This good news is long overdue. Does the pulling of this one permit herald the end of mountain top removal? If it does, the Obama administration will finally have a feather in its cap. I fear they will take the EPA to court and win and the ruinaton of WV will continue where it left off.

Yes, this is a positive development.

But not sufficient to quench my suspicion that the EPA, a component of our corporation-enabling capitalist government in an energy-devouring nation, will only firmly and unequivocally oppose mountaintop removal mining precisely at the point where there are no more mountaintops left to remove.

Jim Hightower for president 2012!!!.... This late EPA decision is welcome. We shall see if it is enforced! Meanwhile, Massey Coal is now Alpha Coal. Half of all Alpha coal is exported to China and India to support their growing economies. Obama has let us all down in so many arenas. We are all still in shock from the past two years of spineless copitulation to big$$$. It is a palpable feeling you get from friends, family and contacts.Well,shake it off, kids! 2012 is next year, and we have to get busy with a truly inclusive 3rd party that can win!I really believe that Jim Hightower could win!!! How about it, all you , disheartened ,disenfranchised and shell shocked activists! I am 55 yrs. old and I think I have one more big push left in me, and I know there are others. We DO NOT call it the Green,Purple,red,or blue party. We are the REFORM Party!!!! We include all real Americans that care about their children, their communities and their rights. Jim,we need a leader, and I truly believe it is you!

JH's commentary is usually doled out in his bi-monthly newsletter, which I subsribe to, and this news is about two weeks old. It was fully reported in articles posted here, the Reader's Digest of the "progresive" community.

There is a publication (with a sister TV broadcast)in WV called The State Journal. When this story first broke I went to TSJ's website and was pleasantly surprised to see comments posted there in response to this chiken little hysteria all supportive of the EPA's decision.

I have, due to the economic malaise, for the last seven months been involved in mapping Marshall Co., WV for one of the major gas producers involved in the Marcellus development. I am required to obtain the permission of the property owners before I can enter their land and must personally interview the owners. I've had many interesting conversations with the wonderful people there, many of whom are deep miners retired from the parent company of our client.

When I tell them whom I'm working for they, almost to a man, say "You don't have to tell me anything about them, I worked for them for (20, 30, 35 yrs) and I know how they operate. I never initiate these negative conversations, as that would be professionally unethical, but I listen and learn. Much has been said on this site about the new gas boom, but until you talk to the people that are being affected by it, you don't get a full sense of just how complicated this really is. When I apologize for the part I'm playing in it they just smile and say "Hell fella, you're just doin' your J O B and there's nothing you can do to stop it anyway."

As fossil fuels go, natural gas is better than coal, but the hydraulic fracturing process should be stopped. If you want to advocate for something advocate for a moratorium and urge your congress critters to demand that the gas industry go back to the drawing table and come up with a new technology and method for freeing the gas from the strata. As I've been told by the good people there, you're not going to stop it, but we can make it less harmful to the surface and ground waters of the gas regions.

Of course the real and final harm of this new energy boom is that it will once more delay us from getting on with the real work of building a sustainable energy infrastructure. This energy source will run out also, and sooner than later. Recent papers I read state the productive life of many of these wells is not much more than five years.

And how about the chilling effect mountaintop removal, coal excavation and coal burning have on the environment and humanity?!

MTR must end. An article I recently read in, of all places, "Trains" magazine, states that we get at most about 10-13% of our nations coal from MTR. What it costs the people of WV in health and their environment isn't worth it. We'll find another way to get our energy; (I may be on my computer right now, but the rest of my house is dark). And many others out there are doing much more every day. Let's all try to "walk the walk" and we can stop MTR.

it is well past the time that we should think like a mountain.

Coal is not a 21st Century fuel. Fine for the 19th Century, pretty bad for the 20th Century... a really bad energy source today.

And when is Obama going to stop pursuing his love affair with that false harlot, "clean coal"?

So much for clean coal, it only exists in the duplicitous imaginations of coal company CEOs.
In 2000, Germany committed to weaning itself off of fossil fuels and nuclear energy in exchange for renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass). The Merkel government has slowed down the phasing out of nuclear power and will not shut down any more nuclear plants for an extended period of time. Denmark, Spain, Austria and other Western European countries have made a huge commitment to renewable energy.
Austria actually enacted legislation in the late 1980s that bans the building of nuclear plants and it derives a very high percentage of its power from renewable energy.

The words "mountain top removal" always sound to me like the dying gasp of desperate fossil fuel madness. A concept so horrible it cannot be parodied. Mountains are sacred things exalted and beautiful and awe inspiring. Some of Mother nature's greatest works.

The first mountain destroyed for coal should have been the last. Mountains are precious. It is impossible to put a price on them.

peak coal.