OVEC Action Alert - July 2, 2002

A Quick and Easy Web Action on Overweight Coal Trucks

Check Out This Massey Energy Ad

Quick Web Action On Overweight Coal Trucks

Go to www.umwa.org, click on the "NO OVERWEIGHT COAL TRUCKS" link on the left side of the page, under the yellow box. Next click on the WV county you live in and type your name and address then click send. The letter is already written for you. Please tell your friends to take this click-action, and ask them to tell their friends. We can inundate the legislature with mail on this issue!

A note circulated from Teddy Hapne of the United Mine Workers of America sums up the latest coal poli-tricks. The Governor’s panel on truck safety has recommended increasing by 50% the load coal trucks can carry. If this recommended legislation becomes law, it will allow coal trucks to carry up to 120,000 lbs. Again, that is twice the legal limit we have in West Virginia today.

Trucks carrying this much weight create unsafe highway conditions and will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in road and bridge upgrades and repairs. We must contact our legislators and tell them to say NO to this weight increase.

More Truth-in-advertising-not! From Massey Energy

 Thanks to Nathan Fetty of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition for forwarding this gem: Massey Energy (800-766-1320 & on the web), is running a half-page ad, text below, in the State Journal, West Virginia’s business newspaper. For a little background on Massey’s ridiculously bad corporate behavior read the Graffiti article. 

Here’s the ad: 

Fires Out West

This has been a particularly heavy fire season in the western states. Millions of acres are being burned and the skies are filed (sic) with smoke and carbon dioxide.

Meanwhile back here in the East, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other tree huggers continue to assault electric power plants for their very minor air emissions.

Mother Nature's fires in the West far exceed the negative impacts of power generation on our environment. Yet, we don't see an army of enviros and their lawyers rushing out west to fight those fires.

It certainly makes you wonder if the attacks on low-cost coal-fired electricity are related to the environment or tied to some other scheme.

Regardless of the reason, if the EPA and the enviros are successful, we will have higher priced electricity and more West Virginia coal miners out of work. 

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Whacko! (And as if brutally non-union Massey cares about miners!)

For just a few recent news stories on “power plants very minor air emissions” see:

Planet Ark
NY Times
Environment News Service
Environmental News Network
Environmental News Network
Lexington Herald Leader

You’ll find many, many more news articles on that “minor” air pollution—hey, what’s a little global warming, a little acid rain, a little lungful of smog, a little mercury for dinner—archived on the OVEC website.

Please let us know if you contact Massey regarding this ad.