Cross posted from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network Blog Today the Virginia Air Board had its quarterly meeting and looking at the agenda one thing is crystal clear: Coal is impacting air quality all over the Commonwealth. As I write this from the meeting room, and the Air Board is hearing reports on problems associated [...]

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This Time in South Carolina – Cross posted from the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog Today rate-payers and oxygen users can breathe a little easier, as the Santee Cooper company nixed its plans to build another coal plant in the state. A committee of the state-owned utility voted this morning to suspend an effort to [...]

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Another one bites the dust, this one in South Carolina – proposed by the Santee Cooper Electric Cooperative Read the first article to hit the press here. “Committee members and Santee Cooper staff said the down economy, looming federal regulation of carbon and a potential agreement with another power company made it possible to forgo [...]

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Cross posted by JW from the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog Having had their astroturfing forgery exposed, this week coal industry front group ACCCE is taking an uber-REAL super-grassrootsy approach to showing us their grassrootability, via Twitter. And this time, rather than making stuff up about random minority groups, womens’ organizations, or seniors, they’re saying [...]

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Cross posted from Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog Congressman Tom Perriello (VA-05) was just on Rachel Maddow talking about Bonner/ACCCE’s fraudulent attempts to get him to vote against climate legislation. The fossil fuel industry has completely destroyed their fragile credibility, and things are heating up for ACCCE and their corporate lobbying partners with increasing calls [...]

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cross-posted from the CCAN Blog Virginians are no stranger to coal. A state that currently generates 42% of its electricity from the old-school fossil fuel, we are used to living in a political culture that accepts – and endorses – the adherence to a fuel as old as the dinosaurs, and equally archaic. Major players [...]

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Cross posted from Appalachian Voices’ Front Porch Blog Polluting Industries Caught Forging Support When you are a small non-profit working to reform billion dollar industries, you can take some solace when the other side is damaging their own case far more seriously than regular citizens ever could. The last few days have been a highlight [...]

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Article from Tamara Dietrich at the Daily Press. Read the Whole Article Here: http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-local_tamara_0724jul24,0,7027240.column Notably missing from the Army Corps scope of review is mountaintop removal and global warming. While I have respect for their review I believe they made a mistake when they chose to leave out leveling of the oldest mountains in the [...]

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Cross posted at the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog When Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) decided that the small town of Dendron, Virginia, would be the future site of a 1500 megawatt, behemoth of a coal-fired power plant, they probably did not imagine that they would face a tremendous obstacle in the citizens of Dendron. [...]

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Thanks in part to your efforts, Big Coal suffered a setback in Virginia this week! Members of the Dendron Town Council, backed by local supporters cooling themselves with hand-held fans reading “No Coal Plant,” voted to decide for themselves if a coal plant will be built in their town. The vote means this important decision [...]

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Cross-posted from the CCAN Blog. Dendron, Virginia, has more than its share of challenges. The community of around 300, located in the southern corner of Surry County, struggles with an outdated municipal water system, crumbling sidewalks and no major businesses within the town. Prior to the Great Depression, Dendron had been a company town of [...]

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cross-posted from the CCAN blog Yesterday, the EPA performed a turn-around on its protection of the locations of 44 “high risk” coal ash impoundment sites, signaling a desire to make the regulatory body more transparent. Formerly protected under the auspices of national security, the ash impoundments, located in Ohio, Arizona, and throughout the southeast, have [...]

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Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia, a close ally to President Obama and current head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), came out with this statement in favor of the Administration’s proposal regarding mountaintop removal removal yesterday. “I applaud the new guidelines announced by the administration which will impose tighter restrictions on mountaintop mining. “In Virginia, [...]

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The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 cleared its first of many hurdles to passage yesterday, passing the Energy and Commerce Committee by a vote of 33-25. The vote was mostly party line, with three conservative Democrats defecting (Mike Ross (AR-04), Jim Mathson (UT-02), and Charlie Melancon (LA-03)) and one Republican voting with [...]

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Several opinion pieces have been submitted and printes by newspapers in the Hampton Roads area concerning ODEC’s proposed 1,500 megawatt power plant for the region. Eileen over at Articlexi.com, Virginia’s environmentally focused blog, has collected a few of them and posted them as a blog, and others have since been posted in the comments. Check [...]

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