Below:

• Victory for Sludge Safety Project!

• Clean Elections--Hold That Feb. 1 Date, Move The Issue

• So Much To Do....

 Victory for Sludge Safety Project!
Thanks so much to all of you who helped the Sludge Safety Project during the Interims--we garnered an important victory! On Jan. 9, 42 SSP supporters attended the final Interim hearing on slurry injection and groundwater contamination. (Wow what a great turnout--thank you!) Subcommittee B passed a resolution to study what it is in slurry and whether it is getting into people's water wells. For news coverage of that hearing, click on the 1/9/2007 news-headlines in the right column here.

On Jan. 10, the full Joint Judiciary Interim Committee passed the study resolution. Now the resolution, which will be assigned a number, must be passed by the full legislature. So, we may call on you for your help again...

In fact, we'll ask right now. Volunteers are already organizing weekly Citizen Lobby Days for every Tuesday during the Legislative Session, starting this coming Tuesday, Jan. 16. The volunteers are busy updating both Sludge Safety and Clean Elections fact sheets. They are compiling info packets to make your lobby experience easy and maybe even fun. If you would like to help educate Legislators on these issues, please reply to this e-mail and we'll send along details. We welcome your help on any level--from coming out once to attending every Tuesday. We'll need help writing letters and making phone calls.  There are all sorts of opportunities to help.

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 Clean Elections--Hold That Feb. 1 Date, Move The Issue
This Legislative Session, we’re in the best shape ever to advance Clean Elections—the real reform that makes all other reforms possible! Just think what we can do if we loosen King Coal’s grip on our legislators…

Thursday, Feb. 1 is a big day for Clean Elections. We ask that you and your friends come to Charleston that day. Maybe you can ask for the day off--call in well on Feb. 1. The day begins at 8:30 with a light breakfast and a quick training on the issue. Next is a press conference, then it's your chance to meet with your Legislators. If you would like to be involved, please reply to this e-mail and we'll fill you in on the details. 

Clean Elections is one of the sexiest issues out there, people. If we had the Clean Elections system here in West Virginia, all our other work substantially easier. Thanks to our earlier Clean Elections work, in the 2006 elections Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship was no longer able to pump huge amounts of money into campaign advertising without people knowing his money was behind the ads. Blankenship and his ilk can never again run campaigns under the radar, as he tried to do when he spent millions to unseat Supreme Court Judge Warren McGraw in 2004. We’ve had other Clean Election successes through the years, and with the new leadership in the House, we have high hopes for bigger successes this year.

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 So Much To Do....
Please check our calendar web page to keep up date on upcoming events. Here's a sampling:

January 13: 7 p.m. The South Charleston Museum presents a night dedicated to West Virginia's greatest filmmaker, Pare Lorentz. Congressman Ken Hechler will introduce Lorentz' first landmark film, "The Plow that Broke the Plains"(1936). The second film on the program is the WV premiere of the 2005 Pare Lorentz Award winning film, "America's Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie" provided courtesy of Bullfrog Films.

The South Charleston Museum is located in the LaBelle Theatre, 311 D Street, South Charleston, WV. For more information, please contact the museum by telephoning 304.744.9711, e-mail scmuseum@yahoo.com, or visit http://www.geocities.com/scmuseum/WV_Film_Series.html.

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