I stood behind the table watching the young girl study the images. Her long dirty-blonde hair glistened in the sun and swayed in the chilly breeze. She must have been around eleven or twelve. She spoke softly to her younger brother. He was about seven or eight but you could see his young [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) applauds the sponsors of the Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act, H.R. 526, (ACHE) just introduced into Congress and supports the ACHE campaign. After nearly two decades of organizing citizens to oppose this brutal mining technique and after reviewing all the published, peer-reviewed studies, it is clear not only that [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Imagine: you move to a new community and discover at least half of the residents have brain tumors, and that there is a forty percent greater likelihood that babies born into this community will suffer from serious birth defects compared to their peers in other communities. Would you want to know what is causing all [...]
This morning residents from West Virginia joined residents from three other states severely impacted by mountaintop removal coal mining in congressional office sit-ins in protest of their congressional representatives’ refusal to protect their communities from the extreme impacts of mountaintop removal. Constituents are currently occupying the offices of Congressmen Nick Rahall (D-WV), Hal Rogers (R-KY), [...]
On May 10, at the West Virginia Woman’s Club in Charleston, OVEC and our partner organizations, the Loretto Community at the United Nations, the Feminist Task Force of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, and the Civil Society Institute, are organizing and hosting the first ever U. S. Climate Justice Tribunal. Women throughout Central [...]