Mountaintop removal coal mining

Comment: Stop Mt.Top Removal now and stop ruining our streams and most of coal is shipped to China! Mt. Top Removal does not employ as many people as underground mining but more money for coal corporations! Ban Mt. Top Removal Now!  Plus this called strip mining which uranium mining will look the same but 1,000 x worse!

January 17, 2010

Mountaintop removal coal mining is destroying our mountains and streams, but Virginia residents have an opportunity to stop it this year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12E2IgGG9nQ

It’s Only Appalachia (Mining)

Comment: This is a great article. I know we get most of electricity from coal and probably Mt. Top Removal and most of the coal is sent to China, so I feel we need to demand our country, our county to stop buying Mt. Top Removal, not to blow up our hills for uranium. Demand our country, county to promote green power, get the power companies to buy power from people with solar, wind, etc so we will not have to build more coal & nuclear plants! Ban Mt. Top Removal now and stop ruining people’s lives! Virginia is destroying our mountains and ruining our families lives, Virginia wants to mine uranium too! Virginia plans to blow up Virginia hills for uranium and will start in a poor area of Virginia first then move up Rt. 29 North and into the Virginia Mountains! Uranium mining and Mt. Top Removal is only allowed for corporate greed and lines the Politian’s pockets with money! BAN MT. TOP REMOVAL AND BAN PROPOSED URANIUM MINING NOW!

January 10th, 2010

Suppose someone wanted to build a waste dump in New England that would blanket an area twice the size of Rhode Island, ruining it for the next 10,000 years. Would you approve?

How about allowing a factory that would destroy the Mississippi River from above St. Louis all the way to New Orleans. Would you sign off on that permit?

Well, maybe we could take up the monument next to the the USS Arizona and sell off the wreck for scrap. Would that get your okay?

The answer to any of these proposals shouldn’t just be no, it should be outrage.

But we do allow it, have been allowing it for years, and continue to allow it despite promises to the contrary — so long as it’s in the Appalachians.

 In the Appalachians it’s fine to bury thousands of miles of streams and rivers under waste and pollute the remainder of the waterways for both people and wildlife.

Coal Sludge

In the Appalachians it’s okay to erase the richest hardwood forest ecology anywhere on the planet for all time, to lay waste to communities, to tear down mountains that have stood longer than there has been life on land.

In the Appalachians, it’s okay to take the most sacred site in the history of American labor, the battlefield where union miners fought not just against mercenaries sent in to eradicate them and their families but against bombers sent by their own government, and to delist that site from the Park Service register of national historical sites.

Why would anyone allow the Park Service to delist a battlefield where over 100 men died and nearly 1000 of those who lived were tried for “treason against a state?”





We do it for the same reason we tear down the mountains, for the same reason we eradicate the forest, for the same reason we destroy the communities, for the same reason we fill in the streams.

We do it for the money.

It’s not the jobs.

Mountaintop removal mining takes fewer workers than the underground mining it replaces. MTR doesn’t compete with surface mining in the west, it directly competes with eastern mines that take more workers but cause far less damage to the environment.

 Mountaintop removal costs jobs, and it always has.

It’s not because we need the coal.

Mountaintop removal provides less than 10% of the coal we consume nationally, and all of that coal, every bit, could be easily replaced by other production.

Watch how the stock of companies given permits for MTR jumps even though there’s no demand for additional coal in the market.

Even if we didn’t lift a finger to change our demand for coal (and many of the sites now permitted for mountaintop removal are among the best locations for wind power in the east), MTR coal simply replaces other coal — it allows mining companies to close higher cost mines.

We allow mountaintop removal because mountaintop removal is cheaper.

Pockets like those of men who think they can buy Supreme court judges. Pockets of men who can and do buy politicians at all levels of government.

Men who can spend millions promoting the idea that there is no choice but to destroy the land for short-term jobs.

This past week, a study from the National Academy of Sciences confirmed what many have known all along.

The effects of mountaintop removal mining are “pervasive and irreversible.” This type of mining is not only unmatched in its destruction, but an unmatched threat to public health. It’s simply not worth it.

A group of scientists on Thursday called on the U.S. government to stop issuing new permits for mountaintop coal mining, citing research that finds the practice is damaging to the environment and human health.

The scientists said no mountaintop mining permits should be granted “unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer-review and shown to remedy these problems.”

That’s what the science says, but that’s not what the Obama administration is saying.

Just this week the EPA issued several new permits for mountaintop removal.

But hey, it’s only Appalachia.

We’ll pretend that we’re saving people’s jobs while we take away their future.

We’ll say that there’s no choice while we ruin the landscape, spoil the waters, and pollute the air.

Then, once we’ve scraped away the last ton of coal, we’ll leave behind the poorest communities in the nation. It’s what we’ve always done.

If you think it’s time to do something about mountaintop removal, please pay a visit to this page at I Love Mountains to call the White House. Then turn over to Appalachian Voices for information on two pieces of pending legislation that can help end this practice. For detailed coverage and frequent updates, drop by Clem Gutta’s place at West Virginia Blue and Jeff Biggers at Grist. ASiegel’s post over at Get Energy Smart is a one stop source of links for the best resources on this topic.

This is an ongoing national tragedy.

It’s one of those things that future generations will look back on with horror and shame. And this is an unnecessary evil, one that can be ended with the stroke of the president’s pen.

Please help make that happen: http://www.youtube.com/user/iLoveMountainsOrg#p/c/2A2F68AF215E24BC

Read more:
http://malarkynews.com/its-only-appalachia/

EPA Softens Stance on Mountaintop Coal Mining

Comment:  EPA is for the corporations and not the environment or the health of people!  Mt. Top Removal is destroying our mountains, destroying our water and streams, destroying our air and land!  Then after they blow up the mountain, they ship the coal to China!  Pure Evil Greed!
JANUARY 5, 2010
5:18 P.M. ET.
By SIOBHAN HUGHES

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency came out in support of a permit for one West Virginia mountaintop coal-mining operation and suggested it might endorse another permit for the largest such operation in Appalachia.

The EPA announcements Tuesday continue the Obama administration's up-and-down stance on mountaintop coal mining, which involves blasting off mountaintops to get at the coal underneath. Environmentalists oppose the practice, because they say it permanently damages the land and pollutes streams. Mining companies say the practice is safer and cheaper than traditional underground mining.

Read more:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126272441988216829.html

Boucher: Interior’s planned coal mining rules run roughshod over states

Comment: Protect our waters from the Greedy Coal Corporations and some of our senators from Virginia! Virginia has the second most polluted rivers and lakes in the nation! Demand our leaders to protect our waters!

By Ben Geman - 12/29/09 11:48 AM ET

Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.), an ally of his southwest Virginia district’s coal industry, is not happy with Interior Department plans to overhaul protections for Appalachian waters from mountaintop mining.

Read..
http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/73829-boucher-interiors-planned-coal-mining-rules-run-roughshod-over-states

Surface Mining Devastation in Appalachia Detailed in New Federal Report

Comment:  Virginia allows Mt. Top Removal and VA loves Nukes, so watch out all of Virginia, VA will blowup our Hills for uranium!  Demand Virginia to ban uranium mining and milling now!
For Immediate Release, December 10, 2009

Contact: Tierra Curry, Center for Biological Diversity, (928) 522-3681

Surface Mining Devastation in Appalachia Detailed in New Federal Report

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.— Up to 23 percent of the land area of some counties in Appalachia has been permitted for surface coal mining, according to a new report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office on surface mining in Kentucky and West Virginia.  As of July 2008, surface coal-mining permits had been issued for 778,800 acres of land in eastern Kentucky and for 435,200 acres in West Virginia.

Vast, contiguous areas of forest have been lost as mining has become more concentrated in a handful of counties. In West Virginia, nearly 50 percent of mining is now concentrated in Boone, Logan, and Mingo counties. More than 178,000 connected acres in West Virginia have been opened to mining since 1990, including a single contiguous 21,700-acre area. In Kentucky, 44 percent of surface mining now takes place in Knott, Perry, and Pike counties. Despite increased surface mining, these counties remain among the poorest in the nation. In Knott County, 18 percent of the land area has been surface-mined, yet 32 percent of residents still live below the poverty line.

“Coal destroys the environment and keeps residents locked in poverty. It is time to say enough is enough and end surface coal mining in Appalachia,” said Tierra Curry, a Knott County native and scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.

In Appalachia, coal-mining wastes are dumped directly into streams. Since 1990, West Virginia has approved the filling of 177 miles of stream. From 1990 to 2008, the states of Kentucky and West Virginia approved nearly 2,000 fills, allowing at least 4.9 billion cubic yards of mining waste to be dumped into valleys and hollows.

After mining, coal operators are not required to return the land to its original contour or elevation, and reclamation requirements can be waived entirely. The report reiterates that even with reclamation, mining has led to forest fragmentation, loss of wildlife habitat, increased flood potential, and reduced carbon sequestration, and that some reclaimed areas do not differ from lands where reclamation wasn’t carried out.

Read more at:
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2009/coal-12-10-2009.html

Judge sides with environmental groups in coal case

Comment: Look at the years the Corps broke the Clean Water Act, Public Notice and other problems but they still can mine for 60 days! People of Virginia do not trust the Uranium Corps and the untruths about how safe uranium mine is because the NRC and the EPA will protect us! The EPA did not protect our Mountain Families!

By TIM HUBER (AP)
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated federal environmental laws by failing to give the public enough of a say before issuing permits for mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers involves permits issued to subsidiaries of Consol Energy and Penn Virginia Resources. But it could have far-reaching implications for the ongoing debate over mountaintop removal coal mining.

Environmental groups have been pushing the Obama administration to ban the highly efficient practice as too damaging. The coal industry argues that would devastate parts of Appalachia by eliminating thousands of jobs and cut coal supplies, pushing up electricity prices for American consumers.

"Most of the pending permits in West Virginia may need to go back through the public process," said Oliver Bernstein, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The corps, Penn Virginia, Consol and the National Mining Association had no immediate comment. Approximately 23 applications for West Virginia surface mines are pending before the corps.

Chambers held that the corps violated the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act when it issued permits for Penn Virginia's Nellis surface mine and Consol's Ike Fork mines. He ruled that public notices for the permits failed to provide a clear understanding of the nature and magnitude of the mines or allow the public to be involved sufficiently in the permitting process.

Chambers ordered the corps to correct the problem with the permits, though he allowed both companies to continue "limited" mining for 60 days.

"The Court realizes that the procedural flaw identified by Plaintiffs did not stem from any wrong-doing on the part of the mining companies," Chambers wrote.

Click Title or Link to whole:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ilNqXcMDBLf-ayRrvcQm9sSC04hgD9C66B9G0

King Coal: Wise Monarch or Cruel and Ruthless Despot?

Comment:  Why does our government allow this to happen to her people?  Greed, pure greed!  Most of the Mt. Top Removal is shipped overseas! 

by LJFurman on November 12, 2009

According to Mortality Rates in Appalachian Coal Mining Counties: 24 Years Behind the Nation, by Michael Hendryx, of the Department of Community Medicine, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, http://www.sludgesafety.org/health/Mortality_Coal.pdf,

mortality is 10.21 % higher in Appalachia than elsewhere in the US, and 18.45 % higher in in coal mining counties where 4 million tons or more of coal are mined. (See also Coal Tattoo.)

Part of the problem is poverty, lack of education, smoking, and other factors, but these are all related to the coal economy.

This “may reflect the unique relationship of mining activity to topography and population centers characteristic of Appalachia. ... Coal contains mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium, and many other toxic and carcinogenic substances and the mining and preparation of coal at local processing sites releases tons of annual ambient particulate matter and contaminates billions of gallons of water.”

In another study, “with co-author Melissa Ahern of Washington State University, Hendryx reports that the coal industry generates a little more than $8 billion a year in economic benefits for the Appalachian region.

But, Hendryx and Ahern put the value of premature deaths attributable to the mining industry across the Appalachian coalfields at -- by one of their most conservative estimates -- $42 billion.

"The human cost of the Appalachian coal mining economy outweighs its economic benefits," they wrote. The costs are 5.25 times higher than the benefits. And that's only in terms of premature deaths. It doesn't discuss environmental degradation.

Click Title or Link to whole post:
http://popularlogistics.com/2009/11/king-coal-wise-monarch-or-cruel-and-ruthless-despot/

Appalachia under attack - Society lives with its impact

Comment: Yes, we need to stop Mt. Top Removal but future uranium mining will be thousands of times worse. The State of Virginia wants to blowup our hillsides for open pit uranium mining! Demand all our leaders to stop the insane practice of Mt. Top Removal and uranium mining all over America!

November 7, 2009
By Mary Popham
Special to The Courier-Journal

‘If the American people could witness the destruction I have seen in the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia there would be a revolution in this country,” says Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Mountaintop-removal mining is devastating southern Appalachia, tearing up mountains, burying streams, flattening forests and extinguishing the region's rich culture.”

Kennedy is one of the activists presenting the deplorable, unbelievable story in Plundering Appalachia, an expose of the ruination by the coal companies for maximum profits. This collection reveals the horror with lavish, large-format photographs and comprehensive pieces, many reprinted, from ecologists, environmentalists, educators, writers, community organizers, and residents of the mountain ranges in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee.

In the Foreword, Douglas R. Tompkins says that the “attack on Appalachia speaks to more than coal mining, it reveals us as a society.”

The passionate essays include substantiating information: the history of coal-mining, how mineral rights were stolen, testimony from the residents, accounts of studies that are ignored and laws that have failed to control this outrage. They go beyond describing the effects of getting coal from the ground.

Along with the missing mountaintops, and the falsehood of “reclamation,” we live with the impact of coal's processing and use. Big Coal discards trees and topsoil, whose removal causes flooding.

The fallacy of “clean coal” is proven: toxic wastes from “washing” the coal leach into the rivers and ground waters.

Black water flows from taps. Black dust is always in the air, on furniture and in the lungs of the residents. Black sludge ponds overflow and compromise the water supply. Coal mining-related acid damage has poisoned over 8,000 miles of eastern U.S. streams.

The book also contains significant information on coal as fuel and its effect on global warming — a concern of far more than a region or a country. Nothing in the world produces more greenhouse gases than the burning of coal (much of it to generate electricity). It's easy to see why this may be the greatest threat ever to confront humanity.

Wendell Berry states, “We are destroying our country — I mean our country itself, our land … Somehow we have lost or discarded any controlling sense of the interdependence of the Earth and the human capacity to use it well.”

Lend your voice to the court of public opinion and commit to the immediate cessation of the plundering of Appalachia and our own hometowns beyond.

Mary Popham is a writer and critic who lives in Louisville.

Click Title or Link to whole post:
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091107/FEATURES06/911070310/1010/features

Coal mines will kill Appalachia

Comment:  Yes, demand this country to stop blowing up our Mountains and never consider blowing up our hills for uranium!!
Sharon Baiocco
Albemarle County
Published: November 1, 2009

People from 158 countries united in demand for action to address the global crisis of climate change on the International Day for Climate Action Oct. 24. In Charlottesville an interfaith vigil was held to launch a local movement to end mountaintop removal and decrease U.S. reliance on coal power.

James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, writes in a February op-ed to the Guardian and Observer newspapers (Feb. 15): “Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.” Coal accounts for 39 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the major cause of global warming, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy.

We live on the edge of Appalachia, where nearly 500 of the oldest mountains in the world that shelter one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on earth have been literally decapitated by coal mining. Together, these mountaintop removal sites comprise an area the size of Delaware.

MTR coal mining replaces forests and peaks with wastelands and sludge ponds, pollutes thousands of miles of streams and brings massive environmental damage to mountain communities. Pollution from coal plants produces dirty air, acid rain, contaminated land and water, childhood asthma, birth defects and respiratory diseases that take nearly 25,000 lives each year, according to “Dirty Air, Dirty Power,” a study for the group Clean the Air.

Charlottesville’s electricity comes from five mountaintop removal sites in West Virginia and Kentucky. We Virginians sit at the epicenter of the greatest source of U.S. pollution — coal and coal-fired power plants. The Southeastern states emit twice the pollution from power production as the Northeast, equal to the CO2 emissions of the third largest polluter in the world, Russia and its former satellites, according to treepower.org.

Yet MTR-mined coal provides less than 7 percent of our nation’s electricity, according to calculations from Appalachian Voices, presented Oct. 17 at “A New Energy Future” conference. We could conserve this amount nearly overnight through behavior change, education, responsible legislation and investment in renewable energy.

Urge Congress to enact Senate Bill 696, the Appalachia Restoration Act!

Urge Congrees to enact  House Bill 1310, the Clean Water Protection Act.

Press the Environmental Protection Agency to withhold permits for the 79 mountaintop removal sites now under review. Mountaintop removal is a deep, personal assault on those who love the Blue Ridge. It is ruthless desecration, and it must stop.

http://www2.dailyprogress.com/cdp/news/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article/coal_mines_will_kill_appalachia/48259/

Mountaintop Removal Mining Protests Go National

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 30, 2009
12:18 PM

CONTACT: Rainforest Action Network
Sam Haswell
Communications Director
(415) 659-0519

Mountaintop Removal Mining Protests Go National

Across Country Coalition of Environmental Groups Call for EPA to Stop Recent Blasting on Coal River Mountain, WV; Site of Proposed Wind Farm
More than Fifty Stage Sit-In and Rally at EPA Headquarters in DC

WASHINGTON - October 30 - Hundreds are participating today with Mountain Justice, Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups in nationwide protests demanding an end to mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. As part of the national day of action, 14 people staged a sit-in at the EPA headquarters in Washington, DC.

They were joined by approximately 50 coalfield residents and allies who held a rally in front of the building. Those in attendance represent a coalition of environmental groups and Appalachian community members who are asking the EPA to take immediate action to stop mountaintop removal coal mining. In particular, the group is asking the EPA to intervene in the destruction of Coal River Mountain, WV, the site of a potential 328-megawatt wind farm, which Massey Energy began blasting this week.

While President Obama spent the week touting his administration’s support for clean energy, Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, a national flashpoint in the battle to replace destructive mountaintop removal coal mining practices with clean energy and green jobs.

“The fate of Coal River Mountain and our clean energy future is in the EPA’s hands,” said Kate Rooth of the Rainforest Action Network who took part in the sit-in. “By intervening to stop the blasting of Coal River Mountain and to protect our nation’s clean energy resources, the Obama Administration has a chance to show that it will stand up for the nation’s new energy priorities and green jobs even against persistent dirty coal interests; this is how we protect the economy and the planet.”

In recent months, the EPA has set out a number of new restrictions on mountaintop mining practices, including a recent decision to revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine in West Virginia due to water quality impacts; the first time since the passing of the Clean Water Protection Act that the agency has revoked an already approved mining permit. Environmentalists believe that the urgency of the Coal River Mountain case necessitates that the EPA intervene, and follow the Spruce Mine precedent.

Coal River Mountain gained national notoriety after a study showed that its peaks and ridges have enough wind potential to provide 70,000 households with electricity, support 700 long-term green jobs and give back $1.7 million in annual county taxes.

For more information on the Coal River Mountain wind project:
http://www.coalriverwind.org/?page_id=143.###

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is headquarted in San Francisco, California with offices staff in Tokyo
, Japan, and Edmonton, Canada, plus thousands of volunteer scientists, teachers, parents, students and other concerned citizens around the world. We believe that a sustainable world can be created in our lifetime, and that aggressive action must be taken immediately to leave a safe and secure world for our children.

http://understory.ran.org/2009/10/

Click Title or Link to whole post:
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/10/30-7