Pro-coal crowds keep dominating Corps hearings

The second round of the Army Corps of Engineers' hearings on Nationwide Permit 21 were met Thursday with similar reactions to Tuesday's meetings. In Big Stone Gap, Va., the crowd at Mountain Empire Community College was again heavily pro-coal, but Jeff Lester of The Coalfield Progress hits on the key dynamic of the ongoing debate in his lede describing the two groups: "They all professed to speak for the future of the central Appalachian mountains."

Many of the coal supporters in the audience wore shirts provided by Friends of Coal that read "COAL = JOBS = ENERGY, NWP 21 YES," Lester reports. Pro-coal participants cited the number of jobs coal creates not directly related to mining, the need to use coal to achieve energy independence in the U.S. and the common thought that most anti-mining groups are not from the region. "We miners don't try to tell them how to stop their urban sprawl," A&G Coal Corp. engineer Mark Wooten told Lester. "Surely we don't need them to tell us how to raise our families in our region."


As in Charleston, W. Va., anti-mining participants in Big Stone Gap had to shout over boos to be heard at times. Members of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards argued that even if land owners had property rights to mine coal, they didn't have the right to poison their neighbors downstream. Opponents of NWP 21 also said that since underground mining creates more jobs, supporters of the streamlined permit are only interesting maximizing their profits. (Read more, subscription required)

"The maneuvers targeting the coal mining industry in the Appalachian region have riled local officials and, as evidenced Thursday evening at MECC, many whose livelihoods depend on the industry," Steve Igo of the Kingsport Times News writes. One man at the meeting accused the Obama administration of mounting a war against Appalachians and targeting them to be "killed by friendly fire." (Read more)


A crowd of more than 300 in Pittsburgh was also heavily pro-coal. NWP 21 has only been used 44 times in Pennsylvania since 2000, Don Hopey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports, but that didn't stop the Pennsylvania Coal Association from speaking out against discontinuing the permit.