Sierra Club:
The EPA announced in March its proposal to revoke the mountaintop removal (MTR) permit for Spruce No.1 unless the mine, operated by St. Louis-based Arch Coal, was modified to reduce its environmental impact. According to the EPA's website, "we are concerned that the project could result in unacceptable damage to the aquatic system, particularly to water quality and fish and wildlife resources." The agency said the environmental damage would be irreversible.
"We're looking at this as a test of whether EPA will stand behind what they've been saying," said West Virginia Sierra Club organizer Bill Price, below. "The coal industry has been unable to prove it can do this type of mining without extreme impacts on the environment and the communities nearby."
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"The EPA is here not about our poverty, not about our political corruption, not about our jobs, not about the loss of our jobs, and it's not about shutting you down," said farmer and native West Virginian Sara Cowgill, below. "It's about the reality of the vital importance of clean water. And there is no question whatsoever that MTR mining is environmentally devastating and catastrophic to every community that it touches, extending into the entire state."
You can either be for destroying West Virginia one mountain at a time or you can be for West Virginia.
We can look at the ongoing mega-disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and no one has a solution how to stop it.
Yet too many in West Virginia, including politicians we support for their stance on many other issues like U.S. Rep.Nick Rahall Jr., are in favor of mountaintop removal.
The first speaker at the May 19 hearing in Charleston was West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall. "Pursuing this course would have a chilling effect on the coal industry and the Appalachian region," he said. "It will send a message that investing in coal mining is nothing but a high-risk bet."
There should be a chilling effect on the ongoing environmental disaster that is mountaintop removal.
Because BP's oil spill is ongoing in public view (despite efforts by BP's CEO to limit coverage), people see the environmental disaster.
But the destruction of West Virginia has been permitted for decades and the devastation extends beyond the mountains and into the valleys and the water systems.
Just as deep water drilling is now shown that it is as dangerous as environmentalists warned, environmentalists are sounding the alarm bells on mountaintop removal.
We are poisoning our wells through this practice. We are destroying our state. The mountains are not going to grow back. They are gone forever. |
