Nothing Conservative About Mountaintop Removal, Says Republican For Environment

Nothing could be more destructive of those conservative values than mountaintop removal coal mining. The high explosives and draglines that are gouging an alien topography onto West Virginia and neighboring states also are butchering old ways of life in the mountains.

The Bush administration has proposed a rule that would exacerbate the damage by easing stream buffering requirements. Since those requirements are largely honored in the breach, the rule would legitimize what has been going on anyway.

Check out a slideshow of mountaintop removal mining below, or continue on to the full story.

• • • • • • • • Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia changes the landscape forever.

Comments

[AZ4thatone]

GWB has no conscience.

[Angela Chen Shui]

Clean coal. With Earth blood caked and drained. So pro-life.

I hope this will be on top 201 list of things to rapidly overturn come January 20th, 2009, if Bush/Cheney nature/life haters get it through before then.

[boophus]

The federal government gives out permits for ridiculous low fees to create jobs in the short term. Many people feel that that is fine because they don't live in the future, they live in the NOW. The problem is that if we are short sighted we end up burdening our children whom we feed today with huge costs not only in clean-up but also in health issues.

I live in Oregon where the government gave a mining company the rights to mine the mountains just southeast of Eugene, the third largest city in Oregon. That closed mine is now poisoning ground and surface water. It is considered a major superfund site.

Who will pay to fix it and will the Fix be as bad as the problem it fixes? This is going on all over the west too. Jared Diamond wrote about the issue in Collapse. I remember an interesting PBS program that looked at the causes of the end of the precolumbian empire. I vaguely remember that a study of bones revealed a huge increase of genetic and nutritional defects caused by thier over use of thier environment. I have no wish to go back to a third world lifestyle but I think we have to learn to self-discipline ourselves not to consume just because we can. Otherwise intelligent or not we are no different than a swarm of locusts.

[elizaconnors]

I work with Toxic Release Inventory data every day and my knowledge makes it hard for me to stand up straight some days. Some individual facilities (not companies, facilities) dump, legally, 500,000 tons of waste from these operations into the land every year. For free! That doesn't include what they pump into the air and water. This must be stopped.

[wildervine]

Bill Moyers just did a story on this on PBS. There is legislation pending that will remove whatever small restraint left on coal mining dumping- in other words, if this legislation passes, the coal companies will be free to dump whenever, where ever they wish: into streams, rivers, valleys, you name it. This easing of the coal waste regulations comes courtesy of the Bush Administration as a kind of farewell favor to his buddies in the coal industry. There are about 25 days left for citizens to voice their disapproval on this relaxation of the regulations. I've already left a comment about my strong opposition. You can go to the Interior Dept.'s website and look up pending legislatio­n/regulati­on.

[TrooAmerican]

I have read that the law Bush Repealed to help the mining industry were affecting environmental issues that corresponded to strip mining and environmental damage from mining just as this article discusses.
They stated that just during the Bush administration mining in the appalachians has permanently destroyed over 700 natural streams from dumping mining waste such as "removing mountain tops"
both destroying habitat, sports fishing, enjoyment, fish species, as well as polluting the ground water with numerous acids and chemical byproducts of mining.

Theres Nothing conservative about today's republican party.
Nothing.

[Tamoomoo]

This is disgusting!

[Beowolf741]

What a monument to the future generations to see.

[Kimsue]

Even since I read an article about this in Vanity Fair, I have wondered why more attention isn't being paid to this outrageous destruction of one of the most beautiful parts of our country. The Bush administration has disassembled even the most basic regulations for their cronies that are ra ping the land. Byproducts of this procedure are being dumped everywhere, with no regard for safety, some of it right next to schoolyards.

Also, isn't there some bunch of ex-Enron wheeler dealers who, with government secured loans, are working on converting coal to gasoline (in Wyoming I believe...how convenient)? We need to get off fossil fuels and we need to do it now! We need to stop destroying our planet and find a way to work with it to produce the energy that we require.

[DosaHut]

It's too late for the environment to enter the picture.That was Al Gore's platform. Now the economy takes precedence. In fact, the economy is so all-consuming, that the GOP hasn't been able to focus on their anti-gay agenda, which is often at the forefront.

This is a black spot on our country. Well, today, McCain went on about how the the environment isn't important, and 'blah blah blah." That's what he said, and his supporters cheered.

[StringOfLights]

Mountaintop removal is nothing new, but hopefully this hammers home the point: there is no such thing as clean coal! It's NOT strip mining, and some laws banning strip mining contained loopholes that made it easier to get permits for mountaintop removal. It's destroyed towns and killed people (shearing up to 1,000 ft off mountains and filling in adjoining valleys can cause massive floods). People who had everything vested in their land have seen property values plummet.

Bottom line: it doesn't matter how cleanly you burn the coal if you blew up a mountain to get it.

[EndangeredJackalope]

I can't be sure, but I think I remember seeing West Va's Robert Byrd talking-down wind turbines in WVA, because they ruin the skyline.. what an ***hole.

The arguments for mountaintop removal as a job source are absurd.. you get at least 5x the jobs out of traditional coal mining - and the companies want coat, its not like they'll walk away from the sites. While Appalachia's congressional offices are still held by strong senior Senators, they should make a mining pact to reduce mountaintop removal, so that the mining/jobs don't just flock to the lest regulated state.

[BlackbirdHighway]

As bad as nuclear is, it is still 1000 times better than coal. Wind and solar even better yet. Geo-thermal, tides, natural gas - there are plenty of alternatives out there, yet we are still building NEW coal plants when we should be closing old ones.

So wrong, so wrong.

[indi1216]

That is why O bama has been reluctant to state that he suppports Clean Coal has part of his alternative fuel plan...I am pretty sure he knows about this and so does B iden, as he has said he does not support clean coal.

[Sandi7552]

Herein lies our major malfunction. They tell WV and KY 'let us rape your land, leave you with lasting scars and forever change the topography in exchange for some good paying jobs FOR A WHILE. It is a Faustian bargain and the rest of America is ok with it because it is NIMBY. All these conservative, right wing zealots that use religion as a cudgle will surely have much to answer for one day. It is similar to the ANWR situation. Drill, dig, blast, remove, even ruin rather than find a new solution and invest in the ingenuity and greener solutions. Shame on us!

[Gasparilla]

True, but West Virginia, and Kentucky especially, have been voting republican. They know who they're voting for.

[botanycreek]

Not all of us in WV are voting Republican

[johnniec]

I wish someone would show this to Obama. His stance on clean coal is the main thing I dislike about him. Everyone here should also know that the EPA is considering changing the way they measure coal plant emissions in such a way that it will make plants that burn more coal in a day than they do now look cleaner even though they'd be releasing even more pollution. Yikes. More shame on Bush. How does he live with himself?