| BIG COAL The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future Jeff Goodell Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-618-31940-4 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-618-31940-9 | 324p. | HC/BWI | $25.95 | |
| Somebody told me that Big Coal's taboo is any condition of change. Yeah, I said that's the mark of a coal baron true, and isn't it terribly strange? They fight for pollution, they keep wages low, they fight against the union line. The only thing they get up for each day is to wring more profit from the mine. |
There's nothing unique or intrinsically unscrupulous about large corporations trying to grow larger. But this in no way excuses the coal companies' greedy and rapacious practices — not when they could mine just as much coal without despoiling the land and ruining the lives of the people who live on it. It's true this would reduce their profits in the near term. But the tradeoff for slightly lower near-term profits is better employee safety and morale, and more good will in the community. They might also extend the life of coal as a resource, and learn to profit from supplying other forms of energy.1
Instead, by and large they proceed as they always have — treating workers as expendable tools, cutting corners on safety whenever possible, dumping wastes wherever it suits them, and ignoring the residents near their operation sites. Nowhere is their depredation more poignantly visible than in the Appalachian mountains that front America's eastern seaboard.
"The coal industry tends to see people who live near mineable coal seams as people who are standing in the way of progress, as if their right to profit from digging out these ancient black rocks supersedes every other right, including the right of future generations to imagine what the Appalachians looked like before they got leveled. The issue is not really whether we have enough coal to provide enough electricity to keep our air conditioners cranked up. The issue is, how big a part of America are we willing to sacrifice for this privilege?" – Page 19 |
Born in 1859 to a poor but devout London family, Samuel Insull got a break when he was six: His father took a post near Oxford, and Samuel was able to attend private school. He soon showed a talent for accounting, and excelled at the study of history and politics. Fired from his first job as a bookkeeper in favor of the owner's son, he answered an ad from American banker George Gouraud and was delighted to find when he took the job that Gouraud was Thomas Edison's agent in England. Soon Insull was bound for New York and a post as personal secretary to the famous inventor.
After some eventful years, Edison gave Insull charge over Edison Electric as it moved to Schenectady, New York. Shortly it grew to dominate the power-plant manufacturing industry. When the company was bought by Charles Coffin, Insull jumped to head of Chicago Edison, one of the fastest-growing electric utilities. Here he had the insight that shaped the monolithic utility companies we know today. Utilities, Insull proposed, should be regulated as "natural monopolies" by the state. Familiar with the Windy City's machine politics, he foresaw that regulation would be no barrier to growth but would protect pioneers like himself from the municipal power companies then springing up in many cities.
Some officials understood the import of this move. Mayor Daniel Hoan of Milwaukee said in 1907:
"No shrewder piece of political humbuggery and downright fraud has ever been placed upon the statute books. It's supposed to be legislation for the people. In fact, it's legislation for the power oligarchy." – Page 105 |
Thus insulated against competition by his company's special status as a regulated monopoly, Insull implemented his next brilliant business insight: he cut prices. Demand grew, and so did Chicago Edison. Insull was a marketing genius too; touting clean, healthy electricity, his ads fostered the development of an appliances industry. His final coup was technical: replacing the piston engines of the day with steam turbines to drive his generators. By 1916 he commanded 118 power systems in nine states and was a very rich man.
Insull's empire, like those of his peers, grew maze-like as it expanded. At one point he himself held 65 chairmanships, 85 directorships, and was president of 11 corporations. His company was worth billions, and its stock was widely held. Then came the Great Depression, and the over-leveraged house of cards collapsed, taking the life savings of many small investors with it.3 Indicted on multiple charges, Insull fled to Europe. He became a symbol of corporate greed, vilified in the press and condemned by president Franklin Roosevelt:
"The Insull failure has opened our eyes. It shows that . . . the development of these fraudulent monstrosities [electric utilities] was such as to compel ultimate ruin; that practices had been indulged in that suggest the old days of railroad wildcatting; that private manipulation had outsmarted the slow-moving power of government." – Page 111 |
In this well-researched account, Jeff Goodell shows us the coal industry from the inside. That industry is more than just executives in their offices or lobbyists on Capitol Hill. It's more than strip mines or flattened mountains, more even than the gritty dark tunnels where Randy Fogle and men like him come alive. The coal industry also consists of once-thriving coal towns like Masontown, Pennsylvania where an old coal-burner called Hatfield's Ferry keeps the lights on, the houses covered with soot, and the residents choking. Indeed, if almost every American carries a bit of the coal industry's guilt, in some sense almost every American is part of that industry, since we all breathe the gases the power plants that burn coal emit, and so many of us carry a share of the effluents that emerge with the gases.
A sense of history is vital to understanding this complex picture. Begin where Goodell does, with an out-of-work Englishman named Samuel Insull. Through one of those James Burkean connections, he becomes Thomas Edison's personal assistant, and winds up in charge of a Chicago coal empire. It's thanks to Insull that we depend on a few suppliers of electricity running enormous central plants fed by caravans of mile-long trains carrying thousands of tons of coal daily. One of the highlights of Goodell's work is his explanation of this history. (See the sidebar; but be advised it is but the merest sketch.)
In this larger sense the concentration of wealth and power in monolithic mine companies, railroads, and electric utilities is just a symptom of classic capitalism. But the use of coal is a special case, because of its far-reaching effects. For a host of reasons, that power must be curbed, the monolithic empires restructured, their wealth and influence distributed across more and smaller kingdoms.2 I summarize those reasons very briefly here.
Alone of North American forests, the tree cover of Appalachia was not destroyed in the last ice age. Known to ecologists as the mother forest, it is a global hotspot of biological diversity that contains 80 species of trees — a stock which re-seeded the rest of the continent as the glaciers receded. The EPA estimates that by 2013 we will have sacrificed a forested area the size of Delaware. So far some 800,000 acres of that forest have already been lost and over 1,200 miles of Appalachian streams have been destroyed or severely damaged. They will take hundreds of years to recover. The mountains turned into moonscapes over the past 15 years number 470. The effluents of that mining spread far downstream, poisoning wildlife and humans alike.
Federal law requires "reclamation," not reforestation. Coal operators do not always comply. Even when they do, according to Plundering Appalachia, "the result is a biological wasteland compared to the native forest—generally a thin, green sheen of exotic grass growing on compacted rubble. The return of a vibrant, ecologically healthy natural community that approaches its former richness is a distant dream."
| "Southern Appalachian forests are predominantly interior because they are spatially extensive with little disturbance imposed by other uses of the land. Appalachian mountaintop mining increased substantially during the 1990s, posing a threat to the interior character of the forest. We used spatial convolution to identify interior forest at multiple scales on circa 1992 and 2001 land-cover maps of the Southern Appalachians. Our analyses show that interior forest loss was 1.75-5.0 times greater than the direct forest loss attributable to mountaintop mining. Mountaintop mining in the southern Appalachians has reduced forest interior area more extensively than the reduction that would be expected based on changes in overall forest area alone. The loss of Southern Appalachian interior forest is of global significance because of the worldwide rarity of large expanses of temperate deciduous forest." |
| – J.D. Wickham et. al., "The effect of Appalachian mountaintop mining on interior forest", Landscape Ecology, Volume 22, Number 2, February 2007, pp. 179-187 |
Lest we forget, coal is still mined from tunnels deep underground, and those tunnels sometimes still cave in. Explosive methane remains a problem in the tunnels, and careless mapping can lead the crews to drill into an older, flooded mine. The 1969 passage of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act reduced the rate of coal-mine deaths, it has lately leveled off. Mine owners resist the regulations and inspections that would make work safer, and in recent years have persuaded the federal government to cooperate. Seventeen men died in Appalachian coal mines during January 2006, including twelve in an explosion at Sago and two after a fire at Alma. (Meanwhile, per the U.S. Dept. of Labor, the inflation-adjusted average weekly wage of a coal miner fell 20 percent from 1985 to 2004.)
Most of the land in Appalachia is owned by the coal companies, or by out-of-area interests. For this reason, and because coal mining is the main source of income in much of the region, local residents have little economic freedom. The increasing mechanization that came with mountaintop removal mining decimated the workforce; only one in ten miners still works at that job. Loss of wild plants and animals removes traditional ways of survival such as hunting or gathering herbs. And the pressure to sell out is always there. In this sense too Appalachians are in the hole.
Most everyone in those states could be considered part of the coal industry, since it forms so large a part of the local economy and has such pervasive influence on daily life. This is the reason why big coal wields so much power in the region. But economic dependency is not the worst influence. Occupational hazards are a part of many jobs. The mining of coal stands out because it brings more severe hazards and because those hazards routinely extend far beyond the workplace.
Fifth-generation families living in Appalachia are part of the coal industry too, though not by choice. Many face an even greater hazard, for they live in the shadow of looming impoundments of waste called coal-slurry ponds. A typical pond holds millions of gallons of waste produced by washing the coal — a toxic mixture containing compounds of arsenic, selenium, and other heavy metals. This mixture can leak into local groundwater, polluting drinking-water wells nearby. And if the dam breaks, dwellers downstream can be drowned by a torrent of sludge.
| On December 22, 2008 the dam holding back a coal slurry pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant burst. Over 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge spilled out, covering 300 acres and contaminating the nearby Emory and Clinch rivers. The coal ash contains high concentrations of heavy metals including arsenic, lead, barium, chromium, and manganese. Officials have called the TVA Kingston coal ash spill one of the largest environmental disasters in US history. |
| Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate (By SHAILA DEWAN, The New York Times, 26 December 2008) |
According to Dan Agin's Junk Science, and to the EPA, most fish in the U.S. today contain unsafe levels of mercury compounds, and 8 percent of women of child-bearing ages have concentrations of mercury higher than the current toxicity threshold. Coal-burning power plants are the biggest source of mercury, producing 50 tons per year: about 40% of the annual total in the U.S.4 From 1970 to 2000, the amount of coal burned for power tripled.5 David Krabbenhoft, leader of USGS National Mercury Project, says the deposition rate of mercury is 3 to 5 times preindustrial levels.6 An EPA sampling program found that 49% of the sampled population of lakes had mercury tissue concentrations that exceeded the 0.3 ppm screening value for mercury. This represents over 36,000 U.S. lakes.
| Former EPA toxicologist Dr. Deborah Rice: "At least eight studies have found an association between methyl-mercury levels and impaired neuropsychological performance in the child. The Seychelles study is anomalous in not finding associations between methylmercury exposure and adverse effects." Study of Seychelles islanders found their diet, high in mercury-tainted seafood, caused no ill effects. That Seychelles study was funded in part by $486,000 from the Electric Power Research Institute, but the NAS found no fault with it. (pages 141-2) |
Philippe Grandjean, Harvard School of Public Health epidemiologist, cited a study of Faeroe Islands children that found IQ dropped 1.5 points for every doubling of parents' exposure to mercury. In Senate hearing over new rules on mercury emissions, Senator Inhofe lauded the Seychelles study, ignored others. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce chimed in: "The push to regulate mercury emissions from power plants is an attempt by extreme environmental groups to hinder economic growth and force jobs overseas." (page 142)
It's common knowledge that soot and ash are not good for the lungs. Fortunately, America's air is far less burdened by those contaminants today than in 1912, when a British journalist visiting Toledo lauded the black smoke from its "forest of chimneys" as emblematic of progress. Since the Clean Air Act passed in 1970, sulfur dioxide emissions are down 77%, nitrous oxides down 60%, and soot is reduced by 96%. But study after study supports the idea that particles in smaller quantities and smaller sizes are dangerous. EPA analyst Joel Schwartz found that death rates from lung and heart disease rose in Steubenville, Ohio along with small-particle pollution, even when the air met 1987 standards.7 And the EPA says the level of small-particle pollution has been constant 2001-2006.
Predictably, industry mobilized its forces to resist stronger standards. C. Boyden Gray, former counsel to George H. W. Bush, heads the Air Quality Standards Coalition. That group got $312,000 from the National Manufacturers Association and $110,000 from American Electric Power to organize fake populist rallies around the country, and to run ads claiming new rules would bring a ban on lawn mowers and backyard barbecues. EPA, for its part, said the new regs would cost industry between $6.5 and $8.5 billion, but save the public $51 to $112 billion annually in medical costs.8
Dr. Diane Shafer is a part of the coal industry because she's responsible for curing the ills caused by coal waste ponds around Williamson, West Virginia. She noticed a spate of cases of kidney stones, thyroid problems, gastrointestinal upsets, and early-onset dementia in rural areas beyond the town's municipal water supply. It took no special genius to suspect that chemicals in groundwater might be the cause. Yet, despite serving on the Mingo County board of health, Dr. Shafer could not get an official inquiry started. But she got Ben Stout of Wheeling Jesuit University to do a water-quality study. He tested 15 local wells and found high levels of heavy metals "including lead, arsenic, beryllium, and selenium" in the water. The 15 wells were close to the Sprouse Creek impoundment — a Massey Energy property. Only five of those wells met federal standards.
"It's not the mountains of West Virginia I worry about," he says. "It's the people. Sometimes I think what's going on here is damn near genocide." – Ben Stout, quoted on page 42 |
The Crandall Canyon Mine is located on the Wasatch Plateau in Emery County, Utah. Six miners were trapped there in August 2007 when a wall collapsed. Later three would-be rescuers, including an inspector with the MSHA, died in a subsequent cave-in. At that point rescue operations were suspended. The mine is co-owned by UtahAmerican Energy, Inc., a subsidiary of Murray Energy Corporation, based in Cleveland, Ohio and owned by Robert E. "Bob" Murray. In 2008 the MSHA fined Genwal Resources, which ran the mine for UtahAmerican, a record $1.85 million for mining too aggressively and ignoring earlier safety violations. Bob Murray was also cited for erratic behavior during the rescue operation.9
The true coal barons conclude that there's only one thing to do: continue with business as usual (BAU). That means they will continue to pay their miners as little as possible, selectively "de-hire" union members, lavish money on local politicians amenable to their concerns (and mount expensive campaigns to defeat those who aren't), and ignore the effects of their industry on the communities where it operates (which is to say on the entire country.)
Again I must point out that they aren't all like that. Entergy (?) is converting its coal plants to cleaner natural gas, and some companies welcome the chance to install equipment that scrubs pollutants from their plants' exhaust. But, more and more, it's apparent that only a radical restructuring of the energy industries can completely solve the problem.
On and on down the dank tunnel beneath Blankenship House they slogged through inky blackness, the wet walls pressing in, their minds oppressed by the ever-present chance that the unseen roof above their heads would give way, entombing their bodies as it now entombed their morbid thoughts...
The bit above was written before Upper Big Branch Mine's methane explosion killed 29 miners. It's a Blankenship mine. I removed one word and will now let it stand for the moment. The rest of this page was also pre-UBBM. It still needs work, but I'll put it online.
A good argument can be made that a distributed network of smaller plants would be cleaner and more responsive to changing conditions. A better than good argument can be made that these smaller producers would be more efficient. They can be closer to their customers, hence losing less energy across long power lines; and the waste heat they cast off can be used to warm parts of the cities where those customers reside.
Goodell discusses a new design for coal-fired power plants called the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC). An IGCC plant cooks the coal into gas which is burned in a turbine like natural gas. The process uses 40 percent less water and produces half as much ash. It is 10 percent more efficient than a conventional coal-burner and almost as clean-burning as natural gas. To top it off, it makes carbon capture and storage much easier.
| Conventional Plant | IGCC Plant | |
|---|---|---|
| Without Capture | 52 | 56 |
| With Capture | 95 | 79 |
China now consumes more coal and produces more CO2 than the U.S. It mines more coal, too. And its mines are more dangerous; more than 6,000 miners die in Chinese coal mines each year. The air in Asia generally is very dirty, and riots over pollution have occurred in China.10, 11 Chinese officials, unlike those in the U.S. when this book was being researched, admit that the globe is warming.12 As a result, China is moving toward green energy much faster than we are. And it was the impoverished residents of Ürümqi who accomplished The Rebirth of Ghost Mountain.13 How embarrassing is that?
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.