On March 23, 2013, OVEC brought Kerry Albright, the Miracle Baby of Buffalo Creek, to the WV Culture Center to tell his story. Here’s Kerry’s story, in his own words. First I’d like to thank Maria Gunnoe and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition for asking me to come down from New York Ctiy to speak. [...]
After a West Virginia legislative session fraught with bad bills such as the weakening of the selenium standard for streams and making the contents of the toxic fracking fluid a “trade secret,” there were a couple of bright spots this past week. One of which occurred when The House of Delegates on Monday called for [...]
A March 8 post in “Grounded,” The State Journal’s energy blog, vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association, and notorious funny man, Chris Hamilton was quoted saying that some West Virginia delegates might not know “the difference between a dragline and a drag queen.” He made these remarks at a recent coal industry conference [...]
2 p.m. update: HR2579 has passed in the House. An identical bill, SB 472, will be considered by the Senate. Please call your senators to tell them not to support SB 472. HR2579 is being fast tracked in the West Virginia House of Delegates under the guise of “stream protection,” when in fact this bill [...]
Several OVEC members and staff are heading to Washington D.C. for the largest climate rally in history, happening this Sunday, February 17. If you can’t join us in person, please join the rally online. Hashtags in use for the rally include #forwardonclimate, #f17. With your tweets please include #(your zip code), so we get a [...]
OVEC’s Vivian Stockman and I took a tour of the beautiful, new Marsh Fork Elementary School during the open house January 4, and on January 18 a formal dedication was held. Not surprisingly, the media left out much of the back story. And politicians like Senator Joe Manchin didn’t utter a peep about all the [...]
The State Journal has listed the news regarding the groundbreaking November settlement between OVEC and others groups, and Patriot Coal as one of the top ten news stories of 2012. Patriot agreed to phase out large-scale surface mining (mountaintop removal) beginning with a series of drastic annual tonnage reductions on their surface mined coal. The [...]
I often sought advice from Joan. She opened doors on Capitol Hill for groups like OVEC. She helped us get our stories to legislators, helped them introduce legislation that would protect our health, our water, our mountains. She helped us get our stories to regulators and she spearheaded efforts at Earthjustice aimed at making regulators [...]
If you follow coal-related news in West Virginia, then you know about the tragic November 30 coal sludge impoundment failure that claimed the life of a bulldozer operator at a Harrison County, W.Va. coal prep plant.You may also know that OVEC and Coal River Mountain Watch have been working together for years on our Sludge [...]
Please call Senator Jay Rockefeller at 202-224-6472 to let him know that we all support his standing up to the coal industry. Let him know that this is an excellent time for him to talk about the very real health impacts of mountaintop removal coal mining on every generation of people, past, present and future. Ask [...]