CHARLESTON, W.V. — Protesters associated with Climate Ground Zero blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) today. Joe Hamsher, 23, and Sarah Seeds, 60, are chained to a concrete-filled metal barrel that is blocking the entrance to the parking lot of the DEP office complex in Charleston. The activists painted the following statement on the barrel: “Department of Easy Permits: Closed.”
The human rights activists staged the sit-in in order to bring attention to what they believe is the DEP’s failure to enforce the Clean Water Act by permitting mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia.
Joe Hamsher and Sarah Seeds blocking the entrance to WV Department of Environmental Protection in Kanawha City.
“The DEP is taking part in sins of permission,” said Seeds. “Permitting mountaintop removal is permitting the poisoning of this bioregion.”
The protesters specifically sought to shed light on the DEP’s new permitting guidance for implementing water quality standards in the coalfields, which it announced earlier this month. The new permitting guidance, the protesters said, is meant to circumvent the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) much stricter water quality standards, thus paving the way for continued pollution of West Virginia’s waterways by coal operators.
“There is no way to operate a mountaintop removal mine without violating the Clean Water Act. Even Don Blankenship admitted that in Charleston when he debated Robert Kennedy” said West Virginia native Joe Hamsher. “The DEP ought to step up and do their job by enforcing the Clean Water Act. But instead, Randy Huffman, and his boss Joe Manchin, try to find loopholes around it.”
According to the Charleston Gazette in an article published on August 12, the DEP’s new permitting guidance is a direct response to the EPA’s decision in April to more strictly regulate the amount of chlorides, sulfides and heavy metals that coal operators are allowed to dump in West Virginia’s streams and rivers.
Upon announcing the new guidelines, DEP secretary Randy Huffman called on the EPA to give deference to its new policy. “We trust the EPA will give deference to West Virginia’s guidance document, as it was created to satisfy outlines in the Clean Water Act,” Huffman said.
On August 13, however, the EPA responded to the DEP in a public statement that reaffirmed the federal agency’s regulatory authority over the DEP and promised a review of the DEP’s new permitting guidance.
“We look forward to reviewing West Virginia’s new water quality guidance,” wrote the EPA. “In the meantime, the EPA’s guidance stands and we will continue to use it to ensure that mining permits issued in West Virginia and other Appalachian states provide the protection required under federal law.”
Meanwhile, activists with Climate Ground Zero say they will continue to do everything they can to hold accountable the government agencies that permit mountaintop removal mining.
“DEP will be held accountable for its crimes against West Virginia,” said Hamsher.
In addition to putting pressure on the DEP, Climate Ground Zero and its allies will be gathering in Washington D.C. on September 25 through September 27 for Appalachia Rising, a mass mobilization to call for an end to mountaintop removal mining and bring the issue to the national stage.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 26, 2010
Contact: Mathew Louis-Rosenberg — 304-854-7306
Email: news@climategroundzero.org
Note: www.climategroundzero.org
Great job folks – so important to keep up the pressure! How do folks there feel about the coal ash hearings going on over the coming weeks?
Ya’ll are incredible. As usual, super proud! Give ‘em hell!
Muy bien! Defendamos el planeta! Aquí hacemos lo mismo… saludos argentinos!
A few thoughts you should consider if you are here to save the mountains or the people. It is definitely not both. A basic fact is that if you end MTR (right now) you will undermine the tax base that supports the very communities you all live in. Make a trip to Wyoming county to catch a glimpse of a post MTR town. There are a few to choose from. I ask that you please speak with the community that surrounds all of you, that is, if they will even speak with you. No cherry picking, go straight up to a miner(s) and ask their side of the story, why they do it?
Another fact is that you all are doing more harm than good by stimulating divisions in the community where you live and beyond. I ask that you all please go home to your white suburban roots (I assume this is the case for a lot of you, apologies if I am wrong) and begin there. Begin in a place that you understand (I know you must constantly feel drawn back to your roots, all of you), not one that you refuse to understand. Coal is not only a rock that is causing global warming, it is this regions culture and history – at least partially. To say stop to one of the only mechanisms of families supporting themselves and sending their kids to college is not “non-violent,” it is violent in the most horrific way. It dehumanizes the very people we should be honoring for playing a large part in building and maintaining the very system you seek to destroy. The very system that gives you and your families life! Hell, this website would not even be here if it were not for the workers right outside your doors!
The civil rights movement was sparked by outsiders and then they were asked to leave. In much the same way, the time is closing in here as well. Will you concede?
Lastly, I have and continue to speak to a lot of folks who are your neighbors and you should definitely speak with them. Most of them are terrified of you (I speak monolithic terms because this is simply the case) and what you represent, that is, a destruction of their way of life.
So I ask that you change your narratives as well. You are there to fight for the mountains and nothing more! Ask the people, a majority of the people, before you pretend to speak for them. The majority of the people in my stomping grounds do not support anything that any of you are doing. So I ask that you please be truthful, you are here for the mountains and nothing more.
Lastly, you may ask why I am posting this at this time. I have been following what you all have been doing from the very beginning and I constantly see this inner circle patting each other on the back for a job well done. This is a pathology that must be broken. This is not a black and white issue where we can exalt the age old anarchist song “which side are you one.” These songs and the theories that informed them are far to simplistic to uncover the complexity of what you are all sitting in the middle of. In this light, I ask that you all go into the community that surrounds you and ask them what they think about you. Ask as many as you can! These different view points will only enrich your understanding of where you all are and what you are doing.
For the people,
Sid
Sid Hatfield pollution apologist….
“Lastly, you may ask why I am posting this at this time. I have been following what you all have been doing from the very beginning and I constantly see this inner circle patting each other on the back for a job well done. This is a pathology that must be broken. This is not a black and white issue where we can exalt the age old anarchist song “which side are you one.” These songs and the theories that informed them are far to simplistic to uncover the complexity of what you are all sitting in the middle of. In this light, I ask that you all go into the community that surrounds you and ask them what they think about you.”
When your very existence is controlled by COAL, and your job is on the line with little legal recourse if you open your mouth and precious few options for outs in this economy brought to shambles by fossil fuel, what the fuck is a miner with 4 kids goining to say?
You are right it is not a black and white issue.
It is a green and green issue……
The green the feeds the greed,
versus the green that feeds us all.
Well “Sid Hatfield” I have been thinking a lot about what you said, and I feel the need to respond. I have lived here in Rock Creek for the last two years. And I have to say, I’ve talked to a lot of my neighbors. In fact, I’ve talked to people all over this state. I’ve talked to underground miners, strip miners, retired and active, talked to farmers and nurses, talked to city folk and people that never leave the holler. Things aren’t as monolithic as you say. I’ve talked to people that hated me. I’ve talked to people that love me for coming to help them, that have embraced me as family. I’ve talked to people that disagreed with me, but respected what I was doing and people that really didn’t give a damn either way. Just last week a man stopped at my house for no other reason than to thank me for being here, never seen him before in his life. Spent his whole life working underground until he got too injured. I heard two women at the gas station last week talking about how people got the treehuggers all wrong and all we want is for them to stop ruining everything surrounding these communities. Yes I have seen a post-MTR, but have you seen a CURRENT MTR town?? Go to Twlight and tell me that MTR is supporting the communities that it’s in. Go to Packsville, Lindytown, Shumate, oh wait, you can’t. They don’t exist anymore.
Yes the situation is complex. In fact, it’s even more complex than you are presenting it. For every person that I have met who family is fed by a coal mining job, I have met a person who’s lost a family member to a coal mining accident or pollution from coal mining. And frankly nearly every person I’ve talked to hates Massey, including most of their employees that I know. I acknowledge that our presence here creates conflict, but that’s what happens in moments of social change. If you have studied the civil rights movement as much as you seem to have, you know that we have created much less conflict that civil rights workers did. Maybe that’s because polls of West Virginia consistently show upwards of 60% of West Virginians oppose MTR. I am here because people have asked me to be here, not everyone, but many. In the civil rights movement, the WHITE people were asked to leave by the radical, a move that’s still deeply contentious among civil rights veterans.
My name is Mat. I live on the Ford Addition. If you really want to have a dialogue about these issues, you’re welcome anytime. If you are going to level these kinds of blanket accusations and claim all this knowledge of the community around us, it would be nice if you would have the same guts as many of the strip miners that I have spoken to. There’s only so seriously anyone is going to take criticism on a blog from one “Sid Hatfield”.
Mat, where was that 60% for mr Heckler? He ran soley on the stop mtr cause.
This is not a black and white issue where we can exalt the age old anarchist song “which side are you one.”