Archive for July, 2016
The Army Corps of Engineers is issuing a renewal of existing nationwide permits, which are general permits that allow the placement of fill material in public waterways under the Clean Water Act. Nationwide permit 21 covers coal mining activities in public waterways. In 2012, the Corps greatly improved NWP 21 by disallowing its use for mines that used destructive valley filling. The new 2017 permit maintains an exclusion of valley filling and has several other opportunities for better protecting public waterways.
Submit your comments on Nationwide Permit 21 to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Nationwide permit 21 can be strengthened by reducing the extent of streams which can be impacted. Currently NWP 21 allows 300 feet of stream be lost due to mining activity. Even more stream can be buried if authorized by the Corps. The current restrictions should be strengthened so that fewer streams are lost due to mining. Our headwater streams are too important to lose.
Tell the Corps to provide the strongest protection possible to our rivers and streams
Comments are due by Monday, August 1st.
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The federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is finally taking steps to limit self bonding — and we need you to speak up today to make sure the regulations are as strong as possible.
Bonding is the process by which coal companies provide financial assurance that they will reclaim the land they have damaged by mining. Currently, weak and inconsistent laws surrounding this practice put the public at risk of having to pick up the tab for the immense destruction of mountaintop removal and other damaging coal mining practices, while the coal industry keeps the profits.
Tomorrow is the last day to submit comments; please speak up today to protect our communities from the outrageous practice of self bonding.
The most irresponsible approach is called self bonding; when a coal company simply promises it will reclaim our land after mining. And if the company can’t clean up its mess? Then the taxpayer is left with the enormous burden of cleaning up the mess. Companies must be forced to set aside bonds for the full cost of reclamation.
The coal industry is laughing all the way to the bank, and we’re left with dirty water and unstable lands.
Can you help us hold companies responsible to clean up their mess? Let’s get rid of self bonding and demand full-cost bonding!
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Coal River Mountain is being threatened by a new mountaintop removal permit that would destroy 561 acres of this beautiful West Virginia community.
We need you to sign our petition to protect this mountain and the communities that depend on it from destruction.
Alpha Natural Resources — the company that is proposing to mine the land — is currently in bankruptcy, making it an especially dangerous and untrustworthy actor in the region. A company that cannot keep its commitments to workers’ health, pensions, and to the land it has already destroyed must not be permitted to conduct this especially destructive and unsafe form of coal mining.
The community around Coal River Mountain has already lost thousands of acres to mountaintop removal. This has created increased rates of cancer, heart disease, birth defects, and other deadly illnesses, as well as serious economic issues in the Coal River Valley.
A new permit will further endanger and impoverish surrounding communities and take away from the potential to rebuild in the area to create a brighter future.
Speak up today to tell the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection that mountaintop removal coal mining is unacceptable on Coal River Mountain.
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