On Monday, groups from all over West Virginia and the nation took a bold step towards addressing decades of failure by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to protect the health of the people and our state.

Through a new initiative, the Citizen Action for Real Enforcement Campaign, these groups filed a formal administrative law petition to the Office of Surface Mining to take away the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s authority to regulate mining. Unfortunately this is not a problem unique to West Virginia; across Appalachia, state agencies are failing to properly enforce the law.

Years of lax enforcement of the laws in our state have yielded an unsustainable future for my children and grandchildren, one that they will be paying for with life-changing results. We don’t have time to wait on our state agencies any longer.

Every year there is another flood, another stream dies, another health study comes out showing the devastating effects of unenforced mining law on our communities. We need action and we need it now.

– Debbie Jarrell, Co-Director of Coal River Mountain Watch