Coal mining companies in Appalachia want to use your tax dollars to help finance new mountaintop removal mines. They’ve worked out a sneaky plan: use $2.4 billion of Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Highway funds to build The Coalfields Expressway, a 50-mile strip mine masquerading as a highway project, through rural Southwest Virginia. Coal companies will use mountaintop removal mining to flatten the area and make way for the road while they keep the profits from the coal they extract.

Construction of The Coalfields Expressway will not serve the public — the route was drafted by Alpha Natural Resources to maximize access to coal reserves, not public utility. It bypasses local communities and threatens to remove the through traffic that local businesses depend on. The Expressway will bury at least 12 miles of streams and condemn hundreds of acres of land. All the while, under the cover of the Virginia DOT, Alpha will be able to avoid basic mining regulations meant to protect Appalachian streams and downstream communities.

Appalachian residents have suffered enough at the hands of Big Coal. The Coalfields Expressway will only bring more polluted water and destruction.

Please send a comment to the Virginia Department of Transportation telling them that a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement should be completed to assess the impacts before moving ahead with The Coalfields Expressway.