The Hardness of Steel

Steel is a mystery. Essential to our psyche and civilization, it is perhaps our most useful invention, as well as the third largest industrial cause of climate change. Its myriad properties which enable that usefulness are due to its endless formulations, which have evolved with us.
Molybdenum is one of the minerals which give steel its hardness, but the quantities used are so small that the demand is limited, causing an oscillating demand, which has prompted the mining industry to mine it only periodically.
One such mine in my list of interests, is on Copper Mountain, southwest of Denver.
Also on my list to shoot are two power plants that are among the 100 largest CO2 and mercury emitters in the USA. This group of attractions, in combination with an exhibit in Denver and lecture invitation, suggested a photo flight.


Lighthawk is a group of pilots that fly for the environment, and are frequent partners in my work. Their pilot Stephanie Wells agreed to the mission, and I laid out a flight plan, which Stephanie modified with her local knowledge and experience of high altitude flying, an exacting experience set combing science, local knowledge, skill, aerodynamics, and the knowledge of her aircraft. The steel would have to wait.


We agreed to go west to the power plant at Craig, CO, the 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA, which is also near several coal mines, one deep below ground, the other on the surface.

Trees affected by bark beetle in Colorado Rockies

Much of the success of  these projects comes from predicting and praying for the right weather, and we had luck on our appointed day. For a coast native that studies those regions, the mountains held a novel fascination- what Stephanie saw as normal was unique and beautiful to me as we crossed the “Front Range” as the mountains closest to Denver are called.



The first environmentally interesting site, a deep coal mine, had not been on my plan, but with an abiding curiosity to see these things and how they work, we circled, before moving on the the power plant at Craig. So as not to seem like a sinister character, cautious pilots limit the number of circles they will make around a power plant. We agreed to pan around it once, circle the nearby mine, and pass by again on the way back to the nearby airfield for fuel, (Stephanie had flown with a minimum for the mountain crossing) and then pass the plant again on our way to the open-pit mine. Power plants are often rather ugly affairs, and this one is no exception, being all stacks, boilers, and turbines enclosed in a utilitarian building.

Coal-fired power plant. 51th largest CO2 emitter in the USA

Open-pit mines use drill rigs to make holes which are “charged” with ammonium nitrate to blast away the dirt (overburden) covering the object of the mine (in this case coal). The overburden is scooped and dumped to the side by a giant walking “dragline”.
After one pass around the mine, Stephanie expressed nervousness about our fuel level, so we went back to tank up from a charismatic old Coloradan gentleman at the tiny air strip (sadly, I left the cameras in the plane). As we took off again, a giant cloud filled the distant sky, and we reasoned it was a blast at the mine, probably executed after everyone left for lunch, due to the danger of flying rock. Still, it was a sight I was disappointed to miss.

Compressor trucks, well-heads and chemical tanks at fracking site

Hydro-fracking has been a controversial gas extraction technique around the world, and Colorado is no exception. Between the close proximity to houses and schools, and the regional scarcity of water, a resource mightily depleted by this process, local people were organizing in opposition to the industry near their homes, and I was asked to get the bird’s eye view. So we came down from the mountains and out to the plains around Boulder to find the sites, and they proved to be a textbook series of illustrative examples of the process. Hydro-fracking is also a rather ugly business, visually as well as its side-effects. A giant drill makes a deep and meandering hole, then leaves to make room for a group of large, powerful compressors which pump that bore full of water and chemicals at excruciating pressure, endeavoring to fracture the gas-bearing layer of rock below.

Factory farm for cattle

I have many topics of abiding interest, and never know when opportunity might arise to further those stories, and I was quite pleased to see large factory farms of beef cattle just on the other side of the fracking sites. Beef is the most climate-change intensive of foods– and, one hamburger requires upwards of 8,000 gallons of water to produce, this in a water-challenged region.


The day really seems a smashing success, even if we did not make it to see the steel, and both pilot and artist were glad to get back on the ground and run to the head.

The Names Have Changed

The report on the “Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster” (the WV mine “accident” in which 29 miners died) has been released. The list of violations found is long, but more telling was the discovery that the company has kept a second set of books, hidden from regulators, that listed all of the various issues. Of course, this tragedy is a legacy of the corporate welfare mentality of the previous administration. Like all welfare recipients, those corporations are screaming at the possible recision of those goodies. Exemption from safe workplace and environmental regulations is simply another handout to those producers, and thus their shareholders.

Meanwhile, back at the mine, the almost comic director of Massey (the mine owner) Don Blankenship, has resigned, much to the dismay of those who try to leaven these deadly topics. And Massey, in the great tradition of corporate 'Amerikan' escape from liability, has been acquired but another company. Of course, Blankenship and other execs have refused to testify, so as not to incriminate themselves.

And we go about our daily affairs, most of us not even aware of the Upper Big Branch and the 29 people that died in the underworld to bring us that black gold that powers our computers. Try to remember their loved ones and turn off the lights when you leave the room. And unplug the TV and cable box while you are at it, one of the largest electricity hogs in your house.

What Can I Do About It?

8 September 2010

Climate change is a contentious issue currently, generating heated rhetoric, tremendous media expenditures, and much disinformation.

Dr. James Hansen, the scientist who is the leading U.S. expert on climate issues is focusing on cutting our coal use as the most effective thing we can do about global warming. Coal combustion is a significant contributor to climate change, and comprises 50% of electricity generation (in the USA.) We can easily affect this by reducing electricity consumption (turn off the lights, unplug appliances).

About 25-35% of climate change gases are caused by deforestation, the greatest portion in the southern hemisphere. Agriculture, commercial logging, and homesteading are some of the major factors driving this conversion, and each of them has a host of contributing elements, many of which point back to consumption in the more “developed” economies. Deforestation will remain a complex, intractable issue, but the individual that wanted to minimize her contribution to that process could consider: not consuming fast food made from livestock raised in the southern hemisphere, not driving (biofuel use of palm oil), and avoiding other uses of palm oil.

Soda consumption is a little considered, but significant cause of climate change on several levels: aluminum production uses prodigious quantity of electricity and releases large amounts of other greenhouse gases. Recycling one aluminum can save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours (EPA, 2008). The climate change impact of the contents of soda would be another fascinating discussion.

Motivated by ideological agendas, it's easy to vilify the scientists who are trying to explain this very complex issue (climate change), especially if they make a mistake or are seen exhibiting human weaknesses.

Though the science now seems certain that warming is occurring, and that it is in part human-caused, no one can predict the exact effects or timeline of climate change, so there will inevitably be misestimations. We know that when all of that ice melts, sea levels will flood coastal areas. This will drive mass relocation of populations, putting a tremendous strain on the “higher ground” areas. Weather patterns have already started to change, which will affect agricultural production. Probably these changes will not happen overnight like in a science fiction movie, but there have been drastic overnight changes in the past, so they could. Bottom line: the risk is too great for inaction, and the individual can make a significant difference on the issue.

Whitesville

4 July 2010

I’m in Whitesville, WV with Jim Hansen, the climate scientist, to attend Larry Gibson’s annual July 4 party. I’m here to do a portrait of Dr. Hansen, see Larry, and to go to his legendary fete. To entertain myself, I decided to bring an old Rollei f, truly one of the great cameras; it’s such a joy to shoot a little film. Remember black and white?

Larry is truly a modern David, squaring off against the goliath of king coal, personified by Don Blankenship, president of Massey Coal. To look at a satellite image, or better, to fly over Larry’s land is to laugh and cry simultaneously. An island of green rises from a despoiled expanse of regurgitated overburden from mountaintop removal mining. Modern mining processes, through mechanization, have inversed the human cost with environmental damage. Ironically, the corollary human toll is unemployment and decay of the communities that were supported by human-powered mining.

Resource wealth rarely benefits the populations in the rich place, those fortunes tend to be extracted to the same place whence went the resource. The people that remain are generally left with poverty, decaying infrastructure, and environmental nightmares.

Main Street, Whitesville is evidence of that pattern; of the few operative concerns were two funeral homes, a few stores (chain saws, floor coverings, five and dime), and of course a few churches. Most of the storefronts are haphazardly boarded, some with love notes written in the dust covering the windows. Dust near coal facilities is a tremendous health issue, and asthma tends to be high. Down the road is the Marsh Fork Elementary School, next to another Massey Coal processing plant. Above the school is an earthen dam holding millions of gallons of “slurry,” the chemical soup used to clean coal before it can be burned and continue its life cycle of destruction.

One can only imagine what Whitesville was like in its zenith, hard to picture all of the stores open and people on the sidewalks.

The people in Appalachia are some of the most vocal supporters of coal mining, and who can blame them? Their lives are at stake. If you lose you lose, but if you win, you really lose. Without coal they have no jobs, but with coal they have desecration, pollution, and asthma. Just down the road is Coal River Mountain, a summit steeped in legend and controversy. For years Massey pressed for permits to begin blasting apart the mountain for the coal underneath. The residents floated a proposal to build an array of windmills on the top, a solution that would have provided clean electricity and jobs forever, as opposed to the dirty and short-term plan of Massey, after which would remain a wasteland. Blasting began last year and destruction of the mountain is moving forward.

There is a better way. It won’t mean loss of jobs and decimation of the economy, to the contrary.

We must demand it.

HYDROFRACKING

19 April 2010

Water, water, everywhere, who needs to worry about a drop to drink?

In an effort to keep tabs on the Catskills gas drilling issue and its impact on the regional water supply, up we went for another look at the activity of the pernicious gas drillers. Catskill Mountainkeeper, Wes Gillingham, Lighthawk pilot Bob Keller and yours truly, the undesignated hydro-fracking swat team out to save your drinking water.

For those who don’t know, hydro-fracking is a deep drilling technique that enables access to natural gas reserves locked in shale formations a mile or more below the surface by pumping vast quantities of water mixed with a chemical cocktail at extremely high pressure to fracture the rock formation and unlock the natural gas therein. Permits have been issued for the western Catskills, and drilling has already begun in the adjacent areas of Pennsylvania. The process uses millions of gallons of water per well, and could easily deplete groundwater and fluvial resources. And then of course are the pollution issues: these millions of gallons of chemical–laced water are being injected down through the aquifer, and back up again.

This was our third flight, so we knew the terrain and the issues pretty well, and agreed to meet at the Poughkeepsie airfield. It was a beautiful day, clear and cool (or as clear as it gets with the always-present pollution.) Always tolerant of my meanderings, Bob and Wes had agreed to a detour to look at a few coal-fired power plants and the Westchester Garbage Incinerator. So we shot the Danskammer Plant first (you can see their emissions report here if you want a little fright)

Coal Ash at Danskammer Power Plant

Our next stop on the tour was Lovett Plant in Tompkins Cove, just upriver from NYC.
When we got there, it was gone. How do you disappear a large power plant? Turns out, it was part of the Enron debacle (remember that) and was spun off to a company called Dynergy that refused to upgrade its pollution controls and was then ordered to close. Good riddance, New Yorkers can breathe a bit easier (turn off the lights before they build another one.) Here is the pollution scorecard on it.

The gas drilling sites we had photographed on our last expedition (nine months ago) were capped and closed, leaving only a giant industrial pad in the middle of the once pristine farm fields. It is amazing how fast they operate, drilling, fracking, and extracting in less than a year. I wonder if the farmers knew that they would be left with an abandoned industrial site in place of their farms. I wonder what the well water is like now?

We then moved westward to see some new sites, and were amply rewarded with some impressive drill rig towers, and then a site with a flare. Flares are generally how the really nasty stuff is burned away in petroleum refineries and drill sites, so you don’t want to live near there. (Wonder if the neighbors know about that?) Then we found a site with a continuous stream of tanker trucks filling a giant man-made pond, which gives some idea of the amount of water used in this process. As we circled, we saw several tractor trailers come and go without making a dent in the level. Assumedly, there is not enough groundwater at that location to support the millions of gallons per well, so they are likely trucking it in. But imagine if that amount of water was being removed from the aquifer as it is elsewhere. Water is so precious, and we take it for granted.

Then we happened upon a site in which fracking was in process, with numerous compressor trucks arrayed around a spider rig, looking like some industrial creature being attended by its feeder slaves. Quite fascinating, actually. The amount of pressure needed to fracture the shale formation is tremendous, and I can’t believe that pumping that water/chemical mixture down at such pressure through the aquifer is innocuous as the gas companies claim.

INSIDE THE COAL MINE

8 April 2010

The reports of the mining disaster in West Virginia have an unreal quality, like newspaper headlines from a distant era; one in which workers were but slightly elevated from the class of serfs, and a few more dead or damaged would have little effect on the march of progress. We all feel the deepest sympathy for the families of the miners lost, and like the recent disaster in Haiti, donations and condolences will be sent, and the event soon forgotten.

{Angry invectives are sure to follow this BLOG}

The corporate owner of the mine (and its CEO) is a bad actor on many levels, from mine safety to environmental disregard. Their acts of corruption harken back to the Teapot Dome scandal in scope, and exude a disregard for law and community that invite disbelief. And speaking of tea, it is no secret that West Virginia voted overwhelmingly in favor of the previous administration, as a condoner of business corruption with its relaxed mine safety enforcement.

Meanwhile, New York City is enjoying summer weather in early April, which is a direct effect of the stuff for which those miners died.

Music and Industrial Scars Save Mountains

13 November 2009

Monday night, NRDC, Gibson Guitars, EmmyLou Harris, and her manager Ken Levitan hosted an event to raise awareness in the country music community about mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). The first step in the lengthy trail of devastation caused by the use of coal as a power source, is the practice of blowing the top off of the mountain, dumping the blasted earth into the adjacent valley, extracting the coal, planting grass seed, and repeat.

The goal of the event was to recruit more country musicians to the cause, as they reach a wide audience outside of the “environmentalist crowd.”

Industrial Scars images of MTR were a central part of the event, as were two custom-made guitars with my images of Coal River Mountain, the destruction of which has just begun.

This is the second event Ms. Harris has hosted on this issue, and the list of notable musicians is growing: Randy Travis, Ben Sollee, Big Kenny Alphin, Delbert McClinton, Dierks Bentley, Gloriana, James Otto, J.D. Souther, Matraca Berg, Jeff Hanna, Michelle Branch, Kid Rock, Patty Griffin, and Rodney Crowell were all there.

Bravo to them all, and if you are a fan, send them a note of applause for their work on this horrific issue.

Bobby Kennedy spoke eloquently (as always) about the link between our cultural heritage and the environment, a link that is particularly relevant in this case as the roots of country music are in the Appalachians.
Coal is the source of half of our electricity, and billed as a cheap energy source. But the reason it’s cheap when your electric bill comes is that you have already paid for it with your high taxes that subsidize it. Some of the 2005 coal subsidies (out of your pocket) include:
$1.612 billion in tax credits to invest in new coal power plants
$1.147 billion in tax breaks for coal power plants to install pollution control equipment
$1.8 billion of taxpayer money to help build a new fleet of coal power plants
$1.137 billion of taxpayer money to help make coal power a cost-competitive source of power generation (there’s a joke on us).
$90 million to research ways to sequester carbon dioxide emitted from coal power plants.
And this is just the beginning.

Is this the way you want your money to be spent, to subsidize global warming and mercury poisoning?

Green Mountain College, VT

11 November 2009

Some people write with facility and grace, words flowing from their fingers seemingly without effort. Others, like myself, struggle, stare, chew the inside of the cheek, and generally suffer until something comes to life.

Green Mountain College in Vermont invited me to be artist-in-residence for a week, my destination after the Nashville NRDC/Gibson/Mountaintop Removal event (more on that in a later post). I've just arrived on a brisk November night, had a delicious vegetarian meal in Rutland, and was deposited on the campus. The thought of dialoging with students and describing what I do and why is exciting is weighing on me. The focus of my work is getting people to change behavior, realize the emminent danger, and participate in a new economy. GMC is a college that made the decision to "go green" in the nineties and has not looked back. So, here I will be "preaching to the converted" but we all still have so far to go, and will only get there by constantly refining and tweaking our methods. In spite of the energy audits that have been done here, I'm sitting in a library with lots of lights on, fighting the temptation to turn them off.

Is it possible to change our behavior before the situation gets drastic?

climate Climate CLIMATE

3 November 2009

Germany's Chancellor Merkel is speaking to both houses of the US congress today in an exhortation for the USA to move on climate change. Talk about rain on the ocean, she will be lucky to get a polite hearing. The US congress is so indebted to the hydro-carbon lobby that our chances for substance from that consensus club are negligent. We the people must demand representation. Turn off your lights in support of action on climate change

Morning Haze shrouds a coal-fired power plant outside Baton Rouge, LA

Water and Coal

How wonderfully concurrent that today is such an environmentally important day for water and coal. Yesterday the destruction of Coal River Mountain via Moutaintop removal began.
Coal is a tremendously thirsty energy source in all the stages of its life from mining to disposal.

Leaves in stream polluted by Acid Mine Drainage

As soon as mining begins, acid mine drainage starts poisoning the nearby streams.
Then tremendous volumes of clean water are mixed with chemicals to wash the coal, which is then stored in giant impoundments which burst with alarming frequency to wash away the poor citizens unfortunate enough to live below.

Coal Slurry

Half of all the fresh water used in the USA is to cool power plants (half of which are coal). And today the EPA released a report acknowledging that coal ash is an unregulated extremely dangerous polluter of groundwater (and surface water as anyone in Kingston, TN will tell you).

Turn off the lights. “Just say no” to coal.

Destruction of Coal River Mountain

Coal River Mountain before blasting.©2008 J Henry Fair

The long dreaded destruction via Mountaintop Removal of Coal River Mountain has begun, all to line the pockets of big coal and feed our heedless demand for electricity. This in spite of a viable proposal to place windmills on the peak that would provide energy for generation with no carbon footprint. Coal is the biggest single cause of global warming as well as a slew of poisonous elements released into the environment. Worried about the mercury in your fish? Turn off the lights.
The Appalachian mountains in West Virginia are home to some of the most beautiful and biodiverse forests in the world. The destruction of these mountains, forests and streams is one of the most egregious examples of our short-sighted demand for energy: a folly that is being repeated ad nauseam around the planet.
Like children, we want what we want and ignore the consequences. So that we can drive our SUV’s and leave our lights and air conditioners on, we blithely sacrifice the systems that sustain us with clean air and water. An even greater lunacy is our ostrich approach to climate change, an issue that is a clear and present danger to us all. Coastal areas around the world will be under water soon, rain patterns will change wreaking havoc on agriculture; and hungry, desperate people will descend on the “haves” and demand their share. And we will have to kill them. This is your children’s world.

Pay no attention.
Get in your car and drive.
Don’t forget to leave the lights on.

CARBON CAPTURE

21 October 2009

AEP, the largest producer of electricity in the USA, with a heavy investment in coal, announced the inauguration of the first carbon sequestration installation on one of its coal burning plants in West Virginia. The first phases of the project have cost nearly $13 million, and the pilot project has not even begun to scratch the surface. The USA gets about 50% of its power from coal burning, the largest single source of climate change, as well as a host of very toxic pollutants.

The capture and sequestration of carbon in underground cavities (old mines and wells, primarily) has been touted as the band-aid that will allow continued use of this disastrous fuel. There is no “clean coal.” Let’s examine: a mine has many openings... is there any reason to think that carbon, a gas, will just stay willingly underground? Water seeps out of these mines regularly. If we permit this practice and fill all the holes we can find with carbon, and it starts to leak - which it will - that becomes a time bomb of incalculable consequences. The people that are telling us this will work are the same who stand to make billions from the continued use of this fuel. Are they the ones whose advice we should heed on this?

Read the story.

Coal mining operation in West Virginia
Coal conveyors transport coal between two static points, eliminating the need for human-operated transport. The yellow liquid is either ground water, contaminated with iron pyrite, or a spilled chemical.

SOUTH CAROLINA 09

8 July 2009

I come from the South, and am proud of my heritage. It is a wonderful place with a natural warmth and generosity unknown in the rest of the USA. No place or people have clean hands throughout history, and my home is no exception. My sense is that the issues that plague us are all interrelated, and I count myself fortunate that I can devote myself to fighting the injustices that concern me the most.

Much as I love the South, the environmental regulations there are some of the worst in the country, thus industry has used it as a haven of permissiveness and reduced costs. Time to wake up. Early in the year I began discussions with my friend Hume from SouthWings, a group of pilots that fly environmentalists and legislators to see issues first hand from the air, about doing a flight in South Carolina. We are both very concerned about the consequences of burning coal for electricity, and have done numerous flights together over Mountaintop Removal (MTR) areas. Our other objective was to provide images to the Coastal Conservation League of whatever they are currently fighting. These are both fantastic organizations that deserve your support.

Coal is bad from the beginning to the end: the MTR extraction process is destroying vast stretches of some of America’s final virgin forest and watershed areas, the combustion is one of the primary causes of global warming and releases more toxics and heavy metals into our environment than I have breath to mention, and lastly is the fly ash issue. If you don’t know about what happened at the TVA coal plant in Kingston, TN just after Christmas, you should: the largest industrial disaster in US history. When coal is burned, the exhaust coming up the smokestack is laden with tremendous amounts of the nastiest stuff known to man. The energy companies are required to scrub that effluent, the most common method being to spray a “slurry” of gypsum through it which captures much of the particulate matter. The resulting mixture is known as fly ash, and its disposal is essentially unregulated- generally power plats keep it in unlined “impoundments” close to the plant.

“Why is this important to me?” you might wonder. Glad you asked. Chances are pretty good that one of the 800 coal fired generators in the USA is close to your home; and chances are they have a big wad of fly ash slurry separated from the water supply by a poorly made earthen dam. (Coal generators are always built next to a water body to supply them with the fresh water they need for cooling). So, like the unfortunate residents who live downstream of the TVA power plant in Kingston, you are in danger of having that nastiness spill into the waterway near you and even if it does not cover your house with toxic waste, you will never eat the fish from, swim in, or enjoy that water body again. And let’s not even talk about the possibility of all those toxins contaminating your well, even if they don’t spill.

So back to the airplane. Hume was delayed leaving Asheville by a mechanical issue, and then had to fly the Nature Conservancy on a quick flight, so we were much later off the ground than I had hoped. Our first site is King Tract in Awendaw, a large undeveloped parcel that CCL is working to save. From there we went up to Lake Moultrie which has several Santee-Cooper coal fired power plants. The first had some really interesting fly ash, but the second was nothing short of amazing- a behemoth of belching, spewing global warming and toxic waste. The fly ash dump was spectacular: variegated tunnels of different liquids. I love it when the subject is simultaneously sinister and beautiful, and a toxic nightmare. Fly ash is a clear and present danger- one more essential reason not to burn coal.

From the Lake Moultrie area we navigate south to the North Charleston Industrial zone. Hume checks in with the tower, as this is getting near to the Charleston airport, and the controller is obviously stressed because of the traffic volume. It is against the law to fly around power plants, and pilots that are willing to do it must always be on the right side of the air traffic controllers. The Nucor Steel Plant is close to our position, and still out of the traffic zone, so we circle, photographing the piles of rusted steel and various minerals.

Suddenly I spot something on fire, ask Hume to circle, and it turns out to be a machine with a large bowl of molten metal dumping its contents into a pit. It dumps once, and only a bit comes out, then backs off, goes to an adjacent pit and trys again. Suddenly the entire contents come out like a volcanic eruption and cause a virtual explosion, the likes of which neither of us have ever seen. To the east is the Williams Coal Plant, and though I have shot it before, I want to again, but it is closer to the airport, and Hume tells me that the tower is starting to divert traffic around us, a situation that clearly unnerves him. Oh the disappointment. Also on that side of the river are the Mead Westvaco Paper Mill, North Charleston incinerator, and various other sites on my list. Can’t do it all in this life, I guess.

COAL ASH - Part I

02 July 2009

The EPA has just released a list of coal ash ponds in danger of bursting. This report has gone unpublished until now, as the sites are so toxic it was feared they would become a terrorist target. There are about 1,100 coal-fired power plants in the USA (you can be sure there is one near you). I’m not going to discuss the 50 tons of mercury they emit, or all of the uranium, global warming gases and the many other toxics. Today I am talking about the waste ash, of which an average plant produces 125,000 tons a year. And this is nasty stuff, including: arsenic, mercury, chromium, cadmium and uranium, all things you don’t want to drink. Oops, did I forget to mention that the ash is dumped in unlined ponds that leach into the groundwater? The EPA (that great protector of industry) does not regulate coal ash and is just reluctantly starting to sample groundwater around these ponds. What a surprise, many of them have contaminated the groundwater.

But wait, the story gets better: In an effort to dispose of the stuff, the Bush cabal came up with a “beneficial use” alternative to disposal. So, they are mixing this highly toxic, very nasty stuff in with sheetrock and concrete. What will they think of next? Just before Christmas 2008, one of these ponds at a TVA coal plant burst, causing the largest industrial disaster in US history, dumping 1.7 million cubic yards of this lovely stuff into the Emory River, burying the houses along the river, and doing who knows what other damage. "Don’t worry," they said, "it’s just mud" (the government is here to help you, God love 'em!)

We generate half of our electricity from coal. To get at it, we are destroying West Virginia. Burning it is the largest cause of global warming, not to mention that it is poisoning our waterways with mercury and whatever else. And when it’s done, the ash is poisoning our drinking water.

Turn off the lights.

COURAGE AND HERITAGE - The MTR Protests

25-06-2009

On Tuesday, thirty people were arrested outside of Charleston, WV for protesting mountain-top removal mining. In the American media, such protestors are portrayed as fringe elements of society, vocificating against some arcane issue of little interest or importance. This is so far from reality, it is laughable. One of those arrested was James Hansen, the most knowledgeable man in the world on climate change issues. He is the NASA scientist who, in the 70s, predicted the climate situations that are occurring today, and his predictions for tomorrow are frightening. Dr. Hansen has lost faith in the will of our government to address the issue and has decided his only recourse is to truck his 89-year-old carcass out to be arrested and face the violence of the bumpkin miners who live in terror of losing the few jobs that big coal still provides. Not only are these “protestors” standing on the same philosophical and ideological grounds as those that founded our country, and not only are they the among the few that are looking out for the future of your children, but they are patriots in anther way. So much of what we are as a country and a people is defined by our natural heritage; one can hardly hum the bars of a patriotic song without it bringing to mind the shining seas or waves of grass or mountain home. But these for-profit industries are allowed to despoil that heritage, not to mention the resources our children will need for their survival. Can we pay attention? Most of us live near the coast; if we don’t change our behavior, our homes will be under water. And more alarming, all those folks who are crowded into coastal areas in third world countries will come swarming to us in the “developed world” looking to be fed.

We are sliding down into a crisis, and we are worried about the stock market? This stuff is real, which is why one of the most knowledgeable and intelligent scientists in the world is willing to get himself to WV and get in harm’s way to draw attention to this issue.

Mountain-top removal is the practice of blowing the top off of the mountain, dumping the blasted earth into the adjacent valley, taking the coal, and planting grass seed, and repeat.

It is the first step in the lengthy trail of devastation caused by the use of coal as a power source. Let’s turn off the lights and pray for Dr. Hansen.

This is an image of an MTR excavation in West Virginia, not far from the location of the protest.

BERLIN - Part II

August 15, 2008


So often in doing my aerial shoots, I have no previous specific knowledge of my subject matter. Research on the images typically follows each shoot. In this case, I had three experts with me who were able to tell me all of the particulars, for which I am always so hungry. Our pilot, Michael Hanke, specializes in flying humanitarian and environmental expeditions. He is a sure-handed pilot who does his job so well that one could almost think he looks careless; Karsten Smid is a Greenpeace energy expert on brown coal issues, particularly as it relates to these locations; finally, the writer from the Taz, Nick Rymer, worked in a factory directly in the region of the mines and power plants and has a personal inside knowledge of these places.

We headed south from Berlin to the Lausitz/Cottbus mining site. The extent of the devastation in this area is amazing. That we humans could so heedlessly destroy such vast areas is audacious. The impact is all-encompassing, from the displacement of local populations to the massive carbon emissions (some of the plants we saw were among the largest carbon emitters in Europe).


Let’s not forget the inefficiency of lignite; such a poor energy source that it’s only worth mining if it’s burned directly where it is mined. Hurrah for the Berliners who are taking a stance against the burning of lignite by specifying that they want to purchase power from “green” sources, a movement only in the nascent stage in the USA. Burning coal is completely crazy. The rant begins by noting that there are myriad options without the consequences that accompany lignite, which are too many to list, but a few include: largest single cause of global warming and acid rain, greatest cause of mercury in the environment (meaning the fish we eat), single main producer of radioactive material released into the air and water. This just begins the list of reasons why mining and burning lignite make absolutely no sense. The only reason why we continue this ridiculous practice is that a few people are making a lot of money, as they are burning our future in the process. End rant.

Soon, the devastation at Janschwalde comes into view. I will admit that my head was nodding as I had only slept about 4 hours in the last 30, but the looming subject brought me back to life. These areas are vast, and we are inured to it because of our jaded media overload. Imagine if you were forced to move from your house so someone could burn the ground underneath it to make a lot of money and pollute the planet. The operations are owned and run by a Swedish company forbidden from coal operations at home, but happy to do it in these outback regions of old East Germany. Is it true that one of the chief executives of the company is the “climate advisor” to the reigning government? The operations are enormous, and efficient in the typical German way. Machines the size of which you can’t imagine move volumes of earth from one place to another to expose the layers of coal so different machines can scoop the coal onto a conveyor where it goes to be burned. All of this is powered by electricity, so in some sense this is just a machine devouring the earth to feed itself.

I will admit to a fascination with these machines, the largest built by humans, ironically contributing to our own destruction. They have a beauty of elemental function that makes them art in a certain way.

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The machine that actually digs the coal is rather small compared to the rest, and sits at the bottom of this tremendous moving trench. Most of my images are of the machines that move the “overburden,” and of course, the abstractions of the devoured earth, which only I can seem to capture. The final waste products (in this case, ashes and smoke) are always things I seek, and as usual, they are illuminating. Interactions of industrial nightmares with groundwater or the water table are a story worth telling in all cases, and here especially. Of course I am a visual artist, so the story I look to tell is a visual one. I can research the facts behind the storyline, but the goal here is citizen participation. We must all drink the water and breathe the air.

We find a place where the ashes are pumped into a gulch, mixing with the surface water to produce a beautiful, nightmarish lake with patterns of flow and color variations. I have the pilot circle repeatedly, certain that the scientists and reporters are convinced of my insanity…

BERLIN - Part I

July 28, 2008

When the ifa-Galerie asked me to participate in the upcoming exhibit, “Nature–Living at the Edge,” I knew it was perfect for Industrial Scars. So, I proposed that we include one of the Industrial Scars symposia as part of the program, which the gallery embraced enthusiastically.



The point of the project is to present people with enthralling images of industrial nightmares, “the consequences of our consumption,” that will serve to inspire reflections on the impact of the euros we spend and the effects our spending will have on our grandchildren. The symposium project has turned in to a vehicle to establish dialog between audience and artist, and, ideally includes a local component, in the form of an aerial photo shoot of nearby environmental damage that is affecting the lives of the residents. Of course, the mining of brown coal (lignite) is the first thing that comes to mind when brainstorming environmental issues around Berlin, so I proceeded to research and map the possibilities. Lignite is an environmental disaster; its mining devastates large areas - entire towns are moved by the powerful conglomerate of industry and government with little regard for the displaced populations. Lignite itself has so little energy value that it’s only worth digging up if it’s burned on the spot. Therefore, tremendous power plants are constructed in the middle of the mines. Aside from the other contaminants produced (only some of which can be filtered), the carbon output is huge.

Having photographed the mines near Koeln, I was interested to see the different techniques used in Cottbus (just south of Berlin).

These photo expeditions require tremendous research and preparation, so we began with preparations forthwith: producing and shipping the images for the exhibit, and organizing the logistics of an aerial shoot.

Too soon the departure date was upon us, and for once I arrived at JFK airport with plenty of time, only to discover I had forgotten my passport. There had been some thunderstorms that day, so there was some hope I could race back in to the city and get it. Sure enough, a call to Delta uncovered the fact that the flight was delayed, and I made it back to the airport in time to check-in, only to wait through a variety of Delta excuses for the continued delay of the flight. As the hours passed, the other passengers became increasingly angry; I, on the other hand, have decided that in this life there are too many things to bring stress, and it kills. Finally, 7 hours after scheduled departure, Delta cancelled the flight at 2 AM, leaving everyone stranded at the airport. I hailed a taxi and went back to the city for a few hours of sleep.

Having another day of work is always a good thing, in this case especially, as the Berlin newspaper, The Taz, was interested in a feature story and needed a large selection of images. I was able to send those along, and decided I would take the low-carbon transport to the airport this time. As I condemn Delta, I praise the NYC transit system with its new train to JFK, which takes about the same time as a taxi, at a fraction of the financial and environmental cost.

As the direct flight to Berlin was booked, I was put on a connection through Paris, which arrived in Berlin just in time for me to race to the small airport in Strausberg, from which we would do our aerial flight. Interesting the legacies of the past that affect our lives: this was an old Cold War landing strip in East Germany… so many resources squandered on our militaristic posturing in the superpower arms race.

More to follow…