The Environmental Protection Agency has once again caved to coal company interests by approving the Hobet 45 permit, offering a way to approve the Spruce Mine permit and continue to ignore the irrefutable science.
A three-mile reduction in buried streams is no excuse to continue burying streams, blowing up mountains and destroying communities. This is especially true when the Environmental Protection Agency has said it won’t be holding Patriot Coal accountable if they are found to be polluting the water. This looks more like a dog and pony show than a regulatory agency doing its job. This site has already devastated over 25 square miles, Mud River is already on the brink of a toxic event due to selenium discharges, the legislature just extended the deadline–again–for coming into compliance on selenium discharges and EPA is going to let it grow.
On top of it all, EPA is reversing course on its veto of the Spruce Mine permit, the largest single strip mine permit in West Virginia. EPA said it wants to find a way forward, but that won’t happen as long as they’re stuck in reverse.
This is completely unacceptable and a smack in the face to communities sick of living with explosions, dust and poisoned water. All this is more stark against the study coming out tomorrow in the journal Science, according to which “analysis of current peer-reviewed studies and of new water-quality data from WV streams revealed serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address. Published studies also show a high potential for human health impacts.”
From the same study, which received no external funding, “Current mitigation strategies are meant to compensate for lost stream habitat and functions but do not; water-quality degradation caused by mining activities is neither prevented nor corrected during reclamation or mitigation.”
And more, “The scientific evidence of the severe environmental and human impacts from mountaintop removal is strong and irrefutable. Its impacts are pervasive and long lasting and there is no evidence that any mitigation practices successfully reverse the damage it causes.”
The science is undeniable: the only right thing to do is abolish strip mining and diversify West Virginia’s economy. Climate Ground Zero will continue to challenge the power that allows this madness to continue, until it’s abolished.
5 letters, figure it out.
A quick google search reveals those participating in said study, very agenda driven and by no means “impartial”. Oh, and by the way, it seems the folks at C G Z feel the same strong need as Ken at coal tatoo to say who “didn’t” fund the study, but the question at hand is……Who did fund the study?
Watcher as usual you completely miss the point.
You make the distractive offer of context over content.
It doesn’t matter if Samuel Clemens wrote it, the content remains the same.
Ater over 100 years of rape and pillage by King coal,
soon he will leave forever.
Watersheds wells and rivers ruined.
MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF TOXIC SLUDGE
left behind dams that could easily be compromised by a tropical storm.
The King won’t care, he’ll be gone.
Finally.
But King coals legacy of destruction will remain for thousands of years.
Desertification, sickness, loss of habitat, and species, this will be the legacy of the King.
YOU SEE kING COAL NEVER LOVED HIS SUBJECTS.
He only loves his money. And cares not about his country.
De oppresso liber
Sola virtus nobilitat.
GBKC
Very Good, Mark Twain.
You guys say there is no wildlife in MudRiver,y the streams are too nasty for wildlife to live in there, what about all those fish the men,w omen and children reel in each year out of there? Those deer that walk across the road, the birds in the trees and the other wildlife that thrive in MudRiver that must be in my imagination…no it’s not. Had it not have been for the Hobet mining, there would be no Mud River Lake and picnic area to enjoy and yes people enjoy it, there are class reunions held there, church picnics and other things that goes on there, thank Hobet 45 for that.
I know first hand that wildlife thrive on these reclaimed mines or these mines that are being worked now. I have seen deer and black bear first hand and know that it wasn’t just my imagination. YOU need to realize that KING COAL does care otherwise they wouldn’t reclaim these mines, the ey would be left standing like logging companies do, they could care less, it’s all about getting logs and who cares about the land afterwards.
Take Heartland Coal company in Harts Creek for instance. There are alot of people in that area that enjoy four-wheeler riding and if you drive down that way you can see tons and tons of people going that direction to ride and had it not have been for the reclaiming that would not be possible. But, yet you all are to stubborn or too blind to see all of that you just want the media to see your side of it, look at the whole picture.
The streams and rivers you all are talking about, well what about the tree companies that cut up trees and threw them in the creeks and streams after this storm that hit, I saw many tree companies just cut up a tree out the road and throw it in the creek and leave it there. What is the difference? There is none, it’s still polluting the streams and creeks. What about all these gas companies that pollute the streams? Why is just about KING COAL ALL OF THE SUDDEN! Stop and look around, there is more doing harm to our state, it’s not coal either!
Raychel dear Raychel now here what I say.
don’t trade off your heaven for a few years of pay.
Only 4% of the mines are reclaimed.
How fortunate you are to get a cool place to ride and a fake lake.
Plenty of fish in many of the rivers I’m sure but can you eat them?
A hidden danger with MTR mining is the leaching of heavy metals,
you see my dear the precious layer of trees and shrub,
leaves and dirt is the real gold not the thin seam
of coal so recklessly exposed.
When this live and thriving layer is gone,
water mixes with rock now freshly exposed and placed in the valleys
as fill and washes heavy metals and toxins where, always downstream to you and yours.
King Coal don’t care, he’s always upstream,
he’s in the position to piss in your creek
and you can’t do a damn thing about it.
According to you dear, it OK for King coal to pollute,
the creeks and the streams because
the tree company and the gas company do it too!
This here is A UNIQUE case of three wrongs don’t make a right!
Raychele think of what you are saying.
Just one tropical storm hangs on the blue ridge
how many sludge dmas could blow?
Marsh Fork?
10 more 100?
Time to stop this practice at all costs..
Timor omnis abesto
De oppresso liber.
GBKC
Green Beret, nevermind it flew over. The paddles are bobbing.
The study mentioned in this post was not funded at all, unless you mean by the universities that pay these scientists’ salaries all the time. The researchers involved all donated their time to working on that paper, like most of us working on mountaintop removal issues. Something I’ve never understood about the rhetoric of those who oppose us. If we’re all collecting such big, fat checks from unnamed rich environmentalists, how or why are we also somehow simultaneously on welfare?
The reality is, of course, that neither of these things are true. The reality is that we are all pretty damn poor and we do this work because we believe very strongly that it is the right thing to do.
Green Beret, Since you brought up (content) these scientists were free to (cherry pick) the data used in this study to support their allready decided agenda. I’m sure those peers who reviewed this study were on the same global warming, oops I’m sorry, climate change runaway train disaster.
Mat, unnamed? How about Ben & Jerrys foundation -$10,000.00…….Piper fund – $ 60,000.00……Patagonia clothing – $5,500.00…….Tides foundation -$ 5,000.00….Public welfare foundation -$ 100,000.00….And last but not, by any means least, our own Rockefeller family thru the Tides foundation to OVEC.
Mat, I work because I seen my dad for years get up and go to work with a tumor on his spine and never complained. If it took him an extra hour to get out of bed, he would set the clock 1 hour earlier. I go to work for the commandment that If a man does not work, he should not eat. I go to work for my wife and my kids. Let me ask you this Mat, with all due respect that every human being that God put on this Earth, when the snowfall came down on Christmas where were you? If you are so inclined to do what is right, were you helping you neighbors? Were you helping the sick? Were you helping the mailman when he stopped to put the mail in boxes so it would make his job easier? Were you even climbing mountains and trespassing in the name of ENVIRONMENT?Were you offering to put your life at risk and travel to Raleigh co to have some heat and water? I did and as I passed by Rock Creek I saw not the first person in the “houses or bus” standing in the cold in the name of opposing anything. As I was driving through Stover I came upon a woman in the ditch, her 12 year old son trying to push her out. I stopped with family in tow, 2 vehicles sat and watched for 15 minutes doing nothing. These are the exact words from the woman. The guy in the Ford, he lives 2 houses from me, the guy in the other truck, I went to school with. Neither offered to help. There is your community action, God Bless you and stay warm. please!
500 more jobs, thanks Asia! and Massey!