don blankenship

Fri, 2013-03-08 05:00Ben Jervey
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Don Blankenship, Dark Lord of Coal Country, Implicated in Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion Deaths

Just under three years ago, an explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, West Virginia stole the lives of 29 miners. Many were quick to condemn Massey Energy -- the coal giant that operated the mine -- for their long record of lax safety oversight, and to bemoan the preventability of the disaster.

Blame was directed straight to the top of the company, to then-CEO Don Blankenship, “the dark lord of coal country” himself, who had grown a vile reputation in the field for systematically putting production and profit over worker safety.

Late last week, in a surprise twist during a routine plea hearing in a federal court, all that blame was seemingly justified as Blankenship was directly implicated in conspiring to skirt safety regulations. A former Massey Energy official called our his boss, Blankenship himself, for conspiring and plotting to hide safety violations from federal safety inspectors.

Read more: Don Blankenship, Dark Lord of Coal Country, Implicated in Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion Deaths
Fri, 2012-06-01 15:46Steve Horn
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Massey WV Coal Battle Take Two: Erie, CO Citizens Fight Fracking

Erie, CO meet Naoma, WV. Though seemingly different battles over different ecologically hazardous extractive processes -- hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") for unconventional gas versus mountaintop removal for coal -- the two battles are one in the same and direct parallels of one another. 

On June 2, a coalition of activist organizations led by Erie Rising and joined by the likes of the Sierra Club, the Mark Ruffalo-lead Water Defense, the Angela Monti Fox-lead Mothers Project (mother of "Gasland" Producer and Director, Josh Fox), Food and Water Watch (FWW), among others, will take to Erie, CO to say "leave and leave now" to EnCana Corporation.

EnCana has big plans to drill baby drill in Erie.

It "plans to frack for natural gas near three local schools and a childcare center," according to a press release disseminated by FWW. "On June 2, the event in Erie will give voice to those immediately affected by fracking there, and to all Americans marred by the process, becoming ground zero for the national movement to expose the dangers associated with fracking."

The action is a simple one: a "rally and vigil to protest gas industry giant Encana’s plans to frack for natural gas near Red Hawk Elementary, Erie Elementary, Erie Middle School and Exploring Minds Childcare Center and transport toxic fracking by-products on roads that come within feet of these and other community schools," reads the FWW press release.

Maria Gunnoe describes Marsh Fork Elementary

Like the battle in Erie of today, the battle in Naoma involved, as Schabacker put it in his interview, "mothers' standing up to protect their children in their community." Ted Nace, Director of Coalswarm, a project on the Center for Media and Democracy's Sourcewatch project and author of the book Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal, told DeSmogBlog in an interview that it is these types of battles that win the hearts and minds of regular everyday people.

"Movements need rallying points and a movement needs to have cases of high visibility local impact," said Nace.

"Those people who think about building movements should keep their eyes open to such cases. People at the local level are also looking to get visibility for their community. And I do think one of the big dimensions of environmental activism is finding stories that resonate for people. It's a lot easier for people to comprehend a story that involves other peoples' families than it is to understand a story about some unpronouncable chemical."

Eventually, after a long, hard grassroots fight, often involving civil disobedience, Massey Energy (with financial help from the Annenberg Foundation) was pressured into building a new school for the community away from the Upper Big Branch Mine. 

Time will tell whether Erie sees similar success. The parallel, at the very least, is an interesting one. 

Image credit: Shutterstock | Cindi Wilson

Read more: Massey WV Coal Battle Take Two: Erie, CO Citizens Fight Fracking
Fri, 2011-06-10 12:56Farron Cousins
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Massey Energy Is Not The Only Mountaintop Removal Mining Villain

This week, hundreds of protesters are marching to Blair Mountain in West Virginia to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining. The march commemorates the Battle of Blair Mountain – one of the most significant labor battles in American history, and one of the few times in history when a sitting U.S. president threatened to use air strikes against American citizens. The group Appalachia Rising organized the march to draw attention to the practice of mountaintop mining, which is destroying large swaths of the Appalachian Mountains. Blair Mountain was added to a list of historic U.S. sites back in 2008, but due to pressure from the coal industry, the mountain was removed from the protected list and could now be subjected to mountaintop removal mining.

Mountaintop removal mining (MTR) entails blowing the tops off of entire mountains in order to extract the coal seems within. The method became popular when coal companies realized that they could produce two and a half times as much coal per worker hour by removing the tops of mountains, rather than traditional coal mining methods. As a result, some states have reduced the number of coal workers by as much as 60%, while output and profits have remained steady.

Read more: Massey Energy Is Not The Only Mountaintop Removal Mining Villain
Mon, 2011-01-03 15:20Brendan DeMelle
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Future of Coal Dims Further in 2010, But Dying Industry Still Killing and Polluting

2010 was a dark year for the dirty U.S. coal industry, with the deaths of 48 coal miners – the deadliest year in nearly two decades – and widespread recognition of the threat posed by hazardous coal ash waste to waterways nationwide. 

2011 hasn’t started off very well either, with a New Year’s Day article in the Washington Post noting the industry’s failure to begin construction on a single new coal-fired power plant in the United States for the second straight year.

An excerpt from the Post story:

“Coal is a dead man walkin'," says Kevin Parker, global head of asset management and a member of the executive committee at Deutsche Bank. "Banks won't finance them. Insurance companies won't insure them. The EPA is coming after them. . . . And the economics to make it clean don't work."

Not only are the coal barons failing to build new plants, but their aging fleet is also facing a huge wave of coal-plant retirements thanks to new and emerging EPA regulations, as Grist’s Dave Roberts summarized last month. 

Nevertheless, the coal industry’s best efforts to flood Washington with lobbyists and dirty PR tricks seem to have crippled President Obama’s campaign pledge to end mountaintop removal and stalled out EPA administrator Lisa Jackson’s momentum towards regulating coal ash as the hazardous waste it surely is.

Read more: Future of Coal Dims Further in 2010, But Dying Industry Still Killing and Polluting
Mon, 2010-12-06 17:22Brendan DeMelle
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Want To Be The Next CEO of Massey Energy As Don Blankenship Retires?

Sierra Club pranksters have posted on Craig's List an all-too-honest job description for anyone hoping to apply for the CEO job at Massey Energy to replace retiring CEO Don Blankenship.  Think you're qualified to fill the shoes of one of the worst polluters in America? 

Here is the Craig's List job description:

Massey Energy Seeks CEO

Date: 2010-12-06, 5:33PM EST
Reply to: job-a32nw-2098801382@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]


Massey Energy seeks a new Chief Executive Officer to carry on its important work destroying the environment and jeopardizing the health and safety of its employees. This position will oversee all Massey Energy operations (but don't worry - stringent or really any oversight is not a corporate priority).

 

Key responsibilities:

-Ducking responsibility for grave accidents and enthusiastically (and with a straight face) shifting the blame to government agencies created to prevent such incidents.

-Denying climate change, hating the environment and hating anyone who might enjoy the environment.

-Trading campaign cash for congressional favor.

-Threatening members of the media.

-Personally persuading workers to abandon union organizing.

 

Read more: Want To Be The Next CEO of Massey Energy As Don Blankenship Retires?
Tue, 2010-01-12 13:01Kevin Grandia
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Massey Energy running attack ads against "tree hugging extremists"

Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE), the 4th largest coal producer in the country is running political-style attacks in West Virginia claiming that "tree hugging extremists and self-serving politicians" are killing jobs, while the coal industry is "fighting hard for Appalachian jobs" and "what's right."

I am assuming that when Massey talks about fighting for Appalachian jobs they aren't referring to the fact that earlier in 2009 they cut employee pay by 6% and then recently increased the performance bonus for Massey's CEO, Don Blankenship, by $600,000.

And I think it's also safe to assume that when Massey talks about fighting for "what's right" they aren't talking about the major environmental violations over the years culminating in a record $20 million settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA stated that Massey had violated its Clean Water Act permits "... more than 4,500 times between January 2000 and December 2006."

Read more: Massey Energy running attack ads against "tree hugging extremists"
Thu, 2010-01-07 15:38Brendan DeMelle
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Scientists Call for Moratorium on Mountaintop Removal Mining

A group of the nation’s leading environmental scientists is calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to stop issuing new mountaintop mining permits, arguing that the ecological and human health costs of the controversial mining practice are “pervasive and irreversible.” 

The group of scientists published the first comprehensive assessment of the ecological and health impacts of mountaintop removal mining today in the journal Science, describing how the impacts of current and former mountaintop removal operations will be felt for centuries, with major implications for water quality, biodiversity, and human health.  Shockingly, there’s never been a comprehensive assessment of MTR impacts until now.

Published only a few days after the Obama EPA misguidedly approved the expansion of Hobet 45, part of the largest mountaintop removal coal mine in West Virginia, the paper concludes that mountaintop removal’s impacts are much too steep to justify.  The authors’ analysis of peer-reviewed research unequivocally confirms irreversible environmental impacts from mountaintop removal, a practice that also exposes local residents to a greater risk of serious health problems.

Read more: Scientists Call for Moratorium on Mountaintop Removal Mining
Thu, 2008-12-11 11:03Kevin Grandia
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Massey Energy CEO Blankenship's anti-environment screed caught on tape

Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy (NYSE: MEE), the fourth largest coal producer in the United States thinks Gore, Pelosi, Reid and environmentalists are crazy, atheist, communist Greeniacs who lie about climate change and other environmental issues.

Blankenship seems to either be a very confrontational sort of person or to have completely jumped the shark by the looks of this video footage that NRDC released today.

Blankenship's speech is quite disheartening because it shows very clearly the massive divide that continues to exist between environmental groups and people who care about environmental issues and the very companies that we need to convince to do something about these issues.

Below are video excerpts of the speech Blankenship made in West Virginia on November 20, 2008.

"I don't believe climate change is real."

Blankenship: "I don't believe climate change is real, I do believe that the Arctic is melting and the Antarctic is getting colder. I believe it's a normal cycle. This is the first speech I've given at the Tug Valley Institute in November and it's snowing outside. So it's not my greatest concern."

Read more: Massey Energy CEO Blankenship's anti-environment screed caught on tape
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