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Mountain Top Removal Action Alert
Joan Linville (from Van, West Virginia), Danny Dolinger (Appalachian Treasures Field Organizer), & the Rev. Sandy Strauss with the Pennsylvania Council of Churches met with the editorial board of "The Patriot News" in Harrisburg last Monday, as part of that week of Appalachian Treasures presentations. "The Patriot News" is the biggest newspaper in Pennsylvania's state capitol.
Their incredibly strong editorial was published today and is pasted below -- I think the message from Joan, Danny & Sandy got through! Here's a quote:
"Such environmental destruction as this [mountaintop removal]-- and we've barely touched on its full ramifications -- should not be allowed in the United States of America. Indeed, it should not be allowed anywhere on this planet where there exists an ounce of respect for the land or even a modest concern for the people who call it home. This type of mining needs to be stopped in its tracks. And only Congress can do that."
The editorial then calls on members of Congress to support the Clean Water Protection Act. We encourage you to send a copy of the editorial to your Congressional Representatives along with a letter requesting their support for the Clean Water Protection Act, especially if you're from Pennsylvania. Even if you've already written to your Representative, this editorial gives you a great chance to get back in touch with them.
You can also set up your own editorial board visit, or write a guest editorial or letter to the editor. If I can help you with that in any way, please contact me at apptreasures@appvoices.org, or call toll free: 877-APP-VOICE.
More info on the bill is here: http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=31471667&u=287023
To support the Appalachian Treasures project, click here: http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=31471667&u=287024
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The Patriot News
Editorial
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
PEAK OUTRAGE
Mountaintop removal mining is an abomination that would be an outrage in a Third World country. Amazingly, it has become mining as usual in parts of West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Literally removing the tops of mountains to get at the coal seams below, filling in valleys and streams in the process, is environmental destruction at the extreme. And it's a financial and health disaster for the people living nearby. The practice should be outlawed.
First they cut down the trees -- in West Virginia alone, 300,000 acres of hard woods, once home to deer, bear, migrating songbirds and other creatures. The topsoil is then removed and blasting begins to clear the covering rock until the coal seams are exposed. The fill is dumped into adjacent valleys, in some places to a depth of 600 feet. More than a thousand miles of West Virginia streams have been destroyed in this manner, covered over with rocky debris that in the process exposes a veritable stew of toxic chemicals that gets in the air and the water. Locals complain of explosions 10 to 100 times as powerful as the bomb that destroyed the Oklahoma City federal building that routinely shake the surroundings, of wells rendered dry or undrinkable. They speak of neighbors getting sick and dying in numbers too significant to be mere coincidence. They face a menace on local highways in the form of huge coal trucks taking a deadly toll on the region's winding, narrow roads. Whole communities are losing their lifeblood.
And by the time the coal companies are finished, residents clearly fear that entire counties will be reduced to a moonscape existence, the jobs gone and the beauty of Appalachia extinguished across vast tracts, as well. All to extract coal a little faster and a little cheaper, federal and state regulators have turned a blind eye to the rape of the central Appalachian landscape. What took 100 million years to create, home to some Mountaineer folk for more than 200 years, is being changed forever with little or no benefit to local citizens. Jobs are fewer because destroying a mountain from the top down is less labor intensive than going into the mountain and bringing the coal out in the traditional manner.
And the five or so south-central West Virginia counties where mountain top removal mining is concentrated are among the poorest in a poor state badly served by its government and the business interests that have long exploited it. Such environmental destruction as this -- and we've barely touched on its full ramifications -- should not be allowed in the United States of America. Indeed, it should not be allowed anywhere on this planet where there exists an ounce of respect for the land or even a modest concern for the people who call it home. This type of mining needs to be stopped in its tracks. And only Congress can do that.
Legislation introduced by U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., and Christopher Shays, R-Conn., called the Clean Water Protection Act, would prohibit the burial of waterways and thus stop mountaintop removal mining. We urge our local congressmen to actively support this legislation and help end what could very well rank as the worst defilement of the environment to be found anywhere in the country.
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=31471667&u=287025
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