FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, June 7, 2010
CONTACTS:
Ashley Browning 859-248-7027, Martin Mudd 859-963-5574

Lexington Protest Shames PNC’s Mountaintop Removal Financing
PNC Bank is the biggest US financier of Appalachian mountain destruction

Banner floated in Lexington, KY, PNC Bank branch.

LEXINGTON, KY – Concerned citizens rallied in downtown Lexington today to express their anger at PNC Bank for financing mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining. Local activists were joined by members of the group Mountain Justice and residents from mountaintop communities, who spoke out about the direct impact that this destructive form of mining has on their community, health and environment.

“Several banks have realized that they shouldn’t be involved with companies that are causing the total annihilation of a culture by their use of MTR. It’s unfortunate that PNC, like Massey, is putting profits over people and over God’s creation,” said Mickey McCoy, a Martin County resident whose community was affected by a coal sludge spill in 2000.

Also present at the protest were a colorful street-theater troupe of ‘clowns,’ who acted out a performance of a coal company blasting the top off a mountain, then extracting a bag of money and passing it between U.S. Banks like a hot potato, to symbolize PNC Bank doing business with companies that other banks have moved away from.

The protesters paid a visit to the PNC branch at Main and Deweese streets and released a banner inside attached to some helium balloons, which said “PNC + Your Money = Toxic Tap Water.” Activists also passed out literature about the issue to bank customers and employees and delivered a letter to the bank branch manager asking that PNC end their financing of mountaintop removal.

“PNC Bank was a recipient of bailout funds, so their investments in MTR represent my tax dollars. I am vehemently opposed to the destruction of the mountains, forests and communities of Appalachia, and I’m concerned by the impacts of strip mining on water quality in central Kentucky,” said Martin Mudd, a Lexington resident and activist with Kentucky Mountain Justice.

Since January 2008, PNC has become the number one U.S. financier of mountaintop removal coal mining. The bank has provided more than $500 million in loans and bonds to six companies practicing mountaintop removal: Massey Energy, Patriot Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, International Coal Group, Arch Coal and Consol Energy (Source: Bloomberg). These six companies are collectively responsible for almost half of all mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia.

“The idea of corporate responsibility has come up repeatedly in recent weeks following the coal mine and oil disasters. That responsibility extends beyond profits to the health and wellbeing of our communities. Some banks, such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo have made commitments to reduce and even end their funding of the dirtiest coal mining practices. By continuing to finance mountaintop removal coal mining PNC is throwing that responsibility aside,” said Amanda Starbuck of Rainforest Action Network, who is campaigning for banks to end their investments in the sector and shift their support to clean, renewable energy and green job creation.

PNC recently ranked bottom in a score-card report on MTR financing by Rainforest Action network and the Sierra Club. The bank earned an “F” for its total failure to take environmental risks into account in its lending practices.

A copy of the report card and supporting data can be found here: www.ran.org/reportcard

Mountaintop removal mining is a devastating form of mining where companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then dump the waste rock into valleys below. This destructive practice has buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020. The mining destroys Appalachian communities, the health of coalfield residents and any hope for positive economic growth.

A video of the PNC Bank Protest is available here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dea Goblirsch     914 960 2197

Email: news@climategroundzero.org

Julian, W.Va. — Two Climate Ground Zero protestors are blocking the driveway to Massey Energy’s Regional Headquarters in Boone County, W.Va.. EmmaKate Martin, 18, is suspended on a platform between three interlocking poles, 30 feet above the road. Ben Bryant, 23, is locked to the base of one pole. A banner hanging from the platform reads “Massey: Profit over People & Mountains: Fight Back!”

This action precedes Tuesday’s Massey Energy Annual Shareholders Meeting in Richmond, V.A.. Mountain Justice and Union organizations, including the United Mine Workers of America, are planning to rally outside of the meeting, encouraging shareholders to take a hard look at Massey Energy and CEO Don Blankenship’s lack of corporate responsibility. Martin and Bryant are blocking the road for similar reasons, including the destructive practice of mountaintop removal mining.

Mountaintop removal mining blasts mountains apart to get to the coal seams beneath, pushing the rubble into nearby valleys. The destruction leads to cracked home foundations, an increase in respiratory diseases and cancer in nearby communities, and poisoned waterways. In some cases, land that has been in families for generations is literally blown apart.

“I used to work for the coal industry, because that’s pretty much the only kind of work you can find around here,” said Junior Walk, 19, a lifelong resident of the Coal River Valley, “It didn’t really register, how much of a scale the destruction was on, until I was a guard at a mine site and I would look out over this wasteland, this moonscape.”

Coal sludge, a byproduct of washing coal to make it burn “cleaner,” is stored in large impoundments that loom over coalfield communities. The Brushy Fork Sludge Dam on Coal River Mountain, operated by Massey subsidiary Marfork Coal, is the tallest earthen dam in North America. The impoundment, permitted to hold 9 billion gallons of coal sludge, rests atop a honeycomb of abandoned underground mines, causing experts, including hydrologist Rick Eades to call its structural integrity into question. By Massey’s own estimates, if the dam were to break, it would kill 998 Coal River Valley residents. Massey is currently blasting a football field’s length away from the impoundment on Coal River Mountain.

“ . . .Something’s got to be done about it, and if no one speaks up, nothing will be,” Walk continued, “I can’t let my home be destroyed, it’s horrible and it needs to be stopped.”

Martin and Bryant released an open letter to Massey Energy’s shareholders, which can be read here.

According to their letter, Martin and Bryant intend to hold their blockade until Massey shareholders “join with the coalition of nine public institutional investors that are asking Massey to withhold support from Don Blankenship and Board of Directors Baxter F. Philips, Richard M. Gabrys, and Dan R. Moore ‘because they have failed to carry out their duties on the Safety, Environmental, and Public Policy Committee,’” and Massey ceases its mountaintop removal operations, and decommissions the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment.

This blockade follows one last September, when four activists obstructed the same road using chains and lock boxes. Three, James McGuiness, Joe Hamsher and Fred Williamson, received 20-day sentences for the stand they took that morning. This is the latest action in Climate Ground Zero’s campaign of civil resistance to mountaintop removal.