Colorado Beyond Coal Organizers Pack a Hearing

Rallying for clean energy in Boulder on Tuesday.

Our own Sierra Club Regional Representative Roger Singer is reporting that a rally and hearing about a coal-fired power plant in Boulder, Colorado, went very successfully yesterday. Singer, the Rocky Mountain (Colorado) and several partner groups helped get more than 200 people to attend the rally and hearing to speak out against the Xcel Energy Valmont coal plant. Singer said the clean energy organizers have targeted this plant for retirement/conversion to renewable energy.

Roger Singer speaks at the pre-hearing rally.

"At the rally, held at a public square right in front of the hearing site on a warm and sunny late afternoon, we entertained the audience with a live jazz band as we built the crowd, then motivated the troops with a combination of motivational speakers (myself included) and little theater skits and songs about the coal plight," said Singer. "One of the more significant moments was when Boulder County Commissioner Will Toor was on stage and described both the Valmont and Cherokee coal plants as 'perfect targets for shutting down or converting to a renewable resource.'"

Getting folks to sign a petition at the rally.

Singer said once in the hearing, the crowd filled the meeting room and spilled out into the hallway. There the Air Quality Control Commission heard more than four hours of testimony about the plant (the hearing was about the plant's renewal of an air pollution permit). The Sierra Club was one of the three groups that formally requested and received the hearing.

Anne Butterfield testifies for clean energy at the hearing.

The rally and hearing received great media coverage, and Singer credits the big turnout to an extensive outreach campaign using emails, snail mail, putting up fliers and handing out pamphlets. News articles can be seen here and here, and more hits are expected from local TV and radio stations.

A clean energy advocate signs up to testify. And yes, those are pieces of coal on the sign-up table.

"This was definitely a big team effort," explained Singer. "We worked with students from Colorado University and Colorado College, our local Beyond Coal community activists, as well as hard working partners at Clean Energy Action, WildEarth Guardians, Rainforest Action Network, Natural Capitalism Solutions, Boulder Climate Action Network and Greenpeace. Everybody had a hand in planning, recruitment, testimony and logistics."

One of many banners from the rally.

Singer called the entire day "a successful coalition effort to demonstrate the growing demand here in Colorado to Move Beyond Coal with visible public support shown to the media and to key decision makers."

Congratulations to our Colorado clean energy organizers!

All photos by Sierra Club Volunteer Doug Grinbergs. You can see more of his excellent photos of the rally in this Flickr set, and more of his excellent hearing photos in this Flickr set.

Confrontation in West Virginia

 

Larry Gibson lives on a 50-acre homestead on the side of Kayford Mountain in West Virginia that has been in his family for 200 years. More than 300 of his ancestors are buried in the cemetery on Kayford Mountain. 

The mountains of southern Appalachia are home to a rich cultural heritage, as well as some of the most bio-diverse forests on earth. They are also rich in coal, and since 1986, mountaintop removal mining (MTR) has been steadily demolishing Kayford Mountain, leaving behind the moonscape pictured below.

Larry's homestead used to be surrounded by peaks and ridges supporting deep forests and mountain streams. The Gibson's haven't moved, but their house now occupies the highest point of land around, as the surrounding 12,000 acres of Kayford Mountain have been blasted to smithereens. The Gibson's cabin is the right-most structure in the settlement pictured below. In 2007 a portion of the cemetery where the Gibson's relatives are buried was bulldozed.

For more than 20 years Larry has held out against coal company efforts to buy him out, meanwhile helping found the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, which celebrates and nurtures mountain culture. The foundation also allows him to travel the country spreading the word about MTR. Larry welcomes concerned citizens, students, journalists, and government officials to visit his homestead to see first-hand what mountaintop removal does to the land.

Larry also helps host the Mountain Keepers Festival over the July 4 weekend at Stanley Heirs Park on Kayford Mountain, where people camp out, learn about the mountains, and share food, stories, music, and solidarity.

This year, a group of people dressed in T-shirts issued by the Massey Energy Company crashed the party, intimidating and verbally threatening festival-goers. They were apparently unarmed, but one half-naked man in their company rubbed meat all over himself and threatened to slit people's throats before Massey employees who were recognized as local residents led him away.

The incident was captured on video. [Viewers, note that this clip contains strong language and is not suitable for children.] State police were contacted, but by the time they arrived two hours later the intruders were nowhere to be found. The video has been forwarded to the West Virginia State Police and the U.S. Department of Justice.

It is not clear whether the intruders acted on their own or were encouraged by Massey, the largest operator of MTR sites in the state. It should also be noted that not all of the party-crashers behaved threateningly; the ones who led the shirtless man away were apparently embarrassed by his behavior, and one member of the Sierra Club's Kentucky Chapter who was in attendance reported that there was "an exchange of barbecue" before the Massey crew drove off.

What is clear is that the practice of mountaintop removal is deeply divisive to residents of southern Appalachia, often pitting neighbor against neighbor and even driving a wedge between family members. Learn more about mountaintop removal mining and how we can move beyond coal.

Kayford Mountain photos by Vivian Stockman, courtesy of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

Sierra Club, Tribes Team Up to Protect Sacred Lands

The Sierra Club and its tribal partners won a hard-fought victory on June 15 when 541 square miles of New Mexico's Mount Taylor, held sacred to many southwestern tribes, were listed on the state's Register of Cultural Properties. The designation will trigger an automatic consultation with the tribes for any new development proposals in the area.

"The tribes and other community leaders are committed to opposing new mining proposals one by one and to do everything they can to use this cultural designation to protect Mount Taylor," says Sierra Club Associate Regional Representative Robert Tohe, below, himself a Navajo.

 

For the last year-and-a-half the Sierra Club's Environmental Justice Program has been working with the Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo tribes to protect Mount Taylor from uranium mining. Despite enormous pressure from pro-mining interests, the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee (CPRC) voted to permanently list Mount Taylor to the state registry.

The Sierra Club did media releases throughout New Mexico and worked hand-in-hand with the tribal grassroots group Dine Bidziil and cultural/spiritual groups Dine Hataalii and Aza Bee Nahangha of the Dine (Navajo) Nation.

"With the help of Sierra Club online organizer Jessica Eagle, who sent out action alerts to Rio Grande Chapter members, we were able to get more than 450 comments submitted to the CPRC in support of the tribal nomination," says Tohe, who attended all the meetings with the state and delivered supporting nominations at every CRPC hearing on the Mount Taylor designation.

Dr. David Begay, policy advisor to Dine Hataalii, was instrumental in laying the foundation for the win. Begay is pictured below, delivering the support resolution for Mount Taylor from the Dine Hataalii Association at the CPRC meeting in the House Chamber of the New Mexico legislature in Santa Fe on May 15. He also led an offering ceremony on Mount Taylor last fall to help the tribes prevail in the fight to protect their sacred lands.

Illinois' Second Windy City

The signing ceremony in the Illinois Governor's office. Left to right: Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin, Governor Pat Quinn, CWLP General Manager Todd Renfrow, CMS Director James Sledge, Illinois Chapter Vice-Chair Will Reynolds.

This post is written by Will Reynolds of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Thanks to an agreement with the Sierra Club, state buildings in Illinois' capital city will be powered by renewable energy.  Governor Pat Quinn announced a contract with Springfield's public utility, City Water Light & Power (CWLP), to deliver 100% wind power to most state buildings.

Additionally, CWLP will spend up to $1.86 million over seven years to make state facilities more energy efficient.

Governor Quinn invited the Sierra Club to a signing ceremony where he called the effort to curb global warming the great cause of our time and repeated his goal to widely expand renewable energy sources in Illinois.

The press conference announcing the contract. Left to right: Will Reynolds, Vice-Chair Illinois Chapter Sierra Club. James Sledge, State CMS Director, Todd Renfrow, CWLP General Manager, Governor Pat Quinn is speaking.

The state's commitment is part of a clean energy agreement with the Sierra Club, in which CWLP agreed to purchase 120 megawatts of wind power capacity.  That equals about 18% of energy use for their customers.  Half of that is designated for state government buildings. 

To help conserve energy, the agreement also provides for investments in energy efficiency programs to increase more than ten times previous spending levels.  They're further reducing pollutants by shutting down Springfield’s dirtiest coal plant built in the 1960's.

Before the Sierra Club agreement, the city of Springfield only asked how big their coal fired power plant should be.  Today, the utility is bringing global warming emissions for its customers down to Kyoto Protocol levels, new efficiency programs are creating jobs, local sources of renewable energy are being developed, and Mayor Davlin signed onto the Cool Cities program.   A capital city in the heart of coal country is now a clean energy leader.

Photos courtesy of Illinois Information Service.

Luke Cole: In Memoriam

The environmental movement lost one of its brightest lights on June 5 when environmental justice attorney Luke Cole was killed in an automobile accident in Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. He was 46.

Authorities report that a speeding semi-trailer veered into Cole's lane and crashed into his car. Cole was on sabbatical with his wife Nancy, who survived the accident with injuries.

Cole was a pioneer in the field of environmental justice law. After earning an undergraduate degree with honors from Stanford, he worked for three years as a consumer advocate for Ralph Nader, then graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School.

As numerous friends and colleagues have commented on Daily Kos, Facebook, and elsewhere, Cole could have worked pretty much anywhere he wanted after law school and made a bundle. Instead he dedicated himself to helping grassroots groups across the country fight back against the disproportionate burden of pollution borne by poor people and people of color.

 

Sierra Club and Chevron Debate America's Energy Future

On June 10, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Chevron Corporation CEO Dave O'Reilly engaged in a debate about America's energy future. The event, held in San Francisco and hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California, was moderated by Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Demonstrators gathered outside the debate venue, above, to protest Chevron's involvement in what many scientific experts consider the worst oil-related contamination on earth, in northern Ecuador's Amazon region. Chevron is facing a multi-billion lawsuit there for its role in devastating the Amazon with oil and gas operations conducted by Texaco before that company merged with Chevron.

The debate was the first time Pope and O'Reilly had met, and hundreds packed the ballroom of the Nikko Hotel, below, to listen to their exchange. What was immediately apparent to this listener is how far the needle has shifted in terms of acknowledging the reality and root cause of global warming.

Not only did O'Reilly agree with Pope that climate change was the result of human activity, he concurred that developing renewable energy sources and encouraging energy efficiency were imperative. The two men agreed that weaning America off coal should be a top priority, and when Pope invited O'Reilly to accompany him to Washington to lobby jointly for such measures, O'Reilly agreed and clasped Pope's outstretched hand, prompting loud cheers.

Arkansas Organizers Install Wind Turbine

Glen Hooks, the Sierra Club Eastern Region Director of our Beyond Coal Campaign, recently shared a story about his work to install the first wind turbine in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's a great story about community action on clean energy! From Glen:

A while back, my friend James Burke and I had an idea to put up a windmill in Little Rock.  We then (with much help from others) raised a bunch of cash to buy and install Little Rock's first wind turbine.  All the money (about $18K total) was raised from people and groups in the community here, mostly small donors. 

We're putting it up at the Dunbar Community Garden today (Wednesday, June 3), where it will help generate clean energy to power their greenhouse.  It's the first wind turbine in the whole state that uses a feed-in meter, meaning that the energy generated goes into the grid and is bought by Entergy at peak rates. Since the Dunbar Garden is technically a city park, the city is now technically a power producer for  Entergy--and that power is wind power. 

The photo is me with the blades.  You can see near the bottom where I signed it.

Great partnership here with ECO, Audubon Arkansas, the Dunbar Middle School, Dunbar Community Center, Entergy, the City of Little Rock, and the Sierra Club!

About 600 schoolkids come through the garden every month to learn about nutrition and gardening. By the end of Wednesday, this bad boy should be spinning away and generating clean energy for them to learn about.

--

Great work, Glen! We look forward to hearing more stories like this from around the U.S.

Club and Labor Coalition Rally for Employee Free Choice Act in Denver

On May 21 in Denver, volunteers and staff from the Sierra Club and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied to demonstrate their joint support for the Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA.

"We biked and walked to the home offices of U.S. Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet to hand-deliver more than 400 letters collected by SEIU, expressing personal support for fair living wages and new green jobs as a part of the New Energy Economy," says Colorado Sierra Club organizer Roger Singer. Ralliers met downtown, then headed by foot or bike to the Senators' offices.

 
 
The day before the rally, Club organizers Karin Lee and Marie Bergen helped send out an e-mail action alert to all Rocky Mountain Chapter members. "We had had nearly 500 e-mails from Sierra Club members show up in just 18 hours to each office's inbox supporting EFCA!" says Singer, pictured below, speaking.

At Udall's office, several of his staffers joined ralliers as they hand-delivered the letters to Udall's state director. "When we repeated the letter delivery at Bennet's office, we were told only four people could come in for security reasons. So we brought their staff out to the hallway to see the large, diverse group, and Bennie Milliner, Bennet's labor issues staffer, stayed around to chat afterwards." Below, Milliner accepts the letters from Singer.

 
Singer was asked to be the group spokesperson because SEIU wanted to stress the Sierra Club's support for EFCA. The morning of the rally, he was interviewed on Denver/Boulder’s KGNU community radio. (Listen to the 5-minute broadcast here. Go to May 21 "Morning Magazine" in the listings and click on the yellow "listen" symbol. The interview starts at the 18:00 mark.) He was also featured on the 5:00p.m.broadcast of Air America with Mario Solis-Marich on June 3. (Singer's interview starts about 23 minutes in.) 

As well, Univision, the largest Spanish-language television network in the U.S., filmed the event at Udall's office, including the gathering outside and the delivery of letters to Udall's staff, and spoke on air with an Hispanic SEIU member.

"It was a fun and productive public visibility action to demonstrate our support for the Employee Free Choice Act with our labor partners," says Singer.

 

Top two photos by Roger Singer. Bottom two photos by Cindy Kirby.

Oregon Coal Activists Profiled

Cesia Kearns (left) and Robin Everett of the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club. Photo courtesy of StreetRoots.

Two of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign activists from Oregon got a great profile on the news website StreetRoots this week.

Cesia Kearns and Robin Everett sat down with reporter Mara Grunbaum and were able to share their views on fighting coal and working for clean energy in the Evergreen State.

Some highlights from the article:

EVERETT: A lot of people are surprised to find out that 41 percent of our energy comes from coal in Oregon. We have an opportunity to educate people on that fact, and there’s decision-making happening that can shift that 41 percent to a lower percentage.

...

KEARNS: People may not be motivated because of the environment, but they’re definitely motivated by their pocketbooks, and that’s helped. We’re saying, look, you can save money by using more efficient appliances. You’re going to save money by doing an energy audit on your house. That’s resonating a lot more now. I know someone who works in the solar installation industry. I was asking him, “You know, it’s kind of expensive, have you seen a downturn in these economic times?” He said, “No, it’s doubled.” People are recognizing that they want to save money long-term, and this is one way to do that.

Be sure to go check out the entire article, and congrats to Kearns and Everett for the excellent article!

Report From the 2nd EPA Global Warming Endangerment Hearing

The Seattle rally. Photo by Dan Ritzman

The report is in from the second Environmental Protection Agency public hearing on its global warming endangerment finding. The hearing was held last Thursday in Seattle, where hundreds turned out to testify and close to 2,000 showed up for the mid-day rally held by the Sierra Club and other partner organizations committed to fighting global warming.

Sierra Club staffer Kathleen Ridihalgh leads the rally-goers in a cheer.

You can read an excellent round-up of the hearing over on the Big Picture blog at our Climate Crossroads website. There are also more great photos of the rally like the one above in the Big Picture's photo gallery.

A busload of Sierra Club folks from Oregon getting ready to head up to Seattle for the hearing.

And if you missed the round-up from the first EPA hearing in Virginia, click here to read that.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone on their hard work organizing such great turnout for both hearings - and special thanks to those who took time to testify to the EPA that the agency should be regulating global warming pollution.