How Joe Manchin Aided Coal, and Earned Millions
GRANT TOWN, W.Va. On a hilltop overlooking Paw Paw Creek, 15 miles south of the Pennsylvania border, looms a fortresslike structure with a single smokestack, the only viable business in a dying Appalachian town.
The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now the single most important figure shaping the nations energy and climate policy.
Mr. Manchins ties to the Grant Town plant date to 1987, when he had just been elected to the West Virginia Senate, a part-time job with base pay of $6,500. His familys carpet business was struggling.
Opportunity arrived in the form of two developers who wanted to build a power plant in Grant Town, just outside Mr. Manchins district. Mr. Manchin, whose grandfather went to work in the mines at age 9 and whose uncle died in a mining accident, helped the developers clear bureaucratic hurdles.
Then he did something beyond routine constituent services. He went into business with the Grant Town power plant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/27/climate/manchin-coal-climate-conflicts.html
Botany
(70,291 posts)... mines that were closed long ago and Joe and his family own that gob coal too. The Grant Town
power plant is less efficient so Joe & friends got a rate hike on the electricity produced by that plant*
(of which the Manchins get a cut of), the plant produces more mercury air pollution then other coal
plants, more SO2 then other coal power plants, Joe got the air pollution limits waved on the Grant
Town plant, the plant should have been closed a few years ago because it costs more than other ways
to produce electricity along with killing the planet but Joe stopped that, and all the while Joe has been
working to kill green energy to protect the fossil fuel industry.
And all the time Joe's son, Joe Manchin the 4th sits in his office in Fairview W.V. and counts the millions.
BTW W.V.'s other senator is the daughter of former governor Arch Moore. And she is dirty too.
* forcing the people of W.V. to pay more for their electricity.
BlueJac
(7,838 posts)With voting power to protect his wealth and pollute the state of WV.
Botany
(70,291 posts)He is a fucking carpet salesman who got onto the Senate Energy Committee.