The websites for the West Virginia Coal Association and the Friends of Coal have been busy over the past four years. According to Google Analytics, the West Virginia Coal Association site (www.wvcoal.com) has drawn some 477,000 page views from 196,255 visitors since July 2008. During that same time frame, the Friends of Coal website (www.friendsofcoal.org) saw 363,913 page views from 124,697 visitors. Most of those visiting the pages saw at least three pages and spent several minutes on the pages prior to leaving the site. Well over 70 percent of those visiting the sites were first-time visitors (74 percent for the association site and 82 percent for the Friends of Coal site).

Two long-standing statewide events are being combined to create the newly named West Virginia Leadership Summit at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, WV on April 18^th and 19^th.  The premiere Leadership Summit combines the highly successful WV Leadership Conference, hosted for 10 years by the West Virginia Roundtable, and Generaltion West Virginia’s equally successful 5-year old Young Leaders’ Conference.

The Summit will feature keynote speaker, William C. Taylor, co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company magazine, as well as established leaders of business, industry, governmentl, education, private enterprise and philanthroy such as WV Governor Earl Ray Tomblin; Susan Brewer, CEO of Steptoe & Johnson law firm; William “Pat” Getty, president of Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation; Kim Knopf, President/CEO of Innovative Mattress Solutions; Nenry Harmon, President/CEO/Chairman of Triana Energy.  The Summit will include a series of workshop sessions  as well.

Registration information can be found at www.wvleadership.org.

The West Virginia Eleventh Annual CEDAR Golf Classic will be held on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at the Twisted Gun Golf Course in Wharncliffe, West Virginia. Registration will begin at 9 a.m. with golf beginning at 10 a.m. promptly. Contact Bud Clapp at bud.clapp@nscorp.com for more information.

The WV Coal Mining Institute, the WVCA and the Central Appalachian Section of SME will be held at the Stonewall Jackson Resort May 3-5, 2012. Registration information was sent out previously via e-mail with detailed information. If you did not receive please let us know and it will be resent.

(Appeared in Daily Mail and other newspapers)

DC Federal Court Decision on Spruce is Critical First Step in Reining in Out-of-Control EPA

Decision confirms EPA has overstepped its authority and supports need for HR 2018

By Bill Raney, president

West Virginia Coal Association

There is no doubt about it, this past Friday’s decision in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia taking EPA to task for overstepping its authority with its veto of the Spruce Mine permit in Logan is a major victory for West Virginia’s 63,000 coal mining families and for the state as a whole. It is a critical first step in reining-in an increasingly radicalized, out-of-control agency, but it is only a first step.

In her decision, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amy Berman Jackson left little doubt EPA’s action is a clear abrogation of the Congressional limits set for the agency in its relationship with other agencies, “‘EPA’s position is that 404(c) grants it plenary authority to unilaterally modify or revoke a permit that has been duly issued by the Corps… This is a stunning power for an agency to arrogate to itself when there is absolutely no mention of it in the statute,” Jackson wrote.