HCMC meeting

The Hampshire County Marcellus Committee will meet Monday, May 16 at 10 am at the Hampshire County Health Department, on Route 50 in Augusta WV. The public is welcome to attend.

Study links flaming faucets to fracking

A peer-reviewed scientific study has found a definite correlation between methane gas migration into drinking water wells--a phenomenon documented in the movie "Gasland," which shows several homeowners lighting their running kitchen faucets on fire--and the process of hydraulic fracture, or "fracking."

The study was done by Duke University, and found dangerous levels of methane in drinking water where a gas well was fracked within a kilometer (about three-fifths of a mile) of a water well. Considering that present WV regulations allow fracking as close as 200 feet to a water well, this study shows how truly inadequate those regulations are.

Let's hope that once the gubernatorial primary dust clears, legislators (including the acting governor) will get serious about a special session to deal with this issue.

http://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking

--Michael Hasty

Marcellus wells in Morgantown

Ken Ward of the Charleston Gazette has a blog post about WVDEP permits being granted in March for two Marcellus gas wells, not far from where the Morgantown area draws its public water. The permits were granted without any opportunity for public comment.

http://blogs.wvgazette.com/watchdog/2011/05/06/morgantown-drilling-approved-with-no-public-input/

Marcellus task force meets

The Marcellus-to-manufacturing task force that acting governor Earl Ray Tomblin named in February had its first meeting this week. As expected, it will focus on boosting industry, and leave the issues of new regulations and environmental damage to someone else. Paul Nyden wrote the story for the Charleston Gazette:

www.wvgazette.com/News/201105041451

Osama assassinated

The news that Osama bin Laden—a CIA asset until at least the morning of September 11, 2001, according to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds—has died of a single gunshot to the head, fired by a US Navy SEAL, signals the end of an era in Deep State global relations.

There is a major shift occurring in global politics, as old US allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan abandon the sinking American empire for the rising power, China. Silencing Osama bin Laden, who has obviously been under the protection of both Pakistani and American intelligence services for the past ten years, is a message from US elites to their restive Middle Eastern vassals that such betrayals will go neither unpunished nor unchallenged.

We live in a world ruled by gangsters allied with banksters—Russian gangsters, Chinese gangsters, American gangsters, and a multitude of smaller affiliate gangs, organized in elite clubs like the Trilateral Commission and the central bankers and the G20. It is a lawless world, governed solely by power. And it is a world running out of cheap oil, the fuel that runs capitalist civilization. We’re entering an era of global hardball. Bin Laden’s death sends a serious message that the US is in the game. It also fits a pattern: Noriega, Saddam, Mubarek—the US always double crosses the monsters it creates.

The news we see rarely reflects the reality of a given geopolitical event, and the death of Osama bin Laden will be no exception. The whole circumstance raises numerous questions which will be studiously avoided by our mainstream propagandists. They create the corporate version of reality, the matrix where most people live.

Nothing to see here, folks. The war on terror grinds on. Your liberties, please.

--Michael Hasty

Stop the Kaboom!

Stop the Kaboom! Festival is an event merging music, art and activism in a fundraiser for a new direct action campaign, the RAMPS Collective. RAMPS stands for Radical Action for Mountain and People Survival, and they have just recently launched their campaign in southern West Virginia, to help abolish Mountaintop Removal coal mining.

The festival and campaign will help raise money and awareness for this cause, and will be used to acquire a living space in the Coal River Valley of WV. The music will include several local and regional musicians, representing a wide range of styles and genres, including bluegrass, funk, reggae, jam, folk and electronic music.

In addition, we will have several informed and inspiring Speakers from throughout WV taking the stage. They'll be speaking and conduction presentations on their involvement in organizing to stop Mountain top Removal, Hydrofracking Marcellus Shale for natural gas, and their struggles in creating a more sustainable, healthier West Virginia.

The event is located in Hedgesville, WV and will be held April 29th through May 1st, 2011. The festival will include admission and 3 days of camping for a minimum donation of $15 dollars.
If you would like to take part in vending, or wish to set up a table with an environmental or social justice group, please contact event organizer Laura Steepleton at lnsteep@gmail.com.

For more info, please visit us at www.stopthekaboom.com or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/l/7e301Laai_rSR1lGKA5O-BLAODQ/www.stopthekaboom.com.

--Laura Steepleton

Mountaintop removal in Romney

On Thursday, April 28th at 6 pm, three young staffers from the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation will talk about their efforts to stop the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. The event will take place at the Hampshire County Public Library on Main Street in Romney, and is sponsored by the Hampshire County Independent Network.

All in their twenties, Junior Walk, Adam Hall and Amber Whittington grew up in the coal mining region of West Virginia. But when they reached adulthood, they began to recognize how removing entire mountaintops to get at the coal beneath was devastating the communities in which this practice occurred. They got involved with groups like Coal River Mountain Watch, and eventually joined the staff of the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation.

The foundation was organized by Larry Gibson, who has been the subject of many articles, documentaries and books, for his attempt to save his family home place on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia. All the land around him has been strip-mined, but Gibson refuses to leave the property where a family cemetery goes back 300 years.

Also being discussed at Thursday evening’s event is the upcoming March on Blair Mountain, which will commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Blair Mountain, where 10,000 coal miners fought against private coal company security, police and eventually the US Army, for the right to organize a union. It remains the largest civil insurrection in US history since the Civil War.

After Blair Mountain was, in a dubious process, removed from the National Register of Historic Places, and became a target of acquisition of both Massey and Arch coal companies, several groups, including the United Mine Workers, filed suit against the Secretary of the Interior to return Blair Mountain to the Register. That lawsuit is pending.

The March on Blair Mountain will take place in June, and will follow the route that the army of miners took in 1921. Marchers will start in Marmet WV on June 6th, and end up at Blair Mountain in Logan County on June 11th, where a final rally will be held. Details can be found at www.marchonblairmountain.org.

The appearance in Hampshire County will be the first in a whirlwind weekend for the Keeper of the Mountains staffers, who will be speaking at events throughout the Eastern Panhandle, including on Saturday at the Stop the Kaboom music festival in Hedgesville (www.stopthekaboom.com).

Hampshire County Independent Network organizer Michael Hasty, who drafted the Hampshire County Commission resolution that established the Hampshire County Marcellus Committee—so far the only county advisory board on Marcellus gas issues in the state—and serves as committee secretary, will also be a featured speaker at the Stop the Kaboom festival. He will speak following the appearance of his folk trio, Michael & the Archangels, Saturday April 30 at 1 pm.

More information and biographical information about the speakers:
http://mountainkeeper.blogspot.com/