Members lobbying, taking action on Capitol Hill

Seventeen KFTC members are part of a group of about 150 participating this week in the annual Week in Washington to End Mountaintop Removal, coordinated by the Alliance for Appalachia.

Members are participating in meetings with the offices of members of Congress and agencies that enforce mining and clean water laws. Tomorrow (Wednesday), they will join a rally and Day of Action organized by Appalachia Rising at the capitol.

"I'm a senior citizen and while I should be working on my bucket list and enjoying my retirement," said Harlan County member Stanley Sturgill. "But instead I'm back in Washington, D.C. again because I am so displeased with the horrific health conditions as a result of all the mountaintop removal.

"The main thing I'd like to see is to have mountaintop removal stopped. We don't need it," he added. "The only reason we do is because it's cheaper for the coal operator. It takes away coal mine jobs and destroys our health."

Recent peer-reviewed studies have shown widespread devastating health impacts linked to surface mining. Residents near mountaintop removal are 50% more likely to die of cancer and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects compared with Appalachian people in non-mining areas.

Sturgill and some KFTC members visited the offices of U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler and Brett Guthrie on Monday. Others had meetings with officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

EPA officials were surprised when showed photos of orange water from the municipal water supplies in Floyd and Knott counties. They are used to water that looks like that in streams where coal is mined, but not in the public water supply.

Members of Congress are being asked to support and become cosponsors of the Clean Water Protection Act. The bill, H.R. 1375, was introduced by Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey and David Reichert of Washington state and currently has 123 cosponsors.

"This bill alleviates the wide array of human and environmental health issues directly correlated with mountaintop removal coal mining by restoring the Clean Water Act to its original intent," said Pallone. "By redefining fill material, we'll be able to keep toxic mining waste out of our nation's streams."

Chandler and Rep. John Yarmuth are already cosponsors of this legislation.

Today and tomorrow, KFTC members will be involved in visits to the office of Reps. Ed Whitfield, Geoffrey Davis and Hal Rogers, Sen. Mitch McConnell, and the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and the National Park Service.

Read an op-ed by Stanley Sturgill published in The Hill.