Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

OVEC’s Co-Director Needs Your Prayers!

The following op-ed by OVEC co-director Dianne Bady ran in the Oct. 18 Huntington Herald-Dispatch. Since the op-ed ran, Dianne found out she has serious health challenges ahead. We’re so grateful to Dianne for the 18 incredible years she has served OVEC, and the people of West Virginia and the Tri-state. Past experience tells us that she’ll be fighting tooth and nail to regain her health. We ask that you join us in sending her loving, healing thoughts. Dianne believes deeply in the power of prayer, so if you are the praying kind, please keep her in your thoughts. Cards can go to Dianne Bady, c/o OVEC, P.O. Box 6753, Huntington, WV 25773.

Don’t Let Area Power Plants Make Our Air Even Worse

by Dianne Bady

I was saddened by the letter to the editor that told of a woman who was diagnosed with advanced, inoperable lung cancer. She’d never been a smoker.

I was luckier. When I was diagnosed with lung cancer almost two years ago, the tumor was small. The cancer has been gone ever since a skilled local surgeon took out a chunk of my right lung. I, too, have always been a non-smoker.

According to public health researchers at Harvard University, the greater Huntington area is the No. 1 region in the United States for human health damages caused by pollution from coal-fired power plants. This was brought home to me in a gut-wrenching way when I traveled to the Cleveland Clinic early on a winter morning. The first 80 miles or so, we drove east along the Ohio River.

We passed about seven huge coal-fired power plants, both on the Ohio side of the river and on the West Virginia side. The pollution from the power plant smokestacks rose in the air just a little bit, and then dropped sharply to hug the Ohio River. The toxic emissions then moved, along with the river, directly toward Huntington.

For the rest of my life, I’m under doctor’s orders to stay away from cigarette smoke. But I live in the Ohio Valley, and I can’t stop breathing.

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., has revealed that the Bush administration is working on new legislation supposedly in response to hurricane emergencies. This legislation would waive some Clean Air Act pollution limits on power plants and refineries.

It seems to me that this is really just another President Bush attempt to reward his buddies in the coal and oil industries for their huge campaign contributions.

Passage of this outrageous legislation may seem farfetched, but keep in mind that since Bush took office, many environmental laws have been gutted. High-level personnel in regulatory agencies were replaced by political cronies, and enforcement of environmental laws nationwide has plummeted.

The wholesale annihilation of Southern West Virginia’s mountains, streams and coalfield communities has increased dramatically under Bush’s watch. A successful lawsuit filed by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Coal River Mountain Watch slows down the granting of new mountaintop removal permits and allows for more citizen involvement in permitting decisions.

But this victory is now being appealed in federal court by the Bush administration. Such a deal for citizens – obscene destruction in the coalfields; every West Virginia taxpayer pays to subsidize the real costs of mountaintop removal mining; and those of us in the Ohio Valley get to breathe the toxic emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Please write to your federal Congress people and senators. If you don’t know their names or addresses, just call your local library, and they can give you this information. For the sake of your families and your community, tell your lawmakers that allowing even more pollution from power plants and refineries is just insane. As insane as mountaintop removal!