Coal and Water News | Kentuckians For The Commonwealth

Coal and Water News

Despite challenges, Kentuckians make an impact in Frankfort

March 31, 2021 at 12:00am
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You’ve made an impact during the 2021 General Assembly. Some of these impacts have been on legislation – a key meeting with a legislator that changes the course of a bill, or a push of calls and tweets that makes the will of the people more visible and harder to ignore. We also set a goal this session to continue to build the power we need. So many impacts have been in our own communities, talking with neighbors and networks about the bills that impact us, and the work of our legislators. 

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First 100 Days: Just Transition & Climate Actions & implications for Kentucky

KFTC chairperson met with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in January 2019, just days after she was sworn into office.
March 17, 2021 at 10:40am

The text below was updated on March 26, 2021.  (All previous weekly updates can be viewed here.)

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Eastern Kentucky members meet with Senator Turner

February 10, 2021 at 12:00am
Just Transition, Big Sandy

EKY members meeting with Sen. TurnerIn February, members of the Big Sandy Chapter and KFTC members in nearby counties met with Sen. Johnnie Turner to begin to build a relationship and urge his support for a few important issues. Participants included Kathy Curtis, Erik Fields, and John and Jean Rosenberg from Floyd County, Dayjha Hogg and Jacob Mack-Boll from Letcher County, Carl Shoupe from Harlan County, and Lisa Abbott from Madison County.

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‘Big Tent’ Environmental Justice Plan Looks Past Racial Divides

February 5, 2021
Bloomberg Law
Just Transition, Big Sandy, Just Transition, Cumberland, Just Transition, Harlan County, Just Transition, Perry County

Environmental justice advocates are looking to link communities of color with experience fighting industrial polluters and landfills with polluted communities in Appalachia—a “big tent,” strength-in-numbers approach they say is ripe for results.

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Amid KY coal bankruptcies, who cleans up the environmental mess left behind?

September 18, 2020
Lexington Herald-Leader
Big Sandy, Harlan County

More than 15 months after seeking bankruptcy protection, Blackjewel still holds 209 Kentucky mine permits. Though most have sold, the buyers have yet to transfer the permits and assume the responsibilities of environmental compliance and reclamation. Those responsibilities remain with Blackjewel. Unless they don’t.

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Whatever Happened to the RECLAIM Act? Mitch McConnell killed it.

October 26, 2020 at 02:31pm

We are two women who have different connections to Appalachia, but who share a passion for the mountains. Melissa grew up in Van Lear, the home of Loretta Lynn.  Her mom and dad still reside there. Many of her relatives worked in the mines, including both of her grandfathers. Rebecca lived much of her adult life in the hills of North Carolina.

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RECLAIM Act and AML pass the House as part of The Moving Forward Act

July 3, 2020 at 12:50am
Just Transition, Big Sandy, Just Transition, Cumberland, Just Transition, Harlan County, Just Transition, Perry County, Just Transition, Rowan County

Kentucky will have a better chance at seeing its $400 million backlog of mine reclamation projects move forward thanks to legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on July 1.

Both the RECLAIM Act and reauthorization of the Abandoned Mine Lands Program were included in the INVEST in America Act (a.k.a The Moving Forward Act), a broad bill addressing the country’s infrastructure needs.

"I am overjoyed that Congress is finally helping to clean up abandoned mines and polluted waterways," said Joanne Hill, a retired nurse originally from Harlan County now living in Pulaski County. "For too long, Kentuckians have been pleading for action with no response.”

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Blackjewel has environmental debts, bankruptcy court told

June 25, 2020 at 01:40am
Enforcement, Big Sandy, Enforcement, Harlan County, Enforcement, Perry County

KFTC and allies have asked a federal bankruptcy judge to consider the environmental liabilities created by Blackjewel LLC and its affiliate mining companies in settling the company’s bankruptcy case.

Blackjewel – the company that gained notoriety last year when it shut down while owing its workers unpaid wages – has unreclaimed mines throughout eastern Kentucky, as well as in Virginia and West Virginia.

In filings earlier this year, Blackjewel assured the court that the majority of its permits and reclamation obligations had been assumed by other operations, which would be responsible for maintaining and reclaiming the sites.

However, there has been no activity to transfer 149 of the 213 permits the company holds in Kentucky, research has revealed. In the meantime, environmental violations continue to grow at many of the sites.

“We’re alarmed by the fact that so few permit transfers have even been initiated, let alone completed. We’re also alarmed by high, and increasing, number of permit violations at the non-transferred permits,” stated the letter written by Mary Cromer with the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, based in Whitesburg.

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A road map to a Just Transition

June 9, 2020 at 10:05am

A new report from a diverse set of frontline organizations outlines a set of comprehensive solutions needed to respond to the cascading and interlocking crises our communities face, including the climate crisis, COVID-19, and structural racism and inequality. 

The report, A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy, offers community groups, policy advocates, and policymakers a pathway to solutions that work for frontline communities and workers. These ideas have been collectively strategized by community organizations, including KFTC, and leaders from across multiple frontline and grassroots networks and alliances to ensure that regenerative economic solutions and ecological justice.

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Tackling the A-Z Impacts of Plastics

May 14, 2020 at 05:21pm
Northern Kentucky

Members of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth have built connections with allies across the Ohio River valley over the past few years around the fight to protect ORSANCO's regulatory mission.

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