OVEC Action Alert - January 6, 2004

BRING BACK JACK 

Please join the Friends of the Mountains Coalition at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 13, as we gather in Charleston to tell Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to Bring Back Jack! We need a big turn out to kick off a new campaign, so please make plans to spend your lunch hour with us! (Of course, if you live too far away to make this event, you can still take action by writing a letter on to Chao--we'll have more on that in an upcoming Action Alert.) Whistleblower Jack Spadaro faces termination after 30 years of protecting the health and safety of miners and coalfield residents.

What : National Letter-Writing Campaign Launch to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao When : Tuesday, January 13 at 12:30 p.m. Where: Downtown Charleston Post Office at the corner of Washington and Dickinson Streets

Join the Friends of the Mountains Coalition as we launch a letter-writing campaign to Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to urge her to reinstate Jack Spadaro as the superintendent of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy. Bring a letter for Secretary Chao, or paper, pens and sample letters will be available.

Please RSVP to Anna Sale at (304) 342-3182, anna.sale@sierraclub.org or Vivian Stockman at (304) 522-0246, vivian@ohvec.org.

Coalfield residents, workers, and environmental activists from across the nation were disappointed to hear that Jack Spadaro, the superintendent of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy in Beckley, was notified of his imminent firing in October by the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Spadaro has been on administrative leave since June of 2003, charged with misuse of funds and abuse of authority. Since these charges surfaced, new reports have revealed that they little credence. Instead, it appears that Spadaro is being targeted because he was a whistleblower who pointed out corruption in his own agency.

Spadaro has over thirty years of experience in mine safety and inspection. He began his career as a 23 year-old engineer, charged with investigating the Buffalo Creek disaster in 1972 that killed 125 people. Since that time, he has worked to  spilled from an impoundment at a mountaintop removal site in Inez, Kentucky in 2000, Spadaro publicly criticized the Bush Administration's handling of the investigation, specifically for its failure to implicate MSHA for enforcement failures. Spadaro has also criticized several of MSHA's no-bid contracts.

Join the Big Sandy Environmental Coalition, Citizens Coal Council, Coal River Mountain Watch, Delbarton Environmental Community Awareness Foundation, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, the Sierra Club, West Virginia Citizen Action Group and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy to urge Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to stop this firing.

A sample letter is available in two formats, .doc or .pdf:
Sample fetter .pdf  (print it and add your comments)
Sample letter .doc  (suitable for editing if you have Word or a compatible program)

LEARN MORE ABOUT JACK 

Graffiti "Graffiti's 'Eer of the year: Jack Spadaro: Doing what's right despite the cost" 

Salon.com "Dirty business: How Bush and his coal industry cronies are covering up one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history." 

Living on Earth on NPR "Whistleblower Faces the Ax" 

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