If you love WV, call your congresscritters to insist they pass S.696 The AppalachiaRestoration Act!

by: One Citizen

Wed Jun 24, 2009 at 16:49:50 PM EDT

does not ban other methods of coal mining, but instead would prevent this particular type of coal mining.

Earlier this year, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Water and Wildlife Subcommittee Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland), introduced the AppalachiaRestoration Act [S.696} with this statememnt

"Mountaintop mining is one of the most destructive practices that already has destroyed some of America's most beautiful and ecologically significant regions,"

Senator Cardin has scheduled an open committee hearing for S. 696 on Thursday, June 25, so a call to your Congrescritter's offices would help rid us of this scourge on the State and citizens of West Virginia. Senator Cardin is also quoted as having said

"We must put an end to this mining method that has buried more than a thousand miles of streams."

According to the State Journal, Senator Rockefeller apparently doesn't understand that surface mining has not only been destructive to our ecology, it has been thoroughly devastating to our economy, actually robbing West Virginia of jobs.

Rebecca Gale, press secretary for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said in a news release the senator is reviewing the legislation to make sure it doesn't threaten surface mining jobs in the state.

"Senator Rockefeller is committed to finding ways to minimize any environmental impacts from surface mining and he believes we must do this in a way that protects jobs and our local economies ... ," Gale said

I'm so old that I remember that when Senator Rockefeller first came to West Virginia as an antipoverty worker he was against surface mining.