Tag: ExportImport Bank

Suit objects to loan that helps region's coal exports

By Robert McCabe

Environmental groups on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s backing of a loan that facilitates the export of some Appalachian coal through the ports of Hampton Roads and Baltimore.

The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, alleges that the U.S. Export-Import Bank broke federal law by approving a $90 million loan guarantee in support of Latrobe, Pa.-based coal broker Xcoal Energy & Resources LLC without first preparing an “environmental impact statement.”

The taxpayer-backed financing, approved on May 24, 2012, will help leverage $1 billion in coal exports from Appalachia to markets in Japan, South Korea, China and Italy through coal terminals in Hampton Roads and Baltimore, the groups said.

Lawsuit seeks to stop federal loan guarantee for coal planned for export from Hampton Roads

Daily Press

By Tamara Dietrich

As a registered nurse at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital for more than 20 years, Lorraine Ortega has noticed more and more serious asthma patients who need treatment.

“I was alarmed by the increased number of acute asthmatics in our area, as well as people actually being diagnosed with lung cancer when they’re non-smokers,” Ortega said.

One of those acute asthmatics happens to be Ortega’s daughter, who’s wound up several times in the emergency room. Ortega says she’s also had her own share of “really, really bad lung congestion” and pulmonary issues, even though she, too, is a non-smoker. She didn’t have such problems before moving from Brooklyn to Chesapeake in 1991.

She believes the culprit is coal.

Coal Export ExportImport Bank Virginia

Environmental groups, critical of coal export loans, file lawsuit

Cumberland Times-News

By Matthew Bieniek

CUMBERLAND — At the same time the coal industry is fighting against what industry leaders say is a war on coal, several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit to fight multimillion dollar loan guarantees to export U.S. coal to foreign nations including Japan, South Korea, China and Italy.

Much of that coal leaves the country through the Port of Baltimore.

Coal Export ExportImport Bank Maryland Virginia

Environmentalists sue Export-Import Bank over loan guarantee to domestic coal broker

The Washington Post

By Max Ehrenfreund

Above the harbor in Baltimore’s industrial Curtis Hill district is a one-acre urban farm. Jason Reed, a community organizer who works there, described the view. “I can look out over the harbor, and you can see the piles and piles of coal,” he said.

That coal is the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a coalition of environmental groups against the Export-Import Bank of the United States. The groups are challenging the federal agency’s financing of fossil fuel exports from ports in Baltimore and Hampton Roads.

Coal Export ExportImport Bank Maryland Virginia