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Thought folks might find this interested– apparently every political official in WV is not so into this (From Greenlines, a project of Defenders of Wildlife) "LIPSTICK ON A CORPSE": The Washington Post reported 8/31 on the coal- mining practice of mountaintop removal in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Although the US EPA recently froze a permit for one of the massive mining efforts, critics claim the government has been slow to react. EPA estimates over 450 miles of streams have been filled by the practice. WV Secretary of State Ken Hechler said of efforts to reclaim mountaintop removal sites: "It’s like putting lipstick on a corpse. You can’t replace a mountain."
Dr. P, A careful reading of the Washington Post article will show that Ken Hechler’s background and position on this issue were well covered. Excerpts follow: Critics partly blame the federal government. Although the Environmental Protection Agency recently moved to freeze the permit of a mammoth mine, the chief U.S. coal mine enforcer has been slow to react to West Virginia’s changing skyline, opponents charge. A review now underway at the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is expected to yield recommendations for tightening the rules on mountaintop removal, top agency officials said last week. That’s not soon enough for Ken Hechler, West Virginia’s independently elected secretary of state and an outspoken critic of the mining industry and its overseers. At a rally last month, he premiered his revision of the John Denver hit, "Take Me Home, Country Roads," the one that proclaims West Virginia to be "almost heaven." "Almost level, West Virginia," Hechler sang. "Sheared-off mountains dumped into our rivers. Dark and dusty, blasting to the sky. Murdering our mountains, teardrops in our eyes." <SNIP Arch Coal’s Todd said company studies have shown that there is "no long-term impact" to water quality or wildlife from mountaintop mining. He calls on critics to "take the visual test," judging the projects by how they appear afterward. "We have people visit our reclaimed sites who oppose mountaintop mining and they ask us when the mining is going to start." But industry critics provide a long list of problems, starting with the debasing of mountains many West Virginians hold sacred. "It’s like putting lipstick on a corpse," Hechler, the secretary of state, said of reclaimed mines. "You can’t replace a mountain. And you can’t build a Walmart if there aren’t any people left."
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I realized my mistake after posting– sorry. However, it is a nice summary! Chuck
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Yeah, it’s a lot of money. I don’t expect he’ll respond to our emails concerning the matter either. Future looks bleak for WV!
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Does anyone else find this an *astounding* amount of money? As industry critics frequently point out, Republican Gov. Cecil H. Underwood is a former coal company executive, and so is Michael Miano, his choice to head the state’s Division of Environmental Protection, the agency with primary responsibility for policing coal mines. Coal interests contributed $500,000 to Underwood’s election campaign two years ago, and backed scores of other successful candidates for state and federal office.
I thought the article was a real nice post. Like I was saying before, when the price of oil starts ticking slightly upwards slightly in 10 years or so, or if the mideast gets really messy (what with everyone trying to buy or build the Bomb), you will see pressure for an orgy of strip mining that will make these guys look like volunteers from Green Peace. Gregg
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Thought folks might find this interested– apparently every political official in WV is not so into this (From Greenlines, a project of Defenders of Wildlife) "LIPSTICK ON A CORPSE": The Washington Post reported 8/31 on the coal- mining practice of mountaintop removal in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Although the US EPA recently froze a permit for one of the massive mining efforts, critics claim the government has been slow to react. EPA estimates over 450 miles of streams have been filled by the practice. WV Secretary of State Ken Hechler said of efforts to reclaim mountaintop removal sites: "It’s like putting lipstick on a corpse. You can’t replace a mountain."
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Does anyone else find this an *astounding* amount of money? As industry critics frequently point out, Republican Gov. Cecil H. Underwood is a former coal company executive, and so is Michael Miano, his choice to head the state’s Division of Environmental Protection, the agency with primary responsibility for policing coal mines. Coal interests contributed $500,000 to Underwood’s election campaign two years ago, and backed scores of other successful candidates for state and federal office.
- Mothra (aka Kathy Streletzky) "The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, . . . Where waterfalls around it leap forever," – Percy Bysshe Shelley
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‘Mountaintop Removal’ Shakes Coal State — Cost of Prosperity Hits Close to Home By Joby Warrick Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 31, 1998; Page A01 KAYFORD, W.Va.- It took millions of years to build the rolling green mountain behind Larry Gibson’s house. It took a few weeks and a crew of about 20 to tear it down. First to go was the rocky crest, neatly decapitated one morning in a staccato of computer-synchronized blasts that shook the ground and turned the sky gray with dust. The rest was sheared away in 100-foot segments, like layers of a birthday cake, until most of the mountain was gone. Now surrounding mountaintops are falling, each blasted into rubble to expose seams of coal buried inside. Gibson, who a year ago could stand in his family’s hilltop cemetery and gaze up at higher peaks, climbed the same hill recently to look down on a new valley of flattened stumps. "God created these mountains," the 53-year-old ex-miner muttered. "Only God should be able to take them away." Perhaps so, but in West Virginia these days the fate of the hills lies with coal companies and a practice known as mountaintop removal, a muscled-up form of strip mining that lops off entire peaks to recover the coal. Driven by increasing demand and ever-larger machines, the state’s coal industry is embracing this controversial technology to stay competitive with cheaper coal imports from the West and overseas. In two decades, with the state’s approval, miners have shorn away dozens of mountaintops and combined with strip mining have altered an area larger than Fairfax County. Last year alone, the state granted permits for 20 new projects covering 20 square miles. Environmentalists estimate that as many as half the peaks in the state’s southern coal region could disappear in two decades. Meanwhile, more than 450 miles of stream beds have been buried beneath mounds of rubble that are deposited in valleys and hollows. Defenders of the practice say it’s not as bad as it looks. The coal industry contends that mountaintop removal is essential to keep mines running and miners employed in this heavily coal-dependent state. And while surface mines are never pretty, the industry spends millions of dollars to rehabilitate the land, sometimes cleaning up abandoned strip mines in the process. "We’re committed to protecting the environment and respecting West Virginia’s mountain heritage," said David Todd, a spokesman and vice president of Arch Coal Inc., the nation’s largest coal company. A succession of West Virginia governors and environmental regulators — some of them former coal company executives — also have defended the practice. The state’s economic development office argues that leveling mountains creates not just jobs but new commercial space, perfect for golf courses or shopping malls. "There’s a great need in West Virginia for flat land," state Development Office deputy director Dana Davis told local reporters during a tour of one of the sites. But opponents, including citizens groups and environmentalists, accuse the industry and its government allies of bartering away the state’s birthright. Not only are priceless mountains and streams wasting away, they contend, so are dozens of Appalachian communities that are being bulldozed to make room for the mines. Critics partly blame the federal government. Although the Environmental Protection Agency recently moved to freeze the permit of a mammoth mine, the chief U.S. coal mine enforcer has been slow to react to West Virginia’s changing skyline, opponents charge. A review now underway at the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM) is expected to yield recommendations for tightening the rules on mountaintop removal, top agency officials said last week. That’s not soon enough for Ken Hechler, West Virginia’s independently elected secretary of state and an outspoken critic of the mining industry and its overseers. At a rally last month, he premiered his revision of the John Denver hit, "Take Me Home, Country Roads," the one that proclaims West Virginia to be "almost heaven." "Almost level, West Virginia," Hechler sang. "Sheared-off mountains dumped into our rivers. Dark and dusty, blasting to the sky. Murdering our mountains, teardrops in our eyes." ‘Blue Sky Turns Dark’ Even when viewed from the air, the downsizing of West Virginia’s southern highlands is astonishing in its scale. The biggest mountaintop projects encompass thousands of acres and multiple peaks, which are first stripped of trees and then gashed open in a demolition that turns verdant hills into a moonscape of rock and dirt. Brobdingnagian machines, called draglines, scoop boulders into buckets big enough to hold two dozen Ford Escorts. Giant drilling rigs punch rows of holes deep into the rock for blasting. The explosions are carefully timed to not only pry loose the overlying rocks but to project them down the mountain side for disposal. Blasts many times more powerful than 1995 Oklahoma City bombing kick up dust clouds and rattle buildings and nerves. "When you start feeling the ground shivering you’d better hold on to something," said Gibson, a coal miner’s son who has seen an entire ridge disappear behind his family’s property in Kayford. "The pretty blue sky turns dark, and the next thing you hear is the rocks flying through the trees." What remains after the blasting are the naked seams of coal, free of the rocky "overburden" and ready for loading into trucks. In West Virginia, each of the biggest projects can yield more than $1 billion worth of high-quality coal, the fuel that produced 57 percent of the electricity used by Americans last year. This is coal mining at its most efficient, and it’s hardly new. Mountaintop removal has been around since the 1970s, not just in West Virginia but in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. Traditionally, coal was chipped from the walls of underground mines or scraped from mountainside strip mines called high walls, a practice that today is tightly regulated. But occasionally companies would shear off a mountain peak to take in a fat seam, a practice that is explicitly permitted under federal mining laws. New technology and changing market conditions gave mountaintop removal new appeal in 1990s, and nowhere more so than in West Virginia. Although the state’s coal is considered some of the nation’s finest -packing 50 percent more energy per pound but far less smog-causing sulfur than comparable reserves in the West — it is also difficult to get to. The bulk of it lies in narrow seams, hidden inside steep mountains already honeycombed with shafts from a century of mining. Mountaintop removal has given West Virginia mines a way to improve their efficiency and stave off competitive threats from western states and alternative fuel sources such as natural gas. It has also helped smaller, traditional mines to stay in business. "Right now, the market would not support the old kinds of extraction," one industry spokesman said. But not even the coal companies could have predicted that mountain mines would grow so quickly or provoke such controversy. In three years, the total acreage of mountaintop removal permitted by the states has increased from 1,000 acres to 12,000. And bigger mines mean more blasting, more rubble, and bigger potential threats to rivers and streams. "The magnitude of these things is just amazing," said W. Michael McCabe, the regional EPA chief who has pressed for a federal review of the environmental consequences. "When you consider how many miles of streams have been already been filled — more than 450 — this is clearly something we’ve got to address." The coal industry contends it is been a careful steward of the state’s natural resources. West Virginia mining companies have received multiple awards from the federal government for "reclaiming" or rehabilitating mine sites. On mountaintop projects, the flattened hills are re-contoured into gently rolling slopes and seeded with grass and shrubs. Some sport man-made ponds to attract wildlife. While some stream beds are being filled, others are being cleared of acid drainage from old abandoned mines, industry officials said. Arch Coal’s Todd said company studies have shown that there is "no long-term impact" to water quality or wildlife from mountaintop mining. He calls on critics to "take the visual test," judging the projects by how they appear afterward. "We have people visit our reclaimed sites who oppose mountaintop mining and they ask us when the mining is going to start." But industry critics provide a long list of problems, starting with the debasing of mountains many West Virginians hold sacred. "It’s like putting lipstick on a corpse," Hechler, the secretary of state, said of reclaimed mines. "You can’t replace a mountain. And you can’t build a Walmart if there aren’t any people left." Organized Opposition Hechler is a snowy-haired populist with thick black spectacles and a passion for taking on the coal companies and their political allies. A veteran of the 1960s revolution that brought improved safety and health standards to the coal fields, he believes reform must again come from the hollows. "Thirty years ago it took a wildcat strike by the miners before somethingfinally happened," he said. Such broadly organized opposition has not yet materialized, but there are signs of a growing backlash against mountain removal. Rallies against the mines are attracting hundreds of people in small towns where coal continues to be the chief employer. Opponents are motivated by a variety of collateral effects, including the dried-up wells, choking dust and cracked plaster from blasting. Still others are distressed by the slow death of coal towns that are in the path of the mines. Scores of homes near mine sites have been purchased by coal companies, which find it cheaper to demolish the houses than contend with complaints. Longtime residents who agreed to sell cited … read more »