By Mannix Porterfield
CHARLESTON — Convinced the Environmental Protection Agency is bent on “vilifying coal,” Sen. Mike Green launched a special Web site Wednesday to put citizen pressure on the Obama administration, hoping to gain approval of 23 permits in West Virginia.
Green hopes to attract as many as 15,000 online signatures at the site, www.supportwvcoal. com, and forward them to the EPA.
“Let your voice be heard immediately,” Green, D-Raleigh, said in announcing the Web site.
“It’s important for everyone to go online and sign this petition to help keep West Virginia families working.”
Coal leaders are growing increasingly impatient with the EPA’s further scrutiny of 79 permits across Appalachia.
Green said he had been besieged in recent weeks by “literally hundreds” of telephone calls and e-mails, asking what he, as chairman of the Senate Energy, Industry and Mining Committee, was doing to get the permits out of neutral.
“The sad part is, on a state level, our hands are tied,” Green said during a break in October interims meetings.
“There’s not anything we can do other than bring awareness to the people and let the people’s voices be heard.”
Green said the EPA delay threatens not only the jobs of West Virginia workers, but also the operation of state government in the process, given the potential loss in coal taxes.
“It will devastate West Virginia,” he predicted.
“When you look at the total impact of not only the economy as far as employment but the tax base on what the state relies to run the day-to-day operations, it will literally devastate us.”
If the EPA has a problem with coal, it should work with coal-producing states, including the advancement of clean coal technology, considering how reliant America is on the fossil fuel, Green said.
“The thing of it is, the EPA, in my opinion, is trying to vilify coal,” he said.
The controversy hit the boiling point when the EPA turned the 79 pending permits over the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for additional review. The EPA has said it needs to see if the proposed operations pose any conflicts with the Clean Water Act.
Green called for “a transparent process based on current law and regulation for the consideration of these permits.”
— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com
