Controversial coal baron steps aside

Blankenship took the company public a decade ago and it has grown substantially. Revenues climbed from $1.1 billon in 2000 to $2.7 billion in 2009, according to Massey. But his long tenure was also marked by a slew of controversies.

Here’s a blurb from the piece by the Charleston Gazette’s ace coal reporter Ken Ward Jr. on the surprise retirement:

“Blankenship’s tenure has been marked by bitter disputes with the United Mine Workers union, a series of workplace and environmental disasters, and controversial political involvement that has increasingly drawn negative national attention for Massey.”

“In the past two years alone, Massey has paid the largest fines ever for a coal-mining death case and for water pollution violations by a mining operator — $4.5 million for the fatal Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine fire and $20 million in a water pollution deal with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

The Associated Press notes that Blankenship “leaves at a time when Massey’s safety practices are under scrutiny by state and federal regulators” and that “Its practices are also the subject of a criminal investigation.”

Massey and Blankenship came under fire from environmentalists over mountaintop removal mining. It’s the strip mining method in which the tops of Central Appalachian peaks are blown off to access the coal seams below, while the rocks and other debris are dumped into valleys, often burying ecologically vital streams.

But Blankenship – who is also a climate change skeptic – strongly defended the practice. He debated environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. about it in January and called affordable electricity created with coal vital to quality of life.

According to a West Virginia Public Broadcasting account of their debate, Blankenship “says worrying about something as trivial as mountaintop removal is ridiculous in the face of the world’s poverty.”

“You talk about it being a sin to do surface mining,” Blankenship said. “The real sin is that the enviros want to focus us on 1 part per billion of iron or talk about windmills when tens of millions of people are starving to death.”