March 16: Come Tell DEP No More MTR Permits!

The WV Department of Environmental Protection continues to ignore the studies that show mountaintop removal is drastically harming our health and cutting our lives short.

Time to put your foot down! Join The People’s Foot at DEP headquarters on March 16. Bring your family and friends. We’ll have a free T-shirt for the first 125 people.

For more info, see The People’s Foot Facebook page or call the OVEC office at 304-522-0246. Tell the DEP no more MTR permits. See you March 16!

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March 28: Learn About MTR’s Health Impacts
What are the health risks of MTR mining next to Kanawha State Forest and Charleston (or anywhere)? Come find out from Dr. Michael McCawley, chair, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences at WVU, as he presents the latest research on how ultrafine particulate dust from MTR impacts our health.

Meet Dr. McCawley Saturday, March 28, at 3:30 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 520 Kanawha Blvd. W., Charleston, WV. Presented by the Kanawha Forest Coalition.

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Stay Current on WV Legislators’ Actions
OVEC is a member organization of and donor to the West Virginia Environmental Council. Donors help provide resources for E-Council lobbyists. As a 501-c-3 organization, by law, OVEC cannot engage in extensive lobbying, so we rely on E-Council, a 501-c-4 organization, to inform us of important bills that impact our work and lives.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there’s a lot going on right now at the WV Statehouse that impacts you, and things change quickly. That’s why we encourage you to be certain you are on E-Council’s action alert list, as well as OVEC’s Facebook page and Twitter feed.

We also encourage you to donate to E-Council, which depends on donations not only from member groups, but from individuals like you. (Note that while donations to OVEC are tax deductible, donations to E-Council are not.)

E-Council lobbyists: Thank you for all your work under the Golden Dome!

Speaking of the Golden Dome, both E-Council and Energy Efficient West Virginia want you to know about a bill now before the State Legislature, SB 520 (and the companion is HB 2945), the Local Energy Efficiency Partnership (LEEP) Act.

Here’s how you can help move this bill along.

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Another Terrifying Example of the Need to End
Extreme Extraction / Accelerate Renewables

No doubt you read the news doubt the Bakken crude oil tanker training exploding here in West Virginia. This Al Jazeera America article, “West Virginians start clean up after massive oil train derailment,” quotes OVEC member T. Paige Dalporto and OVEC organizer. Paige lives near the explosion site and shared this photo/sentiment on Facebook:

ohvec.org    crwm.net    mountainkeeper.org
Folks, it’s not enough anymore to sit on the sidelines and root for your team… these are 3 very fine, hardworking, WV lovin’ organizations, with world, and national recognition… they have won top awards for what they do… please visit them online, and if nothing else, please donate $5 just as a show of support. Please, please don’t sit this one out! It is very important to insure safety standards to prevent more tragedies from being visited upon our state… and please, think about attending the next rally. Our numbers have to grow or we are, literally, dead in the water! – P

Last week, OVEC staff were on the phone with our friends at WORC, Western Organization of Resource Councils, who know a lot about Bakken crude. They know it’s time to stop the exploding train madness!

Click here to join in their action to demand that North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple require North Dakota oil producers to fully stabilize Bakken crude prior to loading it onto trains. You can use the same page to ask our governor to contact Gov. Dalrymple about making Bakken oil safe before hauling it on trains.

As OVEC Executive Director Janet Keating says in her blog:

West Virginia’s over-reliance on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels guarantees more disasters, more toxic pollution of our precious, vital water resources, increases to on-going threats to public health and safety, and threatens the very future of planet Earth due to climate disruption. This is beyond common sense when clean, renewable solar and wind energy are off-the-shelf technology becoming increasingly more competitive with coal, gas and oil with the added benefits of thousands of new jobs along with greater safety for the public.

Here’s another easy e-action you can take: Stop the Bomb Trains.

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