A Flood of Blame for Mountaintop Removal
Posted May 11, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places, Solving Global Warming
Some 300 National Guard troops are pouring into southern West Virginia by order of Gov. Joe Manchin III. The soldiers are being dispatched to aid in disaster relief in the wake of flooding over the weekend caused by a wave of powerful storms that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings, knocked out electricity and caused mudslides.
"Since I have been governor, the damage that was caused by the flash floods is as bad asI have seen anywhere," Manchin said in a statement.
Surely the governor must be aware that many coal field residents blame mountaintop removal for worsening flooding in the region.
FYI, featured in the latest NRDC newsletter Nature's Voice is Go Tear It Off the Mountain: Coal and Appalachia, which reads:
They were once enduring symbols of timelessness, celebrated in a rich tradition of folklore and song, but today the mountains of Appalachia are, quite literally, disappearing. Call it what it is: mountaintop removal.
Eager coal companies, emboldened by years of business-friendly deregulation, are leveling forests and blasting the tops off mountains to get at the thin seams of coal inside. So far, more than 470 summits across the region have been reduced to rubble.
"It's almost incomprehensible that a company can destroy an entire mountain," says Rob Perks, director of NRDC's Center for Advocacy Campaigns. "But the destruction doesn't stop there."Lush, biologically diverse valleys are transformed into giant landfills where mining companies dump millions of tons of waste, obliterating wildlife habitat and burying once-clear mountain streams. At least 380,000 acres of forest alone have already been lost, with nearly 500,000 more acres expected to disappear by 2012.
In small towns from West Virginia to eastern Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, residents are suffering the devastating impacts of mountaintop removal. The explosive blasts damage homes and leave whole towns covered in a layer of filthy coal dust, while huge slurry ponds pose an ever-present threat of bursting their dams.All this so that coal companies can extract a fuel source that is one of the dirtiest and most polluting: Burning coal in the United States contributes more than two billion tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere each year.
NRDC is working with local residents and grassroots organizations to put a halt to mountaintop removal and save the Cumberland Plateau, a region with more than 4,000 native species found nowhere else on the planet. It's been a tough battle in the face of years of Bush-era pro-mining policies, but now there's new hope. Bank of America recently announced that it would phase out lending to companies that engage in mountaintop removal after an NRDC-led tour in Appalachia showed bank executives firsthand the devastation there. And the House has introduced legislation that would strengthen the Clean Water Act and prohibit mining waste from being recklessly dumped in the area's streams.
Here are details about Bank of America's new policy and, of course, there is now a bi-partisan bill in the Senate to protect waterways from being buried and polluted by mountaintop removal.
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Comments
Roy Phillips — May 15 2009 01:43 AM
I have to say that I wittnessed a flood in the Belfry community of Pike County that I never thought I would ever see, and that is that flood waters over the weekend of May 9 actually got into the old Belfry High School. Even Hal Rogers and Gov. Steve Beshear commented on how quickly the flood came on, and the intensity of the flood before they denied that MTR had anything to do with the unprecedented flood damage. One of the two said, Beshear, I think, that this couldn't have had anything to do with mining, because there "are no mines anywhere near" the Belfry School. But, unbeknownst to Le Governor, there is a huge-no, really-HUGE MTR operation at the headwaters of Pond Creek, the stream that did all that damage, and this is the only difference between 2009 and previous flood years, like 1977 (flood of Biblical proportions), 1963 or 1957. Even Steve and Hal mentioned how rapidly this last flood came on. All that was said by this duo about this catastrophe is characteristic of flooding in an area where MTR is taking place. The Rockhouse Mountain, Cow's Knob and Dick's Knob are three peaks at the head of Pond Creek that have been completely denuded, stripped bare, in other words. Wanna see it? Get on Google Earth, click "find business" and fill in moutaintop removal, then Pike County, Ky, in the where box. You will see a list of pages below the first group of sites listed. Rockhouse, Dick's Knob and Cow's Knob can be found on page 7 and 8. I clicked the program used to measure distance, and found that the largest of the three disturbed areas here measures almost 7 miles in diameter, as I recall. Tell me that when you disturb that much territory, you ain't gonna get a real gully washer. Then tell me how anybody can say with a straight face that, no, MTR had nothing to do with it. This is more ridiculous than I can say.