Press Releases

Charleston, WEST VIRGINIA -Lack of federal funding has terminated a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine study on the health effects of mountaintop coal removal in Central Appalachia. Trump has been slowly and quietly dismantling the study since last fall, when the Department of Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) halted the work due to an agency wide review of grants and agreements over $100,000.

As Duke Energy continues its push to raise customers’ bills to pay for its coal ash cleanup and to pad its bottom line, Sierra Club has launched a two-week digital ad buy in Raleigh and Charlotte to shine a light on the utility’s greed.

Duke Energy has a released a report showing that the company plans to stop burning coal by 2050, and will instead relicense its nuclear plants and continue expanding its fracked gas infrastructure.

Greene County, PA--The Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ) and the Sierra Club filed an appeal of a permit issued by Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that would allow Consol Pennsylvania Coal Company (Consol) to mine underneath another stream within Ryerson Station State Park despite anticipated damage. This is the fourth time the groups have been forced to file an appeal of permits for Consol’s Bailey Mine East Expansion.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality held the final public hearing on Virginia’s Carbon Reduction Plan today. At the hearing, participants called for the strongest possible standard to cut Virginia’s carbon pollution from fossil fuel burning power plants. The public hearing was preceded by a press conference held by community members and activists, which was attended by about 50 people.

PENNSYLVANIA – In a new poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR), Pennsylvanians show strong, bipartisan support for generating 100 percent of the state’s electricity using clean, renewable energy.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that he is severely weakening the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR) program for air pollution, which will make it possible for industrial polluters to avoid installing state-of-the-art, cost-effective pollution controls. The Clean Air Act, and EPA’s NSR regulations, require major sources of air pollution, like dirty coal burning power plants, to add modern pollution controls when they undertake projects that produce an increase in air pollution. Pruitt’s announcement today opens a major loophole in those requirements by allowing polluting facilities to claim that planned decreases in pollution will offset any immediate increase in pollution, while abandoning the procedures by which EPA has, in the past, ensured that such claims are accurate and enforceable. The practical result will be an increase in air pollution, with especially harmful impacts in the communities that surround major industrial facilities.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam of the Northern District of California found that Scott Pruitt had illegally delayed the Environmental Protection Agency’s designation process for stronger clean air protections against smog pollution.

TDEC taking over surface coal mine permitting would not only be bad for the environment, but operating this permitting program could cost Tennessee taxpayers more than $2 million dollars every year.

MGE called on local, state, and federal governments to create policies that encourage the implementation of more electric and low-emissions vehicles. Three days prior, on Monday March 5th, high winds kicked up toxic coal dust from the Oak Creek and Elm Road power plants in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, into the surrounding neighborhoods, coating nearby homes, vehicles, playgrounds and residents’ lungs.