All West Virginia Coal Association members in the Morgantown, Preston, Marion and Harrison county areas are invited and encouraged to attend the WV Business & Industry Council  regional business forum beginning at noon September 4^th at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown.  BIC has also invited Morgantown-area business community to this forum.

The Attorneys General of West Virginia and Kentucky –Patrick Morrisey and Jack Conway – have joined with the Attorneys General of ten other states in litigation in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the authority of the United States EPA to issue standards of performance for existing power plants under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act, which were proposed on June 18, 2014.

According to the latest information from the U.S. Energy Information Agency, coal production in the United States fell by 400,000 tons for the week ending August 9 compared to the same time last year. Production for the week stood at 19.2 million tons compared to 19.6 million tons in 2013.

Coal production for the 52 weeks ending August 9 was also off by 1.6 percent, from 993 million tons in 2013 to 977 million tons this year.  This reduced production was reflected in the number of rail cars loaded, which fell from 6,060,769 cars loaded in 2013 to 5,996,869 cars in 2014.

A very special episode of The Coal Seam television show will begin airing next week. The show was filmed on location at this past month’s coal rally in Pittsburgh. The show will include vignettes of the rally, which included Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor of Ohio.  Gov. John Kasich was also on hand via a video he sent.  WVCA President Bill Raney and Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton also addressed the crowd of thousands of coal miners there to protest the EPA’s GHG regulations that are shutting down coal-fired power plants and killing thousands of jobs.

Watch for the episode next week. It will be broadcast through most of September.  It is available on the state Library Television Network as well as your local cable system’s public access channel. In the Charleston area, it is on Suddenlink Channel 17.

The Friends of Coal petition to protect America’s coal jobs has already collected approximately 6,000 letters of support through our convenient online tool.   The online tool allows you to file your comments calling on EPA to rescind its job-killing regulations that are halting the construction of new coal-fired power plants and essentially forcing the closure of existing plants.  The letters are sent directly to the EPA’s official comments email address.

If you have not already done so, we ask that you visit the out online petition and add your support. You can do so at www.friendsofcoal.org/soundoff.  Please do it today – for all of us!