As the debate for and against mountaintop removal mining rages on in Kentucky, hundreds of supporters of the coal industry - from miners to political leaders - rallied at the state Capitol Thursday, just two days after a controversial piece of legislation died in the Appropriation and Revenue Committee by failing to garner enough votes.

The stream saver bill, which has been introduced for the past three years in the Natural Resources Committee but never outed for a full vote in the House, was attached to a House bill that would exempt sales tax on camel feed, and therefore be heard in front of the Appropriation and Revenue Committee where the bill would be more likely to garner a positive vote in committee.

“They thought they had that vote,” said Perry County Clerk Haven King, himself a former coal miner, who traveled to Frankfort Thursday in support of the coal industry. King noted that proponents of the stream saver bill, which if passed into law would have forced coal companies to haul overburden to separate sites rather than pushing it into valleys, assumed that enough votes would be cast to push the legislation out of committee. King said the efforts of supporters of the coal industry illustrated to legislators that the industry does have support and the bill would not be a good thing for Kentucky coal. “I think we changed their minds when we actually went into the committee before they started,” he continued.

Coal supporters and opponents of the stream saver bill brought with them well over 1 million copies of more than 10,000 signatures for each state representative on the A & R Committee in defense of the coal industry. “This was a giant effort,” King said, noting that signatures came in from not only Hazard and Perry County, but also from cities like London and Corbin as well.

Coal companies played the largest role in gathering the signatures that were presented to the legislators, King said, as International Coal Group (ICG) presented over 4,000 alone. Other coal companies, such as Pine Branch Coal, B & W Resources, James River Coal Services and TECO brought in thousands more signatures.

Several mines in eastern Kentucky were closed Thursday to allow miners to attend the rally in Frankfort, which was an important step in illustrating the support for the coal industry, said King. “It was important to show that there is support for coal mining,” he said. “We have been quiet too long. We’re going to educate the people about coal mining.”

Several busloads of coal miners and coal supporters departed from the Black Gold Shopping Center in Hazard Thursday morning, bound for the Frankfort rally. The miners were also joined by several legislators, such as state Senator Brandon Smith and state Rep. Rocky Adkins, as well as Governor Steve Beshear.

Not gathering enough votes to push the stream saver bill to committee was surprising for supporters of the legislation, said Perry County resident and former coal miner Truman Hurt, who had testified before the A&R Committee on behalf of the legislation. “We were kind of surprised,” he said, noting that two legislators who were thought to have supported the bill failed to do so, while another excused himself before voting and three didn't vote either way. “All of that kind of bothers you, but it’s part of the process, and we don’t want to quit,” Hurt continued. “We believe Kentucky is worth saving, especially eastern Kentucky.”

Hazard resident and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth member Dr. Lyle Snider noted that he was disappointed in hearing that the bill died while in committee, but commented that getting the bill heard at all was a small victory in and of itself. "I was disappointed that it is no longer under consideration, but very grateful to the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee for hearing it finally," he said. "We got it heard, and a lot of important issues were raised."

Insiders within the coal industry have stated that the stream saver bill would result in a negative impact on the region, and potentially cost hundreds of jobs locally to coal miners. Kentucky Coal Association President Bill Caylor told the Herald last week that there was no definitive numbers on what impact the bill would have had, but everything he had read on the subject pointed to a higher cost for coal in Kentucky, which would cause customers of Kentucky coal to seek coal from other states at a cheaper rate while coal mined locally would become less competitive with other areas.

According to Snider, the price of all fossil fuels, including coal, will continue to rise and points to oil as one example, and the stream saver bill wouldn’t have had that much of an impact on the industry. He also noted that many supporters of the stream saver bill do not want coal miners to lose their jobs. "Miners are led to believe that environmentalists and KFTC want them to lose their jobs. That's certainly not true of KFTC as a whole," as he said. "We don't have any way to generate power at this point without coal from southeast Kentucky. The  coal is there and it's going to come out. The issue is how to get it out in a way that does not destroy people's homes and our water and environment."

Proponents of the legislation state that the practice of filling valleys and covering streams has consequences for the region, and point to EPA studies which seem to indicate that restricting valley fills would have an insignificant impact on the cost of coal or the electricity it produces, and therefore an insignificant impact on the coal industry in eastern Kentucky as a whole.

But Don Gibson, chief engineer for ICG, said the bill, which would have required coal companies to haul overburden to separate sites, would have been cost prohibitive and put even more coal trucks on the road hauling materials as a result, estimating that for every one truck hauling coal approximately 20 would be on the road hauling other materials to different sites. “It’s not feasible economically,” he said, noting that the consequences of the bill would be devastating for the coal industry in the region.

For supporters of the stream saver bill, testimony given before the A&R Committee points to why the practice of pushing spoil into valleys needs to be halted. According to testimony presented by Nathaniel Hitt, research associate at Virginia Tech, the practice of valley filling covers waterways in Kentucky and is having a negative impact on water quality and increases the risk of flooding. Hitt testified that past research indicates that water downstream from mining operations contains an increased level of several different minerals, including selenium, iron and sulfate, which could prove harmful at high levels of exposure.

But the overriding factor for many supporters of the coal industry is that the industry itself creates a boon to the economy of eastern Kentucky, and the practice of surface mining creates flat land in a region where such property is at a premium. King pointed to several different former surface mining sites that have been used for development, such as the Coalfields Industrial Park in Chavies where Sykes and Trus Joist are located and hundreds of jobs were created. In recent years, local leaders have taken advantage of the flat land produced by surface mining, as is evidenced in Knott County where the Knott County Sportsplex was recently opened and in Hazard where several business have opened on former surface mining sites. Elected leaders are also pointing to the budding industry of adventure tourism, an industry for which surface mining creates ample land for use.