Not worth the risks to health, environment

Several times a day, a cloud of coal dust emanates from the tipple at the Goals Preparation Plant in West Virginia as another train car receives a payload of coal bound for North Carolina. The dust clouds frequently drift over toward the playground at Marsh Fork Elementary School, which sits less than 100 yards from the plant's coal silo. Pipes run from the preparation plant nearly 400 yards up an artificially tiered slope composed of waste from nearby strip mines.

At the top of the slope is an earthen dam holding back a dark lake of coal slurry, the waste product from coal washing at the preparation plant down below.

The 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge provide ample cause for parents to worry about the safety of their children at the school. Just a few dozen miles to the west, near Buffalo Creek, a smaller impoundment failed in 1972, taking 125 lives, mostly school children.

The situation became more hazardous when blasting began at the Edwight surface mine surrounding the dam. That operation is in the process of leveling 2,000 acres of forested slopes that used to tower above the school. These peaks and ridges are some of the tallest ever mined in West Virginia, with wind resources that once held the promise of far more jobs than the few provided by the mountaintop-removal industry.

The Goals Plant is at the end of the CSX rail line and the loaded train initially runs north up the Coal River Valley toward Charleston. More North Carolina-bound cars are added at a preparation plant in Sylvester, built a decade ago over the opposition of a large majority of town residents. Pauline Canterbury describes the impact that the plant and nearby mines have had on her community: "For the past eight years, life in the community of Sylvester, West Virginia, has been a living Hell of black-coal dust, nerve-shattering noises and broken promises, while we have watched our homes be destroyed, and respiratory illness invade our bodies."

Near Charleston, the tracks merge with another CSX line coming north from the Beth Preparation Plant, a facility that processes coal from the massive 12,000-acre Hobet 21 mine site. Hobet has been at the center of recent lawsuits over toxic levels of selenium found downstream from the mine. In 2008, researchers found that selenium was causing gruesome deformities in fish, including larvae born with both eyes on the same side of the head.

Mountaintop removal is the other inconvenient truth about North Carolina's reliance on coal. We consume 30 million tons of Central Appalachian coal every year, half of which comes from mountaintop-removal mines, to produce 60 percent of our electricity. Recognizing North Carolina's culpability in the ecological and human-rights catastrophe caused by the mountaintop removal, a bipartisan group of 30 North Carolina legislators recently introduced the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act (AMPA). This bill would phase out North Carolina's use of mountaintop-removal coal over a five-year period during which existing long-term coal contracts would be allowed to expire.

In explaining her company's opposition to AMPA, Marilyn Lineberger, a spokeswoman for Duke Energy, told the Journal that the bill could lead to a 5 percent increase in residential electric rates and an 8 percent increase in industrial rates. This would amount to an astronomical $33 per ton increase over the current price of mountaintop-removal coal. Presumably, Lineberger was assuming that mountaintop-removal coal would be replaced entirely with higher-priced coal from underground mines in the same region.

A more practical approach that might lower rates would be to gradually diversify the coal supply away from total reliance on Central Appalachia while reducing overall demand for coal through cost-effective efficiency measures. Regardless, according to the Department of Energy, the "price premium" for underground compared to surface-mined coal from Central Appalachia has been $3 to $6 per ton in recent years -- a fraction of the $33 price impact that Duke projects. Based on these DOE numbers, the rate impact of a total shift to underground coal could be less than 1 percent.

As long as North Carolina remains dependent on such a destructive and controversial source of energy for 30 percent of our electricity supply, price spikes and supply shortages will remain a very real risk to ratepayers. Passing AMPA and diversifying our coal supply would go a long way toward addressing the risks from a growing number of legal and legislative challenges to mountaintop removal that could result in a costly rush to find new sources. Vince Stroud, the vice president of regulated fuels for Duke Energy, was quoted in the Dec. 10, 2007, edition of the US Coal Review saying that buyers could look back "wistfully" at recent coal prices should mountaintop-removal permitting issues not be solved.

In the past year, those "permitting issues" have ballooned into a growing national consensus that mountaintop removal should be stopped. Last fall, President Obama said "we have to find more environmentally sound ways of mining coal than simply blowing the tops off mountains."

Last November, Bank of America announced that it would phase out its financing of companies engaged primarily in mountaintop removal. Last week, the Clean Water Protection Act was introduced in Congress with more than 100 co-sponsors. With federal appeals and class-action lawsuits mounting, even ardent coal supporters are coming to the conclusion that the future of mountaintop removal may be short.

If Duke Energy and Progress Energy want to discuss practical and cost-effective solutions for moving away from mountaintop-removal coal, they will find enthusiastic participants. But legislators should not wait for those companies to take the lead in moving us to a sound, sustainable and ethical energy policy. Legislators should not let scare tactics about rate increases dissuade them from voting their conscience on AMPA or shake their confidence that passing the bill will save their constituents money in the long run.

■ Matt Wasson is the director of programs for Appalachian Voices, an advocacy group for environmental protection in the southern Appalachian Mountains. In 2002, Appalachian Voices was a leader in the coalition that passed the North Carolina Clean Smokestacks Act.