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Mountaintop Mining Fight Heads to Washington
About 140 Appalachian residents traveled to Washington this week to urge Congress to pass the Clean Water Protection Act.
Patrick Dunn of Berea was one of hundreds at a rally in February against mountaintop removal mining. (Courier-Journal) "We want them to restore the Clean Water Act to its original intent and protect it from the president being able to make changes, like the George W. Bush administration did," said Bo Webb, a Naoma resident who met with Obama administration officials and members of Congress Monday and Tuesday.
Environmental groups and coalfield residents say mountaintop mining is dangerous for those living near it and is harmful to the environment.
"We want them to eliminate valley fills and block new mountaintop removal mining permits," Webb said.
Webb says more than 100 permits are pending at the Army Corps of Engineers office in Huntington that would bury more than 200 miles of streams in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
"Coalfield residents are telling Congress and the Obama administration how this type of mining is affecting their lives on a daily basis," said Lorelei Scarbro, a Rock Creek resident living in the shadow of Coal River Mountain.
There are currently four strip mining permits out for Coal River Mountain that will level 6,600 acres and lead to the construction of 18 valley fills, according to Scarbro.
"We have asked them to give particular attention and consideration to Coal River Mountain and the sludge impoundment and coal silo that is dangerously close to Marsh Fork Elementary School," Webb added.
Massey Energy was granted a five-year permit for a silo, now up for renewal, located close to the school.
The lobbying activities take place each year, but the environmental groups and coalfield residents say now is the time to make a push for change.
"We got a different feel on Capitol Hill this time," Scarbro said. "With a different administration, we see the possibility for change now."
All of this comes a month after a federal appeals court struck down the latest in a series of court rulings aimed at tougher oversight of mountaintop removal permitting by the Corps of Engineers.
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4 Comments so far
Show AllSo besides solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal, what else to replace coal with? First, let's cut down the demand and reward those other renewable energies. Protesting in Washington against coal is just plain moot at this point. Besides, the state is overwhelmingly conservative and strongly pro-coal just like my state of Oklahoma is staunchly pro-oil-drilling and conservative. Sad but true.
I live in Western Pennsylvania. The Marcellus Shale gas drilling boom is on and big-rig drilling companies are sprouting up everywhere. At least the hills hide the rigs themselves pretty well. We are not looking forward to all the Oklahoma and Texas oil-field trash that will be moving in, burdening our law-enforcement budgets. Our state DEP is umprepared and is probably getting bamboozled. As a result, they may also rendering most of Pittsburgh's drinking water supply unusable with their brine-dumping in the rivers, while few of the resulting jobs go to Pennsylvanians.
---USAn---
Actually, "Friend of Coal" billboards and bumper stickers notwithstanding, the pro-coal attitude in West Virginia may not be as strong Peter Pike implies, and among those, the moutaintop removal method is not very popular. Some points about MTR that are never made by it's proponents, which it's opponents SHOULD be making (rather than incessantly carrying on about that silo and the coal waste impoundments):
1. For all it's impacts, MTR represients a relatively small amount of the states coal production. Statistics don't break down mining by this method, but assuming it is about half of all surface mining, it would be about 20% of WV's coal production.
2. The other 20% of surface mining uses lower-impact methods like contour strip mining combined with remote-control underground machines called "highwall miners" that burrow into the seam uncovered by the highwall. This mining method entails restoring the slopes to approximate original contours and does not fill stream valleys to a significant extent.
3. The majority of production is unuderground methods (60%) and this is increasing. This mining method provides most of the good-paying mining jobs.
4. Probably about 60% of the reserves mined by MTR could be mined using highwall miners or other developing technologies. The would be less profitable, but probably not unprofitable in most cases.
To summarize, even if MTR was banned, there is still plenty of coal to be mined, the big coal operators would still do well, and most of the coal mining jobs would remain.
Of course the coal companies will scream. Let them. Corporations scream over every new regulation, then they accept them, then a few years later they even have the gall to claim that environmental, workplace, and consumer safety was their idea to begin with!
I work for MSHA, and a supervisory person down there, who'se family originally settled his home county said this:
"50 years from now, we will look around and ask: 'what were we thinking'"
---USAn---
WVa. alone has lost 500,000 residents from a 2.3 million population.But what Peter Pike posits is plain BS.Many mining families have fought MTR from the very start and most people in the state oppose it.Plus many WVa. natives living elsewhere are increasingly militant,and as powerful as Peabody,Massey,et.al. appear to be-they've gone way beyond the Pale-there WILL be actions against their rapacity.
Montani Semper Liberi