For nearly a year, we’ve been working to pull back the veil of secrecy that has protected the coal companies that are blowing up the mountains of Appalachia.
And now, thanks to your efforts and support, the debate about the future of mountaintop removal is about to take center stage.
Today, in a major editorial, the New York Times says that “mountaintop [removal] mining cries out for Congressional intervention to define once and for all what mining companies can and cannot do” and highlights the Clean Water Protection Act.
Give the Bush administration credit for persistence. It just won’t let a bad idea die. On Friday, the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining proposed new regulations that it hopes will permanently legalize mountaintop mining – a cheap, ruthlessly efficient, environmentally destructive means of mining coal from the mountains of Appalachia.
By our count, this is the third attempt in the last six years to enshrine the practice by insulating it from legal challenge. But since the net result is likely to be more confusion and more courtroom wrestling, the situation cries out for Congressional intervention to define once and for all what mining companies can and cannot do.
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With that in mind, two members of Congress – Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey and Christopher Shays of Connecticut – introduced a bill last spring that would reaffirm Clean Water Act protections prohibiting mining companies and other industries from dumping solid industrial wastes into the nation’s waters. The bill has already picked up 60 sponsors in its brief life, and the administration’s latest sleight of hand should add more converts to the cause.
Unfortunately, the occasion for the New York Times editorial is a new rule proposed by the Bush administration that would legalize and expand the worst abuses of mountaintop removal.
If adopted, the new Bush regulation would exempt coal companies from a 1983 law that prohibits surface coal mining activities from disturbing areas within 100 feet of streams.
As Vernon Haltom, co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch, told Democracy Now radio, “what this rule change amounts to is a declaration of war against the Appalachian people.”
We’ll be providing you with the tools you need to speak out against this rule when public commenting takes place in the coming weeks.
It’s because of your support so far that the word is getting out that it’s time for mountaintop removal mining to end.
All of this press coverage — and the Bush administration’s wrong-headed rule proposal — mean that in the coming weeks, the fight to stop mountaintop removal coal mining will be in the public’s focus like never before.
In fact, in just the last week, more than 1,000 people have added their voices to iLoveMountains.org and the movement to stop mountaintop removal coal mining.
Submitted by Carole Madan, “Momma Nature”, An evangelical Christian who has been saving native environments for 40 years. www.mommanaturesworld.com
Please forgive us for allowing the desecration of Your holy mountains.
Send a message to our children and grandchildren that we will stop blasting of mountain tops in the name of greed.
Let us be strong in the knowledge that You want us to be active in our prayers, lives, churches, temples and synagogues to bring Light to the dark evil that takes joy in making money from killing what we love.
Our air, water and soil is being killed even as we stand and watch. We will come together as one to speak for the trees, streams and future generations who need our voice.
Thank you for the beauty and magnificence of our natural world. Give all who feel Your love the strength to carry on and let your Angels surround us and keep us protected.
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If you had the opportunity to double your power to end mountaintop removal coal mining, would you take it?
Right now, you can. Between now and September 16th, SixDegrees.org and Hanes are offering up to $10,000 in matching funds to 6 non-profits who receive the largest number of financial contributions.
That means that right now, you can double your contribution to iLoveMountains.org. Every $5 becomes $10, $25 becomes $50, and $100 becomes $200 — but only if you take action.
Can you contribute any amount you can afford today — to double your impact in helping to end mountaintop removal coal mining?
In the 11 months since we launched iLoveMountains.org, people like you have played a critical role in growing the movement to end mountaintop removal coal mining.
To date, more than 21,000 people have joined us on iLoveMountains.org, and tens of thousands more have used Google Earth to witness the devastated remains of more than 470 destroyed mountains in America through the National Memorial for the Mountains.
That awareness has translated into political progress — we now have more support in Congress for the Clean Water Protection Act (which would sharply limit mountaintop removal coal mining) than ever before.
But as successful as the last year has been, we have plans in the next year to bring even more attention to the issue of mountaintop removal coal mining. We’re convinced that Americans would never allow mountains to be destroyed forever for short-term energy needs — they just don’t know what is happening right now in Appalachia.
With your support, we can change that. Your contribution to Appalachian Voices today will go directly to bringing more people to iLoveMountains.org, and will help fund new developments to the website that will show how energy companies across America are contributing to mountaintop removal coal mining.
Please, contribute today. Even a $10 donation puts us on the road to receiving this critical matching grant:
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Rising high above the Coal River Valley in Raleigh County, West Virginia, Coal River Mountain is one of the most beautiful and wild areas left in the coalfields. There has been little surface mining on the mountain to date and no mountaintop removal operations, however, subsidiaries of Massey Energy Company are proposing or planning almost 6,000 acres of surface mining on Coal River Mountain. If permitted this mine would destroy the tallest peaks that have ever been surface mined in West Virginia.
Coal River Mountain has become ground zero in the fight between proponents of large-scale surface mining in Appalachia and community groups working to end mountaintop removal and promote an alternative economic and energy production model in the “Coalfields.”
Coalfield residents who oppose mountaintop removal have long wished that wind energy production could replace the destructive mining practices that are destroying their communities. However, publicly-available maps of wind resources have typically shown little potential for wind development in the coalfields.
Shown in the image to the right are the results of a coarse-scale wind modeling project for 11 counties in Southern conducted by the wind energy consulting firm Windlogics. Typical of other large-scale wind studies, there would appear to be few, if any, economically developable wind sites in the coalfields. Based on this model, there are no peaks or ridges that reach 7 m/s in average wind velocity (class 4 wind site) – a level commonly viewed as the minimum threshold for industrial-scale wind development.
In contrast to the lower resolution model, the high resolution model below, also produced by Windlogics, indicates that the ridges on Coal River Mountain have excellent potential for wind development. The tremendous difference between the results of the two models is due to the highly variable topography of the coalfields – the coarse scale models are more useful for coastal areas and plains, as they average over a large area (low resolution). This means that, in areas like the coalfields, the excellent wind potential on the ridgetops tends to be obscured if it is averaged with the low wind potential of the valleys.
The areas covered by three permits, the applications for two of which have already been received by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, would level more than 5,700 acres of Coal River Mountain, including nearly 3/4 of the area with good to excellent wind potential.
Based on an average capacity factor of 40% for 229 potential sites, estimated by the Windlogics model, a windfarm using the best ridges on the mountain could produce enough electricity to power 91,180 homes.
Given the controversial nature of wind farms elsewhere in Appalachia, the one major coal industry development on the mountain, the Brushy Fork Sludge Impoundment – the largest sludge dam in Appalachia holding back 8.1 billion gallons of coal sludge – provides an interesting contrast from the perspective of the people living below the mountain. Almost anybody would prefer to live near wind turbines than beneath a massive mountaintop removal operation or sludge dam and the local community appears to be far more favorable to a wind proposal than to the proposed mine permits.
After just 18 years, an industrial wind farm would create more jobs (as measured in 1-year increments) than all three proposed surface mines combined and would continue to provide a steady source of employment for local workers indefinitely into the future. In just 86 years, this wind farm would create as much electricity as burning all of the coal that is expected to be produced from the proposed mines.
As of 2003 many nearby mountains had been leveled by mountaintop removal and the last 4 years have brought an accelerated pace of mining. Coal River Mountain is quickly becoming an oasis of wind power potential in a largely flattened area.
In addition to an expansion of the nearby mine sites, here is the future of Coal River Mountain as envisioned by the coal companies. The land disturbance shown on Coal River Mountain is a simulation based on the proposed boundaries of the Bee Tree, Eagle 2 and Eagle 3 permits.
By signing up for iLoveMountains.org, you’ve become an integral part of the movement to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining – and you’ve helped to expose the more than 470 mountains that coal companies have already destroyed in Appalachia.
Today, I want to tell you about a place that is ground zero in the fight to stop mountaintop removal coal mining ? a place called Coal River Mountain.
Located in westernmost Raleigh County, West Virginia, Coal River Mountain is under threat from Massey Energy.
Massey has applied for two mountaintop removal permits, and is considering a third, that would destroy nearly 6,000 acres of Coal River Mountain, effectively decapitating it. They would fill 18 Appalachian valleys with toxic coal mining waste and destroy the tallest peaks ever to be mined in West Virginia.
But a coalition of grassroots organizations, led by Coal River Mountain Watch, have joined together to protect Coal River Mountain – and bring the attention of the nation to the ongoing tragedy that is mountaintop removal coal mining.
You can help. Will you forward this email on to just one person you know, and ask them to add their voice to the more than 20,000 Americans who are standing up to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining?
Simply forward this email right now, or click on this link to send an invite from your personal action page on iLoveMountains.org:
The effort to stop the Coal River Mountain project is gaining momentum at the local level. Just last week, more than 100 local citizens filled the bleachers at a public hearing held by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection at the Clear Fork Elementary School to speak their minds about the massive proposal.
There has never been such a turnout to a public hearing on a mine permit in West Virginia… but even more incredibly, every single citizen who spoke, spoke in opposition to the mine.
There are many reasons that local citizens oppose the mine: it will pollute their drinking water, heighten the risk of local flooding, and destroy the mountains and the beautiful landscape that have been their family home for as many as nine generations.
The mine, too, would destroy the long-term economic future of Coal River Mountain. As many citizens said at the hearing, for just a few years worth of jobs and a few years worth of coal, the mine would wipe out the opportunity to build a wind power facility that could provide long-term jobs and enough power to meet the needs of more than 90,000 homes forever. (Click here to learn more about the alternative wind power facility.)
Yet despite the united – and, at the hearing, unanimous – opposition to the plan to destroy Coal River Mountain, local citizens hold little hope that their testimony alone will stop the mine – because the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has never denied a permit application for a mountaintop removal mine. Never.
That’s why it is absolutely critical that you forward this email on to at least one friend or family member today.
Even though most Americans would never support the destruction of this beautiful mountain and irreplaceable landscape, the people living near Coal River Mountain believe that their mountain will be destroyed because most Americans simply don’t know what’s happening in the hills and hollows of Appalachia.
The power to change that lies in your hands, right now. Please, forward this email to your friends and family, and ask them to join you in standing up to end mountaintop removal coal mining. They can join by clicking here:
August 27th, 2007 – The following email was sent to over 20,000 supporters of iLoveMountains.org. To sign up to receive free email alerts, click here.
By signing up for iLoveMountains.org, you’ve become an integral part of the movement to raise awareness about mountaintop removal coal mining – and you’ve helped to expose the more than 470 mountains that coal companies have already destroyed in Appalachia.