Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As its lobbying efforts in Washington face a congressional probe over faked letters to lawmakers, the coal industry is launching another public relations effort to combat calls for a ban on mountaintop removal and limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry officials, business leaders and local government representatives gathered in Charleston Wednesday afternoon to announce their new "FACES of Coal" effort.
"Many outsiders are putting pressure here in West Virginia and nationally," said Bryan Brown, a West Virginia Coal Association publicist who also organized Wednesday's press conference. "We feel they don't understand and appreciate America's reliance on coal and the economic impact coal has on our communities, our state and our nation."
Brown said the new group, the Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security, would focus on "voices that are not typically associated with coal mining."
Among those who spoke at the press conference were state Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, a lobbyist for the County Commissioners Association of West Virginia, and the owner of an Upshur County retail flooring business.
"I'm thoroughly convinced that coal has a great future," Prezioso said. "I just can't see any other way around that."
Brown and other speakers focused on the spin-off jobs created by coal operations and by the distribution of coal severance taxes in West Virginia to counties statewide, including those where no coal is produced.
Read more in Coal Tattoo
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- As its lobbying efforts in Washington face a congressional probe over faked letters to lawmakers, the coal industry is launching another public relations effort to combat calls for a ban on mountaintop removal and limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
Industry officials, business leaders and local government representatives gathered in Charleston Wednesday afternoon to announce their new "FACES of Coal" effort.
"Many outsiders are putting pressure here in West Virginia and nationally," said Bryan Brown, a West Virginia Coal Association publicist who also organized Wednesday's press conference. "We feel they don't understand and appreciate America's reliance on coal and the economic impact coal has on our communities, our state and our nation."
Brown said the new group, the Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security, would focus on "voices that are not typically associated with coal mining."
Among those who spoke at the press conference were state Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, a lobbyist for the County Commissioners Association of West Virginia, and the owner of an Upshur County retail flooring business.
"I'm thoroughly convinced that coal has a great future," Prezioso said. "I just can't see any other way around that."
Brown and other speakers focused on the spin-off jobs created by coal operations and by the distribution of coal severance taxes in West Virginia to counties statewide, including those where no coal is produced.
To illustrate the impact of those tax dollars, several uniformed representatives of the Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority attended, after parking an ambulance outside that was painted to advertise the fact that it was purchased with coal-tax money.
Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper, a member of the ambulance authority board, said he did not know that the agency was sending representatives to take sides on controversial issues about the coal industry's future.
"Sometimes you get invited to these things and what you were told it was going to be isn't what it turns out to be," said Carper, who was not invited to the event. "From what you're telling me, I would have told them not to go."
Brown said FACES will start with a budget "upwards of $1 million" that comes from coal companies, coal industry vendors and other businesses and individuals. He said a breakdown of financing was not available. Brown said the group was formed by other coal industry groups who felt a need to publicize the support coal has from other businesses, organizations and individuals in the region.
In a prepared statement, the FACES group said it hopes to build on the "effective work" of organizations such as Friends of Coal and the Mountaintop Mining Coalition. The group's promotional materials focused on mountaintop removal, calling beefed-up permit reviews instituted by the Obama administration "a regulatory black hole" -- language previously used by the National Mining Association -- and alleging the only water quality damage from this mining is elimination of mayflies from certain streams.
Brown said he was not that familiar with the controversy generated by another coal lobby group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, or ACCCE, when its public relations firm sent more than a dozen faked letters opposing climate change legislation to members of Congress. The letters purported to be from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, senior citizen groups and a Hispanic advocacy organization.
Brown said he did not know if publicity about such tactics would make it harder for other coal groups like his to sway public opinion behind the industry.
"I can only speak for myself," Brown said. "And as an individual, I wouldn't be involved in a situation where we are stretching the truth or lying to get a job done."
Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1702.
In West Virginia, mining companies are literally moving mountains to uncover valuable, low sulfur coal reserves.
Mountaintop removal has become the dominant form of surface mining in the state. Coal operators are blasting off hilltops, and dumping leftover rock and dirt into nearby valleys.
An untold amount of the state has been flattened, and hundreds of miles of streams have been buried. Find out more in this Special Report.
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Coal mining areas in Appalachia were found to have nearly 11,000 more deaths each year than other places in the nation, 2,300 of those attributable to environmental factors such as air and water pollution
If mining is so "valuable", then why is the per capita income for Mingo county only $12,445? About 25.90% of families and 29.70% of Mingo's population are below the poverty line, including 38.90% of those under age 18 and 18.60% of those age 65 or over.
Coal workers: please pay attention to what you are touching, tasting, and breathing...some of it can kill you. remember: low doses of some of the chemicals you work with week after week, month after month...can lead to non-infectious disease.
Your MD will not tell you this re: too much work filing the workers comp claim, or as in most cases he just isn't smart enough or interested enough to do a proper history on you to find out what work you do, what chemicals you work.
Educate yourself, OSHA, MSHA and you employer will not. Good luck.