The Dominion - coal

Small Town Power

Tim McSorley — Fri, 13 May 2011 05:27:02 +0000

A community with energy to spare

HALIFAX—“I can get quite overwhelmed and pessimistic at the state of the world, and I get incredibly angry at our government, which seems to be intentionally ignoring its moral responsibility for the state of Canadian industry,” says Wilf Bean, a resident of Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia. “With [federal environment minister] Peter Kent saying that he’s not going to pass any legislation which restricts tar sands development...It’s absolutely irresponsible.”

Bean, a veteran social justice campaigner and adult educator with the Coady International Institute, explains his decision to become the secretary of Colchester Cumberland Wind Fields (CCWF), a small, community-owned company on Nova Scotia’s North Shore.

“Getting involved in something locally, with local people, and trying to build a community that is attempting to live out some alternative...It’s necessary to my own sanity,” says Bean.

With 125 local shareholders, CCWF has raised the capital to build its first 0.8-megawatt wind turbine, scheduled to be up and running by August of this year. It will produce “about the amount of power Tatamagouche [population 900] uses,” says Bean.

Through an arrangement with electricity provider Nova Scotia Power (which has a monopoly in the province), the wind energy produced by the turbine will feed into Tatamagouche’s substation, which provides electricity to the community. This means that once the turbine is functioning, the company’s “vision of community-owned renewable electricity generation” will be a reality, Bean says.

The community-based aspect makes the project distinct, explains David Stevenson, CCWF’s president. “It’s very rewarding for individuals to have a sense of connection to their own power, and I think we’ll value it more in the long term,” says Stevenson. “All of our power will stay within this area.”

Bean and Stevenson say the North Shore community, already close-knit, is being brought together on yet another level by the wind project.

“There is that pride, that sense of...being part of something,” says Stevenson. “We had a public meeting at the hall in September...There were people there from the Department of Energy, along with local people, and the expression that was given back to us [by the Department] was, ‘Boy, you sure had people on your side.’”

Stevenson and the directors of CCWF raised money through a CEDIF (Community Economic Development Investment Fund), a tax-incentive mechanism created by the provincial Department of Finance to promote investment in local business. As more than 90 per cent of Nova Scotians’ investments into RRSPs leave this province for the Toronto Stock Exchange, a CEDIF means people have better incentive to “[put] their retirement funds in our company,” says David Swan, engineer and manager of the turbine project.

The community-based structure and cleaner-than-coal energy are what led Renate Hempel, a local heritage interpreter, to invest in the wind turbine project. “I was very intrigued by the idea to support sustainable energy that at the same time wouldn’t be owned by a big corporation,” says Hempel.

Hempel admits to having some reservations about the project. For instance, the tax-credit mechanism that financed the project means that the incentive to invest is only there “for people who pay a certain amount of taxes,”—high-income earners, she says. “It’s community-owned, but for people who pay high taxes.

“For some of my neighbours in Tatamagouche, it wouldn’t make any sense for them to invest...their taxes are minuscule” because of their low incomes, says Hempel. “I’m having a little bit of a hard time with that…It’s not for everybody.”

Tracy Glynn, a lecturer in environmental studies at St. Thomas University who campaigns against the environmental and social effects of importing “blood coal” from Colombia to the Maritime provinces, sees the project as a positive step toward cleaner power in Nova Scotia.

But, she adds, it’s important to look beyond small-scale projects like this one and work toward “replac[ing] the capitalist system, which is inherently anti-environment.” Profit, she says, cannot be the only motive driving solutions to the climate crisis.

CCWF is a for-profit business, but one that bills itself on its website as part of a “response to the challenges of the centralized energy systems that resulted from neo-liberal philosophies”—that is, the philosophy that large-scale privatization is the most efficient (read: profitable) way to provide people with energy.

Many people in Tatamagouche glimpsed the impacts of that problematic system in 2008, when Jesus Brochero, a union leader representing workers from the Cerrejon mine in Colombia, visited the community. Cerrejon provides coal to the Maritime provinces via Nova Scotia Power.

Brochero spoke of the myriad hazards mineworkers in Colombia face. Earlier that year, a fellow union leader at the mine, Adolfo Gonzalez Montes, was “tortured and killed at his home,” says Glynn. He was one of 2,510 unionists murdered in Colombia in the last 10 years.

“In the Maritimes, we clearly see how capitalism has merely shifted ecological problems…through the sourcing of cheap, dirty, blood coal in Colombia for our energy consumption,” says Glynn.

David Swan is quick to note that those problems are catching up to us.

“It’s only in the last 200 years we’ve had this concept of ‘I will live better than my parents,’” says Swan. “We may have to go back to a more steady-state lifestyle, a mindset of ‘I won’t have more than my grandparents.’”

Despite her reservations, Hempel is quick to note that she believes the positive aspects of the wind turbine project far outweigh the negative.

“Overall, I think it’s great,” says Hempel. There are “open meetings with everyone, it’s very involved, very transparent.”

And, despite the small scale of the project, Wilf Bean emphasizes its place in the bigger picture.

“At least we’ll be using some clean power source,” Bean says, “and cut[ting] down a little bit on Colombian coal.”

Ben Sichel is a writer and teacher in Halifax.

The Coal In Our Veins

Nova Scotia’s addiction to dirty, bloody power

by ANGELA DAY

HALIFAX—Wind farms aside, Nova Scotia is coal country. Approximately three-quarters of the province’s electricity is derived from this fossil fuel and much of it is imported—but not without conflict.

“Indigenous peoples [in Colombia] have been displaced from their traditional lands for multinationals to access resources that are then exported to us for our energy needs,” according to Garry Leech, author and professor at the University of Cape Breton.

Cape Breton, a rugged island off the northeastern tip of Nova Scotia, used to be the home of coal mining in the province, and is where miners joined the first trade union in North America—the Provincial Workman’s Association (PWA). The PWA was incorporated in Springhill, NS, in 1881 by coal miners demanding better wages and living conditions.

Today, at the Sydney port not far from the union’s origins, coal is unloaded from Colombia.

Nova Scotia began importing coal from the US in the 1950s and 60s for reasons of quality, since the coal mined here was a dirty, low-grade fuel. “Then, taking advantage of...neoliberal economic policies in the late 1990s, the province began to import coal from Colombia instead,” said Leech.

He explains that over the past 20 years, globalization has had a huge impact on Colombia, “opening up Colombia’s resources to foreign investment, particularly in mining and oil.” Cerrejon, a coal mine in northern Colombia, is now the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, and is the reason many Nova Scotians (and New Brunswickers) can turn on their lights, heat their homes and eat toast. All of the coal mined at Cerrejon is exported to Canada, the US and Europe.

Leech dismisses the common argument that Cerrejon’s profit trickles down to Colombians. “While, on paper, this mine contributes to the country’s GDP, most of the wealth generated from the mine leaves the country as profit for foreign-owned multinationals. The people in the affected areas are often living in poverty, and their homes have been devastated.”

MiningWatch cites ongoing damage to homes and severe skin and respiratory diseases suffered by people in the area.

Alongside a deplorable track record of human rights protection and a decades-long civil war, these factors have led to Colombian coal being dubbed “blood coal.”

Nevertheless, Nova Scotia continues to source mass amounts of coal from Colombia, and Brennan Vogel, Energy Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax, says he doesn’t see the province moving away from coal anytime soon.

Nova Scotia’s electricity provider—Nova Scotia Power Incorporated (NSPI)—is a private company that is guaranteed a 10 per cent return on investment by the provincial government. Changing its infrastructure to an energy source other than coal would be an expensive process, says Vogel. Because of this, Vogel sees a need for a broader conversation about electricity.

“Is energy a commodity,” he asks, “or is it a right like water or food, that people need to be assured of?”

Leech says energy doesn’t need to be linked to human rights violations and can be more environmentally friendly. But, according to him, “this has never been the motive of NSPI. They have a monopoly in the province...So, as long as it’s profitable, they’ll keep doing what they’re doing.”

Angela Day is a writer, educator, urban gardener and community organizer with roots in Halifax. She currently coordinates programs for young women across HRM.

These articles were produced by the Halifax Media Co-op for A People's Forecast: The Climate Justice Issue, our 2011 special issue. Come launch the special issue in Halifax on Wednesday, May 18! To read more climate justice articles as they are published, click here.

Turbine Miner

They Tore Down the Kremlin-- and I Wasn't There

macdonald — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:32:32 +0000

The lyrics to the song contained in this track are available here:
http://www.lyricsdownload.com/alarm-the-new-south-wales-lyrics.html

They Tore Down The Kremlin-- and I wasn't there.
September 20, 2009.

Macdonald John Enoch Stainsby.

I guess I should first explain why I am writing this article. It would not be at all inaccurate to say I'm trying to channel incredibly powerful emotions that have surfaced as a result of a recent short visit to Maerdy, south Wales in the Rhondda Valley. My family roots trace back to the town known as “Little Moscow” from the 1920's on. I have long known of our ties to this community but not the depth of those connections or what impact on me these ties would have.

I began my own personal journey in life that took me to revolutionary conclusions by necessity beginning when I was in high school but not becoming the path that I would take with my life until my early 20's, roughly 13 years ago. My reasons for moving towards the revolutionary transformation of society had almost nothing to do with our family history but were based on my own rational conclusions based on the state of the world. To this day when someone asks me why I'm a self-described revolutionary I still want to reply: “Look around you. Why aren't you?”

The Steep Price of Power

Moira Peters — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:50:09 +0000

Colombian coal fuels Atlantic Canada, but at what cost?

LA GUAJIRA, COLOMBIA–In the Guajira, a remote northern region of Colombia, the human and environmental costs of coal extraction go beyond the climate crisis, and it is Atlantic Canadians who are fueling part of the demand for Colombia's mineral fuel.

Production at the Cerrejón coal mine started in 1976, and through the course of its operations it has come into conflict with Afro-Colombian and indigenous Wayuu communities, whose existence and cultures have long depended on the surrounding lands and rivers.

Their livelihoods are under constant threat because of the expansion of the mine, the largest of its kind in the world.

As the biggest exporter of Colombian Coal, Cerrejón counts Canadian utility companies Nova Scotia Power and New Brunswick Power amongst its clients.

The beginning of major imports of Colombian coal coincided with the closing of the last nationalized mines in Nova Scotia in 2001. The climate of fiscal austerity at the time compelled the Liberal-led federal government to view the mining operations as too expensive. Buying coal from overseas sources, such as the Cerrejón operation, was seen as a the more cost-effective strategy.

Colombia’s armed conflict has defined the country’s economic and social layout for over 40 years, resulting in arguably the worst humanitarian environment in South America. There are at least four million internally displaced persons within Colombia’s borders. The country also carries the dubious distinction of being the world's most dangerous country for unionized labour. Since 1991, over 2,300 unionists have been murdered with few charges laid in any of those murders.

As major economic players in a country whose elites are focused on attracting foreign investment, BHP Billiton, Anglo American and Xstrata operate the Cerrejón consortium, and enjoy a comfortable position of advantage over the local communities.

The companies orchestrated the destruction of the small Afro-Colombian town of Tabaco, without any attempt to facilitate a collective relocation for the dispossessed residents.

Leading up to Tabaco’s displacement, Cerrejon pursued a strategy of buying out individual property owners rather than negotiating with the community as a collective through their elected Committee to Relocate Tabaco. At the time of displacement in August 2001, 67 families out of 120 represented by the committee still had not received compensation.

According to the company, the community consultations and expropriations were carried out within the framework of the law and consent of the area's municipal seats.

An independent panel assessing the Cerrejón's consultation process earlier this year recommended that "It might be appropriate, furthermore, to continue to promote group as opposed to individual re-settlement, as is advocated in modern standards covering re-settlement."

The panel advised the companies to acquire land for the approximately 20 remaining families and that its development should be assisted by the companies.

The independent review recommendations show promise for improved practices in community relations, but for the remaining communities in the area, the fear of meeting a similar fate as Tabaco remains part of the hardship of dealing with the encroaching open-pit coal mine.

The suffocating dust from the operations, the pollution of the river that was once the life-blood of the villages, the lowering of the water table, the degradation of farmland and the harassment from mine-employed security forces serve as daily reminders that politicians and business leaders place profit before the well-being of people and the land.

As far as politicians and economic development technocrats are concerned, the ‘progress’ brought to the Guajira by the mine is measurable through indicators such as increased GDP and foreign investment, the creation of mining jobs, and public relations-boosting social spending by the Cerrejón Foundation, the charity arm of the company.

In reality, many of the best jobs have gone to outsiders and the investment in healthcare and education programming by the Cerrejón Foundation has occurred only in the Guajira’s main municipal areas of Riohacha and Barrancas, out of reach of the remote communities in the rural zones near the mine.

In the Cerrejón Environmental Impact Statement, the companies downplayed the Wayuu and Afro-Colombian cultures by claiming “The human settlements in the study area are not well developed... The only population along the railroad line is Uribia, which is a small indigenous community with a primitive infrastructure.”

Villagers from the Wayuu community of Tamaquitos, along with the Afro-Colombian communities of Chancleta, Roche, Patilla and the already destroyed Tabaco, worked hard to make their voices heard as they resist the advances of the mine.

"We’ve gone from being a productive community to a community of paupers,” said president of the Chancleta neighborhood council, Wilman Palmezano, "In the 1980s, the company started buying up land and today we have nowhere left to sow crops, nowhere to put our animals."

“Life was rich, we shared, and no one suffered because we shared what we had,” explained Emilio Pérez, a former resident of Tabaco. “But the last nine years we have had no land to work. We are displaced, and we have no lodging.”

Years of work to raise the profile of their struggle has started yielding results, and the community members can now count the mine’s unionized workforce among their allies. Despite already facing enormous struggles of their own, the workers of Sintracarbón, the national union of coal industry workers, insisted that the plight of the communities affected by the Cerrejón’s operations are indeed a concern for the workers, and the union succeeded in convincing the company to be at the table for future negotiations with communities concerning their land.

The villagers contest Cerrejón’s propaganda tagline “Coal for the world, progress for Colombia.”

“There’s been talk of coal for the world and progress for Colombia. If that is so, we ask, to what country do our towns of Chancleta, Roche and Tabaco belong?" asked Eder Arregoces, president of Chancleta’s community action council. "[Cerrejón] may be one of the largest coal mines in Latin America but most families here can eat only one meal a day," he said.

Solidarity from Atlantic Canada, via the Mining the Connections campaign, has sought to raise awareness among consumers of the coal and bring international attention to the strugging communities.

Suzanne MacNeil is a political science student and associate editor of Colombia Journal.

Cerrejón

Children from Tabaco

Penny Trick in Prenter Holler

Van Ferrier — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:49:56 +0000

A family in West Virginia uses a common penny to show how their well water has been contaminated by coal slurry from a local coal mine.

Monbiot: "Everything hinges on stopping coal"

dawn — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 18:24:05 +0000

299545533_d44a4e8007.jpg

There is an excellent article by George Monbiot in today's Guardian titled "The stakes could not be higher. Everything hinges on stopping coal."

He quotes Al Gore as saying "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

Newsflash, Mr. Gore: in some form or another, they are.

Monbiot goes on to explain that he's on his way to the climate camp outside the coal plant at Kingsnorth (in England).

As if they didn't have enough fossil fuel related issues on their plate with the tar sands, 70% of Canadian coal reserves are in Alberta.

Below, a couple of coal related notes for those who may not have caught them in the Dominion Paper's July in Review:

Goldsource Mines Inc., a junior exploration company, discovered coal in its search for Saskatchewan diamonds. The company's shares rose from 37 cents in late April to $14 per share. With energy costs on the rise, the company says a coal deposit discovery is more valuable than diamonds.