must also consider the international scope of this challenge as individual nations confront problems such as the finite supply of fossil fuels, overhauling outdated energy infrastructures, and many other important environmental challenges.

Members of the relevant Congressional committees are currently working on legislation that would address climate change on a national level, and I look forward to participating in this debate during the 111th Congress.  Though the science surrounding this issue supports the need for dramatic changes in policy, any comprehensive legislation to address climate change must balance this interest with the need to keep our economy viable during this challenging time.

Thank you again for your input on global warming.  Please be assured that I will continue to monitor related legislation and will consider your views as the Senate debates and votes on relevant legislation.  I very much look forward to serving the Commonwealth during the 111th Congress.

Sincerely,
MARK R. WARNER
United States Senator

In a 2008 campaign video, Warner lays out his plans for addressing energy concerns and climate change:

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Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham's fire hoses turned on patriotic African-Americans, a rage so profound that they too joined the civil rights revolution?

Well I invite you, in a brief audio and video tour, to bear witness to what's happening in Wise County, Virginia. This Appalachian region, only a few hundred miles from the policy fog in Washington DC, clarifies what the health care/climate policy fight is all about. And if you're not angry enough to take action after hearing these voices and seeing these images, blame yourself when powerbrokers like Don Blankenship (more on him later) once again have their day.

Let's start with what's good about Wise County: its hard-working families. Taking a look at this community calendar, you'll see all that is right with rural American communities and their urban counterparts. From January to December, the citizens of Wise County celebrate the legacy of Dr. King (January 19), perform plays (March 17), honor our country and its veterans (July 4 and October 8) and get involved in all of those glorious community, spiritual and volunteering activities that capture the essence of the American experience. In Wise County, it's not hard to find the best of ourselves.

But one item on the same calendar reveals what is not right: the July 24-26 "Remote Area Medical Health Fair" at the local fairgrounds. Sound innocuous? Well take ten minutes to listen to this recent report from NPR on the event, hosted in Wise County, which served 2,700 "tired and desperate" people from 17 different states. In the words of NPR, it was "a Third World scene with an American setting." It's heartbreaking: entire families waiting in line overnight to get just some of the basic health care that they cannot afford. Hear about the young boy with a battered nose and an oozing ear; the single mom with a gallbladder so enlarged it's about to kill her; and the many patients gettingall of their teeth pulled. That's right -- for over 20 years, while DC politicians have been promising a better health care system, your fellow Americans in and around Wise County have been suffering. Angry yet?

And take a guess what industry dominates this part of Appalachia. No surprise: it's coal. Like in so many parts of the country, excessive reliance on coal means high levels of poverty -- the kind of poverty that creates the need for this health "fair." A recent study out of West Virginia University puts it clearly: "Coal-mining economies are not strong economies. [Coalfield communities] are weaker than the rest of the state, weaker than the rest of the region, and weaker than the rest of the nation." There's no doubt that the thousands of employees of the (increasingly capital-intensive) coal industry are hard-working, admirable people; the problem is that in the 21st century, coal helps them at the expense of others.

The second part of coal's legacy in this area is mountaintop removal. Take this extraordinary virtual flyover of Wise County to view its devastation:

The human effects of this destruction are captured in the words of Wise County's Kathy Selvage. Listen to her speak about the "terrible injustice' created by coal, literally in her backyard:

And memo to the Birther crowd: if you think the fight against mountaintop removal is some godless liberal conspiracy, see this testimony from Kathy: "It was my Mother's custom to have her early morning Bible reading on her front porch. [Because of mountaintop removal,] she was forced to move inside because she could no longer stand the noise, dust, and smell that was invading her 'Morning with the Lord'."

In Wise County, poverty, environmental destruction and powerlessness come together, and the result -- despite the resilience of hard-working Americans who call it home -- is sick families, destroyed mountains, a dysfunctional economy and at least one good lady who finds it harder to pray.

Now there certainly are winners in all of this: take Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Coal, a modern version of Daniel-Day Lewis's ruthless oilman in There Will Be Blood. It's hard to know where to start with this guy:

So climate warriors, let's get angry: about inexcusable poverty, the destruction wrought by coal, and the lobby-laden system that helps Blankenship thrive while too many of the good people of Wise County suffer.

And if you are angry, what are you going to do about it? Will you be willing to get arrested standing up to Massey Coal, like Jim Hansen? Lead civil disobedience against Dominion Power, right there in Wise County? Or at least, show up to your elected officials' town meetings and speak loudly and clearly in support of health care and climate change legislation? With some hard work, maybe we can reveal Blankenship and his ilk for what they are: the Bull Connors of the dirty-energy age. There's no time to waste.

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Jim Webb

Sen. Jim Webb is a moderate, and Virginia is a coal state. His House colleagues won major concessions for the coal industry in the Waxman-Markey climate bill, but whether they'll be enough to win over Webb remains to be seen. Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, who led the pro-coal lobby in shaping the House bill, is reportedly leaning on Webb to support the legislation.

Last year, Webb told Politico that environmentalists would have to compromise and support the development of clean coal and nuclear power. "We need to be able to address a national energy strategy and then try to work on environmental efficiencies as part of that plan," Webb said. "We can’t just start with things like emission standards at a time when we’re at a crisis with the entire national energy policy."

Earlier this year, Webb voted against using the budget reconciliation process to pass climate policy. Last year, he voted to move the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act to a vote on the Senate floor, but then signed a letter from 10 swing-vote Democrats saying he would have opposed final passage of the bill.

Track the debate and take action >>>

UPDATE, 7/28/09:  A reader stopped by Webb's office and offers this report:  Webb's Legislative Correspondent Jennifer Bryant said the senator does not like the bureaucracy of a cap-and-trade system and is promoting a cap-and-dividend approach that he hopes would be more efficient in getting funds back into the hands of constituents.  Bryant said Webb is in regular contact with the relevant committee members and is hopeful they can get something passed before the international climate talks in Copenhagen in December.

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Cross-posted from Wonk Room.

“Why did Rick Boucher vote to kill Virginia jobs?” Newt Gingrich’s coal-powered front group, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), asked this incendiary question of the coal-district Democrat in a full-page advertisement in the Roanoke Times. The ad, acquired by the Wonk Room, claims Boucher voted “for new energy taxes on every Virginian” when he supported the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) in the House energy committee last month. ASWF goes on to cite terrorizing statistics about “Boucher’s new energy tax”:

Boucher’s new energy tax would:

1. Kill 1,105,000 American jobs per year on average

2. Increase electricity rates 90%

3. Increase gas prices 74%

4. Increase an average family’s annual energy bill by $1,500

5. Send U.S. jobs to China and India

These figures are drawn from a repeatedly discredited study by the Heritage Foundation, who used an unrealistic economic model to examine the effects of a cap-and-trade system that does not resemble the comprehensive clean energy provisions of Waxman-Markey. In reality, independent experts from the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency have found that the clean energy legislation will:

– Decrease electricity bills 7 percent

– Improve the budgets of the poorest 20 percent of Americans

– Cost between 22 to 48 cents a day for the average American household

– Cut global warming pollution and oil dependence

And these studies didn’t even take into account the economic benefit of averting catastrophic climate change. Furthermore, creating powerful standards for global warming pollution and clean energy create good American jobs, not kill them. Boucher’s vote was a down payment on a national investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency that would dramatically reduce U.S. global warming pollution, would create 45,000 jobs in Virginia, and create 1.7 million jobs every year.

ASWF’s attack exposes the conflict occuring within the American energy industry. From his perch in the energy committee, Boucher won significant concessions on behalf of the coal industry in the legislation. Some companies — like the coal-powered utilities Dominion Resources, American Electric Power, and Duke Energy — recognize that the United States must pass comprehensive climate legislation now, and have heralded Boucher as a champion of their interests. However, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, is bankrolling the dishonest attacks of Gingrich’s group and the National Mining Association.

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After the Massey Energy coal mining company lost a $50 million verdict to a competitor, CEO Don Blankenship spent $3 million electing a friendly judge to West Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals who went on to cast the deciding vote in a case that overturned the verdict.

But yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court handed a setback to Massey, a company notorious for its reliance on destructive mountaintop removal mining throughout Central Appalachia, as well as other companies that use their financial clout to influence the judiciary, with a ruling that elected judges must recuse themselves from cases involving big campaign contributors.

The case goes all the way back to 1998, when Hugh Caperton of West Virginia's Harman Mining Corp. sued a Massey affiliate for fraud. Four years later, a lower court awarded Caperton $50 million in damages.

Massey appealed to West Virginia's high court -- and in an effort to ensure a ruling favorable to the company Blankenship contributed $3 million to the campaign of Brent Benjamin, who successfully challenged incumbent Justice Warren McGraw in 2004.

Caperton's attorneys asked Benjamin -- who is now the court's chief justice -- to recuse himself from the case, but he declined. The court went on to rule in Massey's favor twice by a 3-2 vote, with Benjamin casting the deciding vote both times.

Caperton's legal team appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday in a 5-4 decision ruled that Benjamin should have stepped aside. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court:

"Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when -- without the consent of the other parties -- a man chooses the judge in his own cause."

Joining Kennedy in the ruling were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. In dissent signed by fellow conservatives Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the ruling would damage public confidence in the judiciary:

The Court's new "rule" provides no guidance to judges and litigants about when recusal will be constitutionally required. This will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be. The end result will do far more to erode public confidence in judicial impartiality than an isolated failure to recuse in a particular case.

The case now returns to the West Virginia courts. Adding in the interest, the judgment in the original case has now grown to over $82 million.

"At its core, the Caperton case was about the inherent conflict of interest when our elected officials depend on or are aided by large campaign contributions and excessive spending in the electoral process," said Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, a nonprofit that promotes public financing of elections. "Americans know that campaign contributions from wealthy special interests impact the policy decisions made by Congress on matters that affect the life and well being of all of us."

Massey's stock was down 6% in yesterday afternoon's trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while other coal company stocks were down between 2 and 4%, Reuters reports.

The high court's ruling is the latest in a series of recent setbacks for Richmond, Va.-based Massey. Last month Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee resigned from Massey's board under pressure from activists who argued that his promotion of sustainable energy was incompatible with Massey's reliance on mountaintop removal mining.

And earlier this year, Santa Clara University in California divested its holdings in Massey because of the company's record of environmental destructiveness. The company has also been the target of nonviolent protests over its environmentally destructive business practices.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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A proposal to mine uranium in south-central Virginia advanced this week when a key state body approved a study of the matter. The targeted site is in Virginia's Pittsylvania County just north of the city of Danville and close to the border with North Carolina's Rockingham and Caswell counties.

A subcommittee of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy OK'd the study yesterday after deciding on exactly what issues should be examined, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Some opponents asked the panel to vote against the study, hoping that would kill the mining proposal.

But state Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, a member of the subcommittee, said approval of the study did not mean approval of mining in Pittsylvania.

"That decision is a long way down the road," Watkins said.

The panel will look at mining's effects on people's health and ecosystems, identify pollution issues and review current mining regulations. But it denied a request by Del. Watkins M. Abbitt Jr. (I-Appomattox) to consider how water pollution specifically might be prevented. The subcommittee's chair, Del. Lee R. Ware Jr. (R-Powhatan) argued that the study already included that issue.

The study, which will be conducted by the U.S. National Research Council, is expected to cost $1.5 million and last about 18 months. It remains unclear how the work will be funded, according to the paper.

As Facing South reported previously, Virginia has banned uranium mining for the past 25 years. Virginia Uranium -- a privately-held company formed several years ago by the owners of the land where the uranium was found -- has been pressing to get the ban lifted. To that end, Virginia Uranium contributed almost $30,000 to state lawmakers last year alone.

The Pittsylvania County site is believed to hold the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States and the seventh-largest in the world. It holds an estimated 60,000 tons -- enough uranium to power all the commercial nuclear plants in the country for about two years. The company estimates its value at about $10 billion.

While the company has maintained that the uranium could be mined safety, uranium mining has a history of causing serious environmental health problems, having been linked to chromosome abnormalities, birth defects and cancer in communities from Texas to Germany.

Uranium mining also poses a serious threat to drinking water. In 1979, for example, a dam holding uranium mining waste at a New Mexico facility owned by the Virginia-based United Nuclear Corp. burst, sending more than 1,100 tons of toxic discards and 90 million gallons of contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Once an important drinking water source for nearby Navajo communities, the river remains dangerously contaminated today.

Officials in Virginia Beach are among those opposing the uranium mining plans. They have noted that a tropical storm or hurricane could breach the mine's waste impoundment and pollute downstream water bodies including Lake Gaston, the city's drinking-water source.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

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Energy and climate scramble the usual left-right political divisions. Many of the big fights are not among parties but among regions and levels of government.

In the U.S. Congress, to be sure, the Republicans=obstructionists formula holds with virtually no exceptions save a tiny handful of remaining Senate "moderates." Republican obstructionists are joined in the House and -- more problematically -- the Senate by a group of Democrats from states with energy-intensive industries. Depending on how they’re counted, there are up to 15 such Senate Dems, more than enough to assist Republicans in a filibuster.

At the state and local level the partisan picture is far more complicated. Some of the leading governors on the issue are Republicans, notably California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida’s Charlie Crist. Some of the most problematic are Democrats from energy states like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Virginia’s Tim Kaine. The city-level picture is even more muddled. At last count, 935 mayors have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, from every political party and every state in the country.

Ultimately, the political battle over climate and energy is how to manage the transition from a high-waste, high-pollution, cheap-energy economy to … the opposite. Those vulnerable to being hurt by the transition span political parties and demographics, and getting over the chasm will require fresh thinking.

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