Mountaintopremoval

In a reprise of the debate between NRDC's Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Massey Coal CEO Don Blankenship over mountaintop removal coal mining, the Washington newspaper The Hill published dueling pieces by both adversaries in today's edition. 

It is time to save the Appalachians from mountaintop removal coal mining. Music Saves Mountains just may mark the swan song for this horrendous crime against nature and our heritage.

I don't know Chris Chanlett, but I like his style. A self-described farmer and landscaper, he writes in the Charleston Gazette about his unique perspective on the "coal war" being waged in Appalachia.

The Interior Department could -- and should -- have published proposed changes right away and proceeded straight to public input.

Interior doing its job by pledging to crack down on mountaintop removal? That's certainly welcome news. Aye, but there's a rub.

As someone who spent considerable time tracking every good, bad, and ugly environmental action by the Bush administration, I can say without a doubt that things are looking a whole lot brighter under the new regime.

It remains nearly impossible to functionally replace a mountain whose ecological niche was 400 million years in the making.

This misguided boycott is akin to a neighbor refusing your dinner invitation unless you agree to let him burn down your house afterwards.

Lax enforcement by state and federal environmental officials means that the mountaintop removal reclamation rarely results in reshaping the mountain to its approximate original state.

The true test of the administration's new policy toward mountaintop removal is whether rigorous regulatory review will deliver on the promise of greater environmental protection.

Coalfield communities "are weaker than the rest of the state, weaker than the rest of the region, and weaker than the rest of the nation," says West Virginia University researcher Michael Hendryx.

It does not bode well that the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday ruled 6-3 in favor of treating America's waterways like dumps.

Kentuckian Erik Reece postulates an interesting theory about the source of all the unhappiness in Kentucky and Virginia: coal.

More that a million acres of Appalachia already have been flattened and over 1,000 miles of streams have been polluted or destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining.

Mountaintop removal leaves Appalachian peaks leveled and left lifeless by the most devastating and senseless stip mining method ever devised. More like moonscapes than mountains.

Yesterday was a wild ride on the mountaintop removal front, with many people suffering whiplash from EPA's dueling press releases.

According to the following press release issued today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the agency is weighing i...