Environmental Groups Battle Over Coal’s Future

Coal River Mountain Watch, a grass-roots environmental group in Whitesville, W.Va., has worked since

its founding in 1998 to curb mountaintop removal, a practice used to extract coal by blowing up a mountain peak that contains it. The process, say activists, results in lasting environmental damage and health hazards for local residents.

The coal industry disputes this view, and other environmental groups are not jumping into the battle. Although the Sierra Club’s West Virginia chapter and Earthjustice, a national group in Oakland, Calif., that provides legal advice and support to environmental causes, have donated services to Coal River, the disparate views on coal among environmental organizations have left Coal River Mountain Watch with few allies among national groups, says Judy Bonds, a co-director of the Whitesville group.

Ms. Bonds is concerned about $5-million in grants made by the Joyce Foundation, in Chicago, during the past year to several national groups, including the Clean Air Task Force, in Boston (which received a grant for $788,000), and the Natural Resources Defense Council, in Washington ($438,000), to advocate against the construction of coal-burning power plants in the Great Lakes region and, failing that, to promote the use of “clean coal” technologies and ways to dispose of carbon emissions from power plants.

“The Joyce grants have caused a split among groups,” says Ms. Bonds. “Let anybody who wants to put the words ‘clean’ and ‘coal’ together come to southern West Virginia and see what the true cost of coal is. Our message is ‘no coal.’”

Americans get more than half of their electricity from the burning of coal, according to the Edison Electric Institute, in Washington, a national association of utility companies.

‘We Have to Get Real’

Joyce made the grants after consulting 50 experts around the country to determine the major environmental issues facing the Great Lakes, says Mary O’Connell, a spokeswoman for the foundation. Confronting the possibility that as many as 40 coal-burning plants could be built in the Midwest, Joyce decided to make grants to fight the sources of climate change.

“Forecasts that assume rapid development of renewable energy still conclude that coal use is likely to grow,” says Ms. O’Connell, who adds that Joyce believes that mountaintop-removal mining is unacceptably destructive. “Given that, it is imperative to come up with ways of using, mining, and processing this resource that minimize damage to the environment and harm to the global climate.”

John Thompson, director of Clean Air Task Force’s coal-transition program, says it is important to change the methods of coal use now. Because the use of coal worldwide is projected to double in the next 30 years, finding ways to heat homes without heating the planet should take precedence over concerns about mining practices.

“We oppose mountaintop removal, but from a practical standpoint, coal is going to be used worldwide,” says Mr. Thompson. “We have to get real about that. If we don’t, coal will kill us by heating up the planet.”

The United States has 275 billion tons of coal reserves — more than any other country — and there is pressure from politicians and others to use them, Ms. Bonds acknowledges.

‘Two Different Lenses’

The imbroglio among groups over coal isn’t so much a divide as a difference in perceptions, says Lois Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, a national advocacy group in Falls Church, Va.

“It’s pretty typical,” she says. “People working at the grass-roots level look at the problem and ask, ‘Is there another way?’ and ‘How do we protect ourselves from harm?’ The bigger policy groups say, ‘How can we control the damage?’ Neither is wrong. They’re looking at the same problem through two different lenses.”

Regardless of how one defines the difference of opinion, Ms. Bonds has found one way — if only a small one — to bridge the gap. Since its leaders discussed coal policy with Ms. Bonds’ group and others, the Natural Resources Defense Council has decided to devote more resources to stopping mountaintop-removal mining. The council continues to advocate for unproven coal-burning technologies that might, if proven, decrease the amount of greenhouse gases produced by utility plants.

“We agree with Judy that mountaintop-removal mining is an atrocity. We’ve been fighting it in court for years,” says David Hawkins, climate-center director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We’re trying to form a position for a person who will develop a campaign to raise awareness about it. Our view is that what is missing is a pressure campaign on people who invest in mountaintop-removal-mined coal, and people who buy it.”

The Joyce Foundation, meanwhile, augmented its grant making last month to include a study by a group of energy experts to determine what the “upstream” costs of coal are to the environment and how to reduce their impact. Results of the study, aided by a $75,000 Joyce grant to the National Commission on Energy Policy, in Washington, are expected to be published next summer.