Byrd - Old Senator, New Tricks Has King Coal Confused

As a rule, politicians in West Virginia dont care for environmentalists. This is, after all, a state that essentially depends on pollution for its survival. And West Virginias most prominent coal champion has long been Robert Byrd.

So just about everyone was shocked when Byrd did an about-face... The states governor, Joe Manchin, chalked the whole thing up to a "misunderstanding." The local Chamber of Commerce president generously offered to "forgive" Byrd if hed walk back his comments.

But Byrd is finding it increasingly difficult to argue that the interests of coal companies and the interests of his state are one and the same.

Last May, a series of floods ripped through the southern coalfield counties of West Virginia, damaging some 3,000 buildings and requiring more than $60 million in government assistance. Politicians and industry reps were quick to call the disaster an act of God, but Byrd wasnt convinced.

For the past few years, environmental groups had been quietly lobbying the senators office about the destructive effects of mountaintop-removal mining Not only does this form of mining destroy streams and pollute drinking water in the surrounding areas, but a host of studies have pointed out that the resulting degradation of forests and topsoil has left the region more vulnerable to severe flooding.

When local citizens pled their case that month, Byrd surprised many by agreeing to take a look.

Although Byrd himself was still recovering from a staph infection that kept him in the hospital, he sent several members of his staff to visit the affected areas. They toured the countryside, where locals pointed out roads that had been washed out and homes literally swept away.

"The vast amount of damage is not something you can see from a TV camera," observed Howard Barnham, a resident of Mingo County who volunteered as a tour guide for Byrds staff. "I think what they saw was the true extent of the damage."

At a public hearing on mountaintop-removal mining last October, members of the front group Friends of Coal packed the meeting and shouted down West Virginians trying to lodge their complaints. (Many of the citizens in attendance were convinced that employers had encouraged or paid their miners to show up and disrupt the proceedings. "Ive been in unions, I know how the companies fight, and these guys were being stoked," says retired miner Joe Stanley, who was at the meeting.)

A Byrd staff member was in attendance, and it appears that the industrys tactics grated. "I think those meetings did play a role [in Byrds shift]," says one former mining official and close observer of state politics. "Everybody watched the debate and saw the vile nature of it."

Theres also the climate question. Byrds not about to become an environmentalist; even in his op-ed, he insisted that coal was here to stay. But he seems to recognize that the realities of global warming will force the country to rethink how it uses coal sooner or later and that the states companies arent playing a constructive role.

(Byrd) seems willing to spend whats likely his last term in Congress getting West Virginia to realize that, in the end, obstructionism wont serve the state very well.

Read the entire New Republic article here: tinyurl.com/ZwickMTR.