On April 1, We'll Finish the Corps of Engineers Protest. Be There!

At 11:30 a.m. on April 1, at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office, Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue in downtown Huntington. This will be worth taking the day off for!

We didn't finish our Dec. 10 protest - it ended at the beginning, when Laura collapsed. The press release below never went out. The plan was for Viv and Laura to add any final touches to their news release after the protest and then fax it out. We didn’t sing our carols, nor deliver the sludge fudge. Laura didn’t get to make all her statements. Please help us finish this protest and send a strong message to the Corps of Engineers - stop issuing permits for huge, illegal valley fills! Mountaintop removal must be stopped, not promoted!

For Immediate Release Dec. 10, 2001

Contact: Laura Forman, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, 304-522-0246

Holiday Cheer? Groups give “sludge fudge” to the Corps

HUNTINGTON, WV - Santa dug his hands into the pockets of King Coal to fish out the holiday present he wanted to give the Army Corps of Engineers – a lump of coal and a piece of “sludge fudge.”

A group of citizen activists, including one dressed as Santa and one dressed as King Coal, protested outside the Huntington District Headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers today.

“The Corps is permitting coal companies to obliterate southern West Virginia’s and eastern Kentucky’s streams and forested mountains,” Laura Forman, an organizer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), told the lunchtime crowd.

“For once it’s not only the citizens who are outraged at this Corps-enabled annihilation,” Forman added. “At the end of November, both the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) blasted the Corps saying their nationwide permits are taking an excessive toll on streams and wetlands throughout Appalachia.”

She was referring to letters the two federal agencies sent to the Corps criticizing its practice of issuing the streamlined nationwide permits, which should only be issued when projects have “minimal impact” on the nation’s waters. The EPA said no there are no data that indicate that valley fill permits have minimal impacts.

The FWS said damage to ecosystems from surface mining has been “unprecedented,” and noted that in 2000 alone the Corps had issued permits which “collectively destroyed almost 14,000 acres of aquatic habitat and nearly 88 miles of stream channels.” The agency said over 900 miles of streams have been buried in mining areas, mostly within the Corps’ Huntington District, which covers West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia.

The Corps contends it requires coal companies to create “environmental enhancement” projects to mitigate for wetlands loss.

As the group sang environmental versions of Christmas carols, Santa (OVEC board member Dan Kash) delivered a lump of coal and a tin of “sludge fudge” inside the Corps’ headquarters. The sludge, marked “Caution: Poisonous to humans and other life forms,” was a tiny bit of the 300 million gallons of coal waste that broke through from an impoundment at a mountaintop removal site in Eastern Kentucky in October 2000, in the nation’s worst-ever blackwater spill.

Forman noted that Senator Byrd has recently secured another $9 million for the Corps to work on flood prevention in West Virginia.

“Byrd said this money will allow the Corps to continue to protect lives and property in the coalfields from significant flooding,” Forman scoffed. “Funding the Corps to prevent flooding in West Virginia is like giving money to the tobacco industry to do cancer research.”

The protestors called on the Corps to cease issuing nationwide permits for mountaintop removal-valley fill operations.