This news story originally provided by The Sunday Gazette-Mail

March 13, 2005

Groups use sunshine laws to probe coal industry

By The Associated Press

The week of March 13 has been declared Sunshine Week by media organizations and other groups pressing for government access, contending information is being withheld more often by officials who cite post-Sept. 11 security concerns.

After several years of digging through government records, Julia Bonds says she is still learning how to use the laws that are supposed to help her track developments in West Virginias coal industry.

Its all in the question you ask, says Bonds, who works with the nonprofit Coal River Mountain Watch in Whitesville. You have to be almost an expert in certain things to know what to ask for.

The group was formed in 1998 to monitor mountaintop removal mining and timbering in West Virginias southern counties. It recently joined with two other groups to track the development of impoundments that hold water, sludge and other mining wastes. The three groups rely on West Virginias open meetings law and state and federal Freedom of Information Acts which allow public access to government reports, documents and other records to stay informed.

There are things that go on in the coalfields every day. If we dont ask the right questions, no one will tell us, says Watch member Bo Webb.

While Freedom of Information Act and open meetings laws are often associated with journalists and government watchdog groups, private citizens actually use the federal FOIA law far more. More than 3.2 million FOIA requests were made to the federal government in fiscal year 2003, up from 1.9 million in 1999, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

At the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the number of FOIA requests from contractors, consultants and lawyers represents about 75 percent of the 1,500 requests the agency receives annually, says Jessica Greathouse, DEPs chief communications officer.

The state FOIA law requires agencies to respond within five working days. The DEP usually sends a letter referring requesters to an agency contact who can help them review the files.

If its a small request, Were happy to make the copies and send them off, Greathouse said. The DEP charges 25 cents a page; the first 20 pages are free. The agency is in the process of putting its records on computer, accessible through the Internet.

We try to make the FOIA law as user-friendly as possible. We get so many requests a year, the burden for the most part has to be on the requester, Greathouse said.

Thats a lesson Bonds group has learned.

Bonds has asked DEP for information about blasting complaints from mountaintop removal mines because Coal River Mountain Watch is concerned that increased blasting will weaken old coal mine impoundments. The DEP told her she could come to its office and review each mining permit.

Coal River Mountain Watch also asked for the amount of explosives used daily in Southern West Virginias coalfields. The DEP said it did not keep that information, but the group could look at logs kept at each mine site, Bonds said.

The group instead contacted the Institute of Makers of Explosives in Washington, D.C., and learned West Virginia is the nations top consumer of explosives, using 731 million pounds in 2003, or about two million pounds a day. The bulk of that is used in mining, said institute President Chris Ronay.

Even when government agencies are willing to comply with a request, they sometimes make it difficult for individuals to obtain the information, said Vivian Stockman with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

OVEC recently filed a FOIA request with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration seeking information on a sludge impoundment.

They told us they couldnt give it to us without a huge fee. We havent followed through with a lawyer yet, Stockman said.

Another problem with public requests is that people define words differently, Greathouse said.

The DEP says there are 126 impoundments at West Virginia permitted mine sites. Of those, 89 are refuse impoundments, most of which contain sludge. Others contain fresh water or acid mine drainage.

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration classifies impoundments differently.

And the Coal Impoundment Project Web site, sponsored by the Robert C. Byrd National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit University, says there are 150 active impoundments and several hundred inactive or abandoned coal impoundments in West Virginia.

Its hard for citizens to attend all the meetings and get all the documents they need to know what is going on around them, said Bonds, who won the worlds top prize for grass-roots environmental activists in 2003, the Goldman Environmental Prize.

Thats why our grass-roots organization attends meetings, so we can relay the information we learn at the meetings about whats above their heads in the sludge dams or how do you call in a complaint when you see blackwater coming from these sludge dams, Bonds said.

Open meetings and records are just central to democratic government, Stockman said.

We like that saying about how sunshine is the perfect antiseptic. Anything that is going on in the dark, you bring it out in the open and it gets rid of the possibility of corruption.

On the Net:
Sunshine in Government Initiative: www.sunshineingovernment.com