I had the distinct honor of meeting and speaking with Bo Webb, Mountaintop Removal Protester and Activist, outside the EPA offices in Washington DC today.
It was a chilly and overcast day in Washington DC, when environmental activists from Appalachia got out of their cars and vans and started pounding makeshift cemetery grave stones into the lawn of the Environmental Protection Agency lawn.
As a small crowd of Federal Police gathered about 20 yards away, Bo, who’s had his life threatened and was almost run off the road one time while driving his car, told me about his fight to save not only the mountains, but the lives of West Virginians. “It’s essential to stop the mining on Coal River Mountain. Coal River is the proposed site of a potential 328-Megawatt wind farm, which Massey Energy started blasting this week. “
Kate Rooth of RAN said in a press release put out earlier in the day, that “The fate of Coal River Mountain and our clean energy future is in the EPA’s hands. By intervening to stop the blasting and protect our nation’s clean energy resources, the Obama Administration has a chance to show that it will stand up for the nation’s new energy priorities and green jobs even against persistent dirty coal interests; this is how we protect the economy and the planet.”
In recent months, the EPA has set out a number of new restrictions on mountaintop mining practices, including a recent decision to revoke a permit for the Spruce Mine in West Virginia due to water quality impacts; the first time since the passing of the Clean Water Protection Act that the agency has revoked an already approved mining permit. Environmentalists believe that the urgency of the Coal River Mountain case necessitates that the EPA intervene, and follow the Spruce Mine precedent.
Coal River Mountain gained national notoriety after a study showed that its peaks and ridges have enough wind potential to provide 70,000 households with electricity, support 700 long-term green jobs and give back $1.7 million in annual county taxes. Over the objections of the local community, the site has been granted permits for mountaintop removal. Massey Energy began dynamiting peaks this week, which will destroy any hope for the proposed wind farm unless the EPA intervenes.
“Every day, more than 3 million pounds of explosives are detonated in our state to remove our mountains and expose the thin seams of coal beneath,” said Bo. “President Obama, I beg you to re-light our flame of hope and honor and immediately stop the coal companies from blasting so near our homes and endangering our lives. As you have said, we must find another way than blowing off the tops of our mountains. We must end mountaintop removal.”
If the blasting at Coal River Mountain is allowed to continue, mountaintop removal coal mining will endanger hundreds of people living in the valley below, as the project requires blasting dynamite less than 100 yards from the largest coal sludge impoundment in the country. Massey Energy’s own assessment indicates that if the impoundment, an earthen dam, is breached more than eight billion gallons of coal slurry will spill out endangering hundreds of people who would have less than five minutes to evacuate.
Called the worst of the worst coal mining, mountaintop removal decapitates Appalachian peaks, denudes lush forests, and dumps debris into valley streams — destroying or damaging more than a thousand miles of mountain waterways to date.
For more information on the Coal River Mountain wind project:
http://www.coalriverwind.org/?page_id=143
asdasdfasdsd
Related posts:
