Deadline on coal ash minefilling rule extended...

...to June 22. If you've been thinking about submitting your thoughts on the rule but ran out of time, go for it.

Deadline this Wednesday for coal ash comments

This Wednesday, June 13 marks the deadline for concerned citizens to submit comments to the federal government on its plan to regulate -- sort of -- the filling of old mines with coal ash waste.

The U.S. Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is taking feedback on its response to a National Research Council (NRC) report calling for federal requirements that all states would have to meet when allowing power plant waste to be dumped into coal mines.

Its response? To simply say that such waste is already sufficiently regulated under existing mining rules.

In other words, there's no problem at all with projects like the Big Gorilla pit north of Hometown, or the Springdale pit in Tamaqua, or the many other old mines-turned-coal waste dumps that dot the region's landscape. OSM apparently believes Pennsylvania's mine regulators have those sites under control and are adequately protecting nearby residents from contaminants seeping into their groundwater or dusting their lungs.

But environmental and public-health advocates disagree. They point out that OSM's response inexplicaby ignores the fact that the NRC actually found state regulations to be inadequate -- which is why it called for a national rule. They also note that coal waste has already polluted water supplies all over the country with toxic levels of metals and salts, and that intensifying efforts to curb air emissions from coal plants will only increase the disposal problem.

Concerned citizens are invited to send comments to OSM by the end of the workday this Wednesday. Identify them by docket number 1029-AC54, and e-mail them to rules_comments@osmre.gov.

For more details on the comment process, and to read OSM's proposal, click here. Please note that the original May 14 deadline for comments was extended to June 13.

PAC urges action against coal-to-oil

MoveOn, a national progressive political action and advocacy group, today sent out an e-mail asking members for their help in blocking highly polluting coal-to-oil projects like the one planned for Schuylkill County. The e-mail stated:

The idea of turning coal into liquid to fill our gas tanks should just be a bad joke. But because the coal industry pours millions into lobbying Congress every year, this joke could turn into a real nightmare.

The senate is about to vote on a big bill dealing with energy and the climate crisis. Massive subsidies for coal were defeated in committee. But we're not out of the woods yet, since one of the coal-friendly senators could sneak them back in again as an amendment just before the final vote.

Can you call your senators today to tell them to vote against liquid coal if it's added to the bill at the last minute?

The New York Times reported last month that King Coal is pushing hard for billions of dollars in taxpayer-financed construction loans for coal-to-oil plants, minimum prices for the new fuel, and big government purchases of the fuel over the next quarter-century.

Not only would such operations subject nearby residents to toxic emissions, they would also emit enormous quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Plans to capture those gases and sequester them underground have repeatedly run into technical difficulties.

If Hometown-area residents want to weigh in with their senators on coal-to-oil technology, they can call Sen. Bob Casey in Washington at (866) 802-2833 and Sen. Arlen Specter at (202) 224-4254.

But they shouldn't hold their breath while waiting for these politicians to oppose the plant. After all, Casey and Specter -- along with state Rep. Tim Holden (D-17th) -- rescued a low-interest loan for the plant earlier this year after the Bush administration canceled it. At the same time, Specter has accepted at least $12,000 in campaign contributions from the Rich family, one of whose companies -- Waste Management and Processors -- is behind the plant.

Local environmental watchdog launches news Web site

Schuylkill County residents looking for information on important political issues including toxic dumping, local control, corporate welfare and property tax reform have a new online source to turn to.

Dr. Dante Picciano, director of the Tamaqua-based environmental watchdog organization Army for a Clean Environment, has launched a Web site at www.dante7.com that aims to serve concerned citizens with news and commentary on these and related political matters.

Picciano explains why (hotlinks added by me):

Experience has taught me that the information being disseminated by the media is filtered. There are two examples from the website. Recently, the Pottsville Republican & Herald reported that incumbent Schuylkill County Commissioners Frank Staudenmeier and Robert Carl said that they never considered John Schickram a serious challenge to their re-election effort. John sent a response to Staudenmeier and Carl's criticism but the newspaper refused or failed to publish it. The response was published in the Lehighton Times News and now it is posted on my website.

Second, the Pottsville Republican & Herald reported on the Schuylkill County unemployment rate as evidence by the Commissioners of the success in the county economic development efforts. I sent a response pointing out the fallacy of the Commissioners' interpretation of the the unemployment rates but the newspaper again failed or refused to publish it. My response was published in the Lehighton Times news and now it is posted on my website.

All I read in the newspapers and see on television are stories about the number of jobs that our politicians have created, about their efforts to lower our property taxes, about what they are doing to stop the dumping, about what they are doing about our cancer problems, etc. The politicians are claiming that they created more jobs than there are people in Schuylkill County, our property taxes are constantly increasing, we are continually being assaulted with contaminated, hazardous and toxic wastes from outside the county and the cancer rates continue to climb. All of the media are guilty of one-sided reporting and it is time for a more balanced presentation. Our politicians represent industry and I want to let everyone know the truth.

Investigation documents dangers at Hometown Superfund sites

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington-based nonprofit that produces investigative journalism on issues of public concern, recently published a story documenting at least 114 Superfund sites where the threat from dangerous and sometimes carcinogenic substances is not under control, and 224 sites where the migration of contaminated groundwater is not under control -- and Eastern Diversified Metals in Hometown and McAdoo Associates just north of the village are among the sites on the latter list.

The investigation documents complaints that will strike a familiar chord with many Hometown-area residents:

People living near some of the most contaminated areas complain that the EPA favors private interests over their own and that their health suffers the consequences of government neglect.

Indeed, the EPA has continuously ignored the demands of Hometown-area residents for a thorough clean-up at the sites, instead kowtowing to the responsible polluters by favoring cheaper options at every step of the so-called "remediation" process.

CPI also raises concerns about EPA's choice to "cap" sites -- that is, to cover them with a plastic liner and dirt without addressing below-ground contamination. That's the remedy the agency chose for the EDM site despite vociferous objections from local residents, who among other things point out that capping does nothing to address the plume of the cancer-causing solvent trichloroethylene that runs beneath the site, which drains into a tributary of the Little Schuylkill River. CPI reports:

At another Superfund site in Pensacola, Fla., the EPA plans to place a giant tarp covered with soil and clay over "Mt. Dioxin," a nearly 600,000-cubic-yard mound of dirt contaminated with arsenic, dioxin, PCBs and other highly toxic material harmful to human health and whose exposure to humans is "not under control," according to the EPA.

The Pensacola site was created by another wood-treating facility, operated by Escambia Wood Treating Co. The EPA has determined that migration of groundwater off the site is also not under control.

In deciding among proposed cleanup plans, the EPA acknowledged that the one it settled on, which emphasizes containment, would not be as effective as alternatives that focus on treatment. But the agency maintained that its approach would "result in a substantially equivalent degree of protectiveness" at one-fifth the cost.

Several scientists and activists disagree.

"It's a high-tech engineered version of burying the stuff in a plastic bag," said Frances Dunham, a leading member of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, an environmental watchdog group in Pensacola, Fla.

Among the contaminants being buried at EDM, where metals were reclaimed from phone cables, are dioxin, PCBs and lead -- all carcinogens.

I was interested to see McAdoo Associates on CPI's list of sites with uncontrolled migration of contaminated groundwater. The issue of contaminants running off the site -- a former coal mine that in the 1970s was turned into an illegal industrial waste dump used by some of America's biggest corporations -- has repeatedly come up in public discussions of the high rate of polycythemia vera among residents of Ben Titus Road, a community located downhill from the site.

The EPA has repeatedly assured local residents that any contaminants escaping from the site could not affect the private wells and municipal reservoir that lie along Ben Titus Road. However, the fact that the agency's own records acknowledge that the migration of contaminated groundwater from the site is in fact "uncontrolled" would seem to call any official assurances about its eventual destination into question.