Environmentalists say they’re tired of being ignored by legislature

By Andy Mead – amead@herald-leader.com

FRANKFORT – In one hearing room, legislators listened to report by a director of the Harvard Medical School warning that coal, from mining to moving to burning, is killing Kentuckians.

One legislator responded by noting that obesity also kills people, and wondered if food should be banned.

Then, a little while later in an adjacent room, a group of environmentalists led by author Wendell Berry said they were fed up with the General Assembly.

“We have petitioned, marched, sung, written, lobbied, testified and pleaded — all to no avail,” Berry said. “But today we declare that business as usual in Frankfort — long intolerable — has now become unacceptable.”

The environmentalists, members of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC), took turns reading a Declaration of Independence-type statement.

It called on the state’s political leaders to break their close ties with coal, remove legislators with ties to coal companies from leadership positions, and call for an end to “extreme and sometimes violent speech” directed at people who speak out against coal in the coalfields.

Their message: Coal production and demand is ebbing, but Kentucky is not taking steps toward new energy sources and jobs.

Environmentalists characterized the declaration as a major step, but its effectiveness is doubtful.

The declaration specified, for example, that Rep. Jim Gooch, D-Providence, should be removed from chairmanship of the House Natural Resources Committee. A “stream-saver” bill that would curtail mountaintop removal mining in Eastern Kentucky is introduced every year, but can’t get a hearing before Gooch’s committee, the environmentalists said.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo later said he had no plans to replace Gooch. Both men have close ties to the coal industry.

In speaking of what they characterized as hostile feelings against them stirred up by the coal industry, several environmentalists mentioned Haven King, the Perry County clerk. He is director of Coal Mining Our Future, an industry-sponsored non-profit that was formed to oppose the stream-saver bill.

A KFTC document listed several instances of hostility, including an unnamed coal company in Harlan County that was forced to shut down because it has put too much sludge in a pond. It laid off workers and gave them the names of people in the community who had complained about the pond, the document said.

King, contacted later, ran down a long list of charitable deeds done by his group, sometimes in concert with KFTC members.

“We’re out here helping the community,” he said. “We’re not trying to intimidate nobody.”

Asked about the report from the Harvard Medical School about the health effects of coal, King said this: “I have all these people saying these things like global warming, I guess that’s why they’re having this much snow now.”

The report was by Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard school’s Center for Health and Global Environment.

It was presented to the House Committee on Health and Welfare. There was no bill on the issue before the committee. KFTC’s Kevin Pentz said the group would like to see the legislature back a study of the overall costs of coal, but had little faith that would happen.

Epstein’s report said the public health costs of coal are immense.

“Each step of the coal lifecycle — extraction, processing, transportation, burning and waste storage — generates enormous public health burdens.,” he wrote.

The committee gave KFTC 20 minutes to present Epstein’s report and another by a West Virginia researcher, then moved on to other matters.