What: Rally for Health and In Opposition to St. Mary’s Hosting “Clean Coal” Promoter
When: 4:15 p.m., Tuesday, November 12
Where: On the sidewalks at the corner of 5th Ave. and 29th St. in Huntington, W.Va., outside St. Mary’s Center for Education.
Who: Speakers include citizens with family members suffering health impacts from mountaintop removal operations near their communities.
Street theater with Doctor Whitewash, the Grim Reaper and King Coal.
Groups represented and /or endorsing this rally will include the Huntington-based Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC), Christians For The Mountains, Coal River Mountain Watch, Friends of Blair Mountain, Keeper of the Mountains and Radical Action for Mountains’ and Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS).
More Info:
St. Mary’s Center for Education in Huntington, W.Va. is set to host the Huntington Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Ninth Annual Energy & Natural Resource Symposium on Tuesday, November 12. The featured speaker will be Robert M. “Mike” Duncan, president and CEO for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry lobby group.
Natural Resource Partners (NRP) are sponsors of the event. NRP is a major landowner of Blair Mountain, the Logan County, W. Va. site of a historic mine labor uprising, which is under threat of obliteration from mountaintop removal coal mining.
In light of all the extreme health impacts, including lives cut short, associated with the mining, preparation, transportation, combustion and waste “disposal” of coal used for electricity, members of assorted citizens organizations were enraged that a medical facility would host a “clean coal” propagandist.
OVEC began an online petition asking the medical facility to cancel hosting the symposium, especially in light of recent health studies showing that cancer rates are higher in Appalachian coal mining areas — especially areas near mountaintop removal operations — than the rest of the U.S., as well as mortality rates and birth defects.
Although nearly 600 people had signed the petition by early afternoon on November 8, St. Mary’s had not responded to e-mails and phone calls, so plans for the rally are moving ahead.
“What is a hospital doing supporting an industry that brings miners black lung, and then tries to deny their health benefits?,” asked OVEC organizer Dustin White. “St. Mary’s should not host a publicist for an industry that drives communities to extinction, puts people into their graves far too early and then even desecrates those graves if they happen to be near a mountaintop removal site!
“We’ll make sure St. Mary’s is aware of coal’s health impacts and we'll ask them to host an educational forum on those health impacts.”
Statements from Groups
Hospitals are supposed to be places the sick go to find cures and comfort, not propaganda. It’s ironic that St. Mary’s is holding this the same day they are having a Better Breathers Club meeting.
- Debbie Jarrell, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch
The administration of this medical facility should value people’s health and wellbeing more than money, but by hosting this pro-coal event they show that they do not. They are knowingly supporting an industry that is knowingly making people sick. Shame on them.
- Maria Gunnoe, OVEC organizer
This medical facility’s failure to recognize the numerous and ever growing peer reviewed and published research indicating a link between mountaintop removal blasting toxins and human health is a slap in the face to those of us living beneath this shameful mining practice. Our children's health, safety, and well-being are jeopardized by dangerous carcinogens while this hospital plays host to an event that features a coal industry lobbyist as its main speaker. This stinks of the same smell as John Hopkins Hospital being paid off by the coal industry to say that coal miners’ x-rays did not show black lung. Learn the truth about mountaintop removal and human health, see www.acheact.org.
- Bo Webb, co-founder and campaign director of A.C.H.E.
The Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), which St. Mary’s associates with, recently produced a booklet, “Healing Communities and the Environment.” The booklet includes a key recommendation: “Partner with community-wide efforts to examine and address environmental factors that impact the health of individuals and communities.” Additionally, CHA says, they, as health professionals, are committed to "first, do no harm." In hosting ACEEE, is St. Mary’s doing no harm? Would St. Mary’s Medical Center host a symposium sponsored by the tobacco industry?
ACCCE ignores mounting data that points to major health disparities in communities associated with heavy coal mining, and especially that of mountaintop mining. More than 25 peer-reviewed studies point to significant increases in COPD, asthma, cancer, cardiovascular, and also birth defects and depression. Morbidity rates are excessively high. Furthermore, the ACCCE persistently attacks federal policy moves to curtail greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change, which threatens to disrupt and destroy life on God’s creation.
- Allen Johnson, coordinator, Christians For The Mountains
Natural Resource Partners (NRP), a Texas-based corporation, is the largest landowner in southern West Virginia and owner of much of the endangered Blair Mountain Battlefield. One of the reasons absentee corporations have been able to ignore health and safety issues with near complete impunity is that West Virginians have not learned the lessons of Blair Mountain. NRP’s policies foster an assault, not only on public health, but on public history. It is disgraceful that NRP’s executives, some of whom are native mountaineers, refuse to give a little back to a region that has given them such vast quantities of wealth.
- C. Belmont Keeney, Ph.D., chair of Friends of Blair Mountain
For a health care institution to promote the coal industry is unconscionable. They should be improving community health by tackling the many deadly health impacts associated with mountaintop removal, coal-fired power plants, and poorly regulated mining. Instead, St. Mary’s is providing a platform for the industry that’s poisoning our air, water, land, and bodies. Our children deserve medical professionals who place wellness above wealth. St. Mary’s should be promoting the Appalachian Community Health Emergency (ACHE) Act, HR 526, instead of promoting the industry that’s causing the emergency.
- Vernon Haltom, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch
