It's Time For Mountaintop Removal To Stop

It stopped me in my tracks.

As soon as I glanced up, after we crested the ridge at Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, I gasped.

I had never seen anything like it before.

Where once stood a magnificent, lush and majestic mountain, now laid gravel and dust. A flat and barren landscape. It felt like a punch in the gut, seeing this kind of devastation. After the initial shock and sadness, a deep and guttural anger started to bubble up.

"How dare they," I thought. "Who the hell do they think they are?"

Aerial view of mountaintop removal coal mining in WV. Note the trucks on the right. They are massive in person. But dwarfed by the size of this particular devastating site.

This raping of the Appalachian mountain range is perpetrated by the coal industry.

Three million pounds of explosives are ignited every day, blasting off the tops of those beautiful mountains so that they can get to the coal seams that are imbedded deep inside. The debris is literally dumped in valleys, creating fills where serene hollows used to be. Or it's dumped in surrounding waterways. To date, there are, at a minimum, 1,200 miles of rivers and streams that have been buried from the debris from mountaintop removal. After the coal is washed, the toxic ash slurry is dumped in unlined lagoons, like the one in Harriman Tennessee that overflowed in December 2008. One billion gallons of that sludge spilled over 300 acres. That's the equivalent of 3,000 acres being covered with a foot of that toxic soup. There are 1,300 of these lagoons in this country, seeping toxic chemicals like selenium, arsenic, mercury and lead into the groundwater.

This unlined lagoon is filled with an estimated two billion gallons of toxic ash slurry.

Fifty tons of mercury are spewed into the air every year from coal-fired power plants, poisoning our waterways, our fish and our bodies. Every state in the U.S. has a freshwater fish advisory because of high levels of mercury in the fish. High mercury levels have been linked to a number of permanent neurological development difficulties in newborns, such as autism, ADD, and permanent IQ loss. Adults can experience decreased stress tolerance and an increase in depression from high levels of mercury in their bodies.

The coal industry is not only annihilating one of the most bio-diverse regions in this country, it has debilitated the local communities that surround the Appalachian mountains.

There used to be a flourishing community beside Kayford Mountain. Now there is a ghost town, dotted with the shells of where schools, hospitals, playgrounds and homes used to thrive. Rampant poverty, unemployment and destitution have forced out many people. Only 2% of the people employed by the coal industry around Kayford Mountain come from that community.

Rooftops are blackened by coal dust. Asthma, cancer and premature death are rampant.

Big coal has busted up the unions, impoverished communities, and lined the pockets of state politicians and judges. They have left our nation with high levels of greenhouse gases, poisoned waterways and toxic air.

It's time for this to stop.

It's time for America to move forward by investing in clean energy technologies, industries and jobs.

Call your Senators. Tell them you want climate legislation that will leave dirty fossil fuels behind, and lead us to a cleaner, greener future.

NO MORE COAL.

visit TheDirtyLie.com

 

Comments

[Matt Osborne]

11:25 PM on 10/27/2009

Those mountainto­ps could provide clean, green wind energy FOREVER -- but not if you blow them up first. Massey Energy is literally destroying the energy future of Appalachia to get at the last seams of coal in the cheapest, least-labo­r-intensiv­e way possible. The region is already past peak production­.

But we can stop the practice of mountain removal -- in one fell stroke! -- by passing HR 1310, the Clean Water Restoratio­n Act, which would stop Massey from being able to dump all that toxic fill in the streams and rivers of Appalachia­.

Call your rep, and ask them to cosponsor and/or support HR 1310!

[wonketteRAWKS]

10:44 PM on 10/27/2009

We, at HP, were aware of this back in March.

http://www­.huffingto­npost.com/­jeff-bigge­rs/breakin­g-epa-clea­rs-water_b­_204039.ht­ml

[realpolitic]

03:12 PM on 10/27/2009

We are acting ike a third world economy destroying our natural resources for a quick buck. We only can destroy such a beautiful pristine environmen­t once and then it is unliveable­. Are profits for mining companies worth having an environmen­t that poisons us and looks like a lunar landscape?

[iScan]

06:10 PM on 10/27/2009

I think one problem is that these people are in small communitie­s and don't always have the money and time to put up a decent fight against these coal companies, coal companies that do not reside there so that means they can also ignore the cries of the little people and are not personally affected, cries that are also falling on deaf ears since all the coal company hears is money money money. Its also hard to stop the largest energy producers in the country when a couple hundred miles away you need something to burn to keep times square lit up 24/7...A spectacle that does nothing but waste energy, and unfortunat­ely, it is just one of far too many spectacles in our country that suck the life out of our lesser privelaged brethrens' homelands. I agree, it is quite reckless and disrespect­ful not only to the earth but also to future generation­s.

[FearlessFreep]

02:15 PM on 10/27/2009

And what is the Obama administra­tion doing?

[pinkibus]

07:08 PM on 10/27/2009

fearless - Obama just made a speech at the opening of a new solar generating power station. And he spoke of using smart meters and upgrading the power system. If Americans and their elected representa­tives would stop taking money from corporate powers such as coal and pharmaceut­icals and insurance companies then Obama could get a lot done with no hassle. What have you done to stop the destructio­n of the land. Zero? Still eating meat and still eating food imported across thousands of miles. Still using your drier and so on. Obama can't work alone. He needs the people behind him to do what needs to be done but it is pretty hard to get all the people behind him when they are out trying to find a job and worrying about how they will pay their taxes. These are not worries for the wealthy in America and they don't have problems with mountainto­p removal or people who can't afford drugs or health care.

[FearlessFreep]

12:49 AM on 10/28/2009

I mean, what is Obama doing to actually STOP mountainto­p removal?

[iScan]

02:04 PM on 10/27/2009

I wholeheart­edly agree and thank you for being another voice in this fight. Letters have already been written and will continue to be rewritten by me until this is stopped. I have family in WV with beautiful forests and mountains on their land that I hope is never decimated like this. But I won't wait for it to happen before I do something about it, gotta be progressiv­e. MTM protesting kind of dropped out of the main stream for tha past couple months so I'm glad to see somebody bring it to the front so people can't ignore the senseless acts that are being committed against one of the most beautiful places we have.
MTM=less interior mining jobs(that many locals used to depend on), poisonous wells(that most of those peoples' ancestors dug by hand), bad air, flash floods(you can't replant topsoil and centuries of old growth), food chain collapse(w­hich leads to the beginning of a total local ecosystem collapse). It's just plain bad! I'm with you. Please keep up the fight and keep people's attention on it.