OVEC, 5/9/07

Whatever happened to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition?

Yes, OVEC and its members are still here, but the group’s focus has changed in the past few years. What got the founders excited no longer interests OVEC members.

Try these first few paragraphs of an AP story that moved yesterday evening:

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — A coalition of environmental groups called on the United Nations Tuesday to take a stand against ecologically destructive coal mining practices in Appalachia, saying that state and local governments were not paying attention.

The groups from Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky asked the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, which is holding its annual session through Saturday, to shun coal in favor of policies promoting renewable energy and cuts in fossil fuel consumption.

The delegation told reporters outside the U.N. that coal extraction has destroyed more than a million acres of forests, 500 mountains and 1,000 miles of streams in recent years in Appalachia.

“We need the help of the U.N. to expose and bring an end to coal mining abuses,” said Larry Gibson, a board member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in Huntington, W.Va.

I remember sitting in a news conference at the Cabell County Public Library back in 1989, listening as people talked about how the BASF pigment factory here in Huntington was burning a byproduct known as aniline in its boilers. That was around the time OVEC became a force in what little environmental movement existed in this region.

Later, OVEC would fight plans by BASF to build a paint factory and an accompanying hazmat incinerator and landfill at Haverhill, Ohio. It would fight the proposed pulp mill in Mason County, W.Va.

But OVEC really got excited over air pollution from the Ashland Oil refinery at Catlettsburg, Ky. Ashland Oil was the boogeyman of all boogeymen. That fight went on for years.

But then OVEC and the rest of Appalachia discovered mountaintop removal mining, thanks to an article in U.S. News & World Report titled “Shear Madness.” Ashland Oil put its refinery into a joint venture with Marathon Oil Co. OVEC had a new boogeyman in Massey Energy. It eventually forgot the refinery, presumably because all the problems there had been solved.

As the American Lung Association released its rankings of air pollution in various metro areas on Tuesday, May 1, I wondered about OVEC. By noon that day, we had received nary a word from the group about how bad the air quality is in the area of OVEC’s birth.

One of our reporters contacted OVEC for a comment, but the spokesperson was concerned mainly with mercury emissions from smokestacks.

Despite all this, OVEC people still get upset over the location of a school in Raleigh County that most parents are fine with.

We need some sort of citizens group here in the Tri-State to monitor the environment and keep the bureaucrats honest. OVEC once filled that role. It still has an office in Huntington, but apparently it’s more worried about environmental problems miles from home than those on its doorstep.