Our Stories

The Latest by Liz Judge

Advocacy Communications Director

November 22, 2011

Appalachian Coal Jobs Reach 14-Year High

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

A little-covered news item from Nov. 18 bears much more attention. The Charleston Gazette‘s Ken Ward reported on some new data that blows the top off two years of coal industry lies and spin: Obama’s so-called “job-killing regulations” and “war on coal” are not actually killing jobs, they are CREATING JOBS! We’ve been saying it all along, but …

November 14, 2011

Creek Memories & Our Fight For Clean Water in America

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

From early morning tadpole pursuits to sunset creek walks, my summer days started and ended in the creek that ran behind my home. My dad built a bridge across the creek, but for our neighborhood gang of rascals, well, there was no use for such bridges when we could splash and wade right through that …

October 26, 2011

New Bureaucracy, Same Old Sad Story?

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

Today Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a major agency reshuffling that will affect how the government enforces laws on mountaintop removal and surface coal mining.  He will fold the Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) into another Department of Interior subdivision, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). OSMRE is the agency that oversees …

October 21, 2011

Mountaintop Removal: A View From Up Above

By Liz Judge

Recently, thanks to a nonprofit flight operation called SouthWings, I had the opportunity to fly in a small airplane over a mountaintop removal coal mining site in West Virginia.
We flew over the Hobet mountaintop removal mining site, which measures to more than 20 square miles of demolition, and though I will try to put what I saw into words, it can only really be understood through the eyes. So I’m sharing a few photos that illustrate a scale of destruction that words cannot convey.

September 30, 2011

For Some in Congress, It's Easier To Censor Than Hear Americans

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

“They are blowing up my homeland,” said West Virginia coalfield resident Maria Gunnoe on Monday morning, in her sworn testimony on the impacts of mountaintop removal mining before the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. I feel the vibrations of the core driller in the floors of my home; and the impacts …

September 22, 2011

House Passes TRAIN Act/Wreck

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

We all deserve to breathe clean air, but the House of Representatives today acted as if our air doesn’t need to be quite so clean. Guided by Rep. Eric Cantor’s toxic dirty-air agenda and a host of political paybacks to dirty-industry campaign contributors, the House passed a bill to block the Environmental Protection Agency from …

July 14, 2011

Obama Promises Veto of Toxic-and-Dirty Water Bill

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

Yesterday evening, July 13, the full House of Representatives passed the Toxic-and-Dirty Water Bill that I warned about a couple weeks ago — HR 2018, along with a number of amendments. The House passed this legislation 239-184, despite a vow from the White House promising a veto if the bill makes it through the Senate. This …

July 12, 2011

Save the Babies: Stop Mountaintop Removal Mining

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

A major new scientific study shows significantly higher rates of birth defects in areas of heavy mountaintop removal mining, even after controlling for a range of other contributing factors. The study found that living near a mountaintop removal site poses a much greater risk to unborn babies than smoking during pregnancy. More than double the …

July 6, 2011

House Appropriators Slash Environmental, Health Safeguards

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

The 112th Session of the House of Representatives is at it again, doing what they do best: writing legislation to strike and block the clean air and clean water laws that keep us alive and healthy. This morning, the House majority released its spending bill for the year 2012, and not to disappoint those who …

June 22, 2011

Congress v Environment: House Committee OKs Dirty Water Bill

By Liz Judge  /  Policy and Legislation Team & Washington, D.C. Office

It was a dark day in the House of Representatives, today, as the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure passed a bill that would flush away decades of water safeguards and protections, along with our powerful federal system for ensuring that any waters in this country are safe to drink, fish, and swim in. The …