"So hurrah for
King Coal and his fat pay-roll, and his wheels of
industree!" - excerpt from "King Coal" by Upton
Sinclair.
- - -
"King Coal sends
more greenhouse gases into the air and more mercury and
acid rain onto our Earth and produces more lung-searing
ozone and particulates than any other industry. As the
nation's largest energy provider - more than half of our
electricity is coal-fired - big coal is the No. 1
polluter," - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr. is right.
Half of America's electricity is generated by burning
coal, and most of that coal comes from the mountains
that stretch through West Virginia, Virginia and
Kentucky, a region known as Appalachia.
Coal has been mined
in Appalachia for more than 100 years, making it the
primary industry and livelihood for many in one of the
country's poorest region. Appalachia's ancient
mountains, possibly the oldest mountains on Earth,
contain thin veins of low-sulfur coal buried deep in
southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. These
capillaries of "black gold" are too thin to be mined by
tunneling through the mountain.
So instead, coal
companies developed mountaintop-removal mining, which
involves clear-cutting the forests and scraping away the
topsoil, blasting up to 800 feet off the top of the
mountain, and gouging out the coal with gigantic
earth-moving machines. This mechanized process replaces
human miners with technology, and causes millions of
tons of "overburden" (mountaintops, trees and topsoil)
to be bulldozed into adjacent narrow valleys and the
streams they contain.
The Environmental
Protection Agency has estimated that past and future
mining could destroy more than 1.4 million acres. By the
end of the century, more than 2,200 square miles of
Appalachian forests and mountains will be gone.
That's too bad
because Appalachia is an area of high biodiversity, and
mountaintop removal harms more than 240 species of
animals, as well as temperate forests and clear mountain
streams.
In 2002, the Bush
administration redefined "fill material," making it
legal for mining operations to dump debris from
mountaintop removal into nearby streams. This action
effectively gutted the Clean Water Act, removing
important protections and boosting mountaintop removal
mining. Last May, the Clean Water Protection Act was
introduced in the House by Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and
Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and co-sponsored by 129
other representatives. This bill is designed to protect
our nation's waterways from heavy-duty polluters like
old King Coal.
Appalachian culture
is equally endangered because coal-extracting machines
take away jobs from mining families and devastate local
economies. A century of extracting energy from the land
and from the people has left a wake of social and
environmental devastation. What remains are ghost towns
- whole communities reduced to a few stubborn
homesteaders surrounded by a bleak, pitted landscape.
Imagine living in a
place where you have to wear a dust mask to work in your
garden, because you might contract "black lung," even
though you never stepped foot inside a coal mine.
Imagine never knowing when it might start raining rocks.
"Fly rock" is what residents call the occasional rock
deluge raining from the side of the mountain onto cars,
houses and prized petunias. Residential drinking water
and streams are contaminated by coal slurry, and the
constant "boom" of earth-shattering explosions is a
bass-heavy background noise.
"I look at what
they're doing and I can see the moonscape that they've
created. And it's total devastation. Nothing will ever
grow back," says Judy Bonds, a 52-year-old grandmother
from Whitesville, W. Va. Bonds turned activist one day
when she watched her grandson, wading in a stream, scoop
up a handful of fish killed by toxic coal slurry runoff.
Bonds went on to form Coal River Mountain Watch, which
stands up to old King Coal on behalf of the residents
and mountains.
What you can do to
reduce mountaintop-removal mining:
Ask your
representatives to co-sponsor the bipartisan Clean Water
Protection Act and ask your friends in other states to
do the same. This bill would prohibit industries from
dumping into our nation's streams and waterways.
Also ask your
representative to support the Markey and Waxman
"Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants," a new bill
introduced to Congress that NASA scientist James Hansen
says "hits the nail right on the head" in terms of
averting catastrophic climate change. The legislation
requires carbon capture and sequestration on all new
coal-burning power plants.
Write letters to the
editors of local, statewide and out-of-state newspapers.
Tell them about mountaintop removal, and the loss of
Appalachian wildlife and culture.
Cut your electricity
consumption. Most electric providers get half their
power from coal from mines that tear up mountaintops.
Support renewable
energy by purchasing wind energy through your utility.
In some areas, it would only cost $7 more per 300
kilowatt hours to get all of your energy from wind
instead of from polluting sources. You can sign up at
www.newwindenergy.com or call your utility.
Best of all, go
solar and feed your excess energy back into the national
grid.
Shawn Dell Joyce is
an award-winning sustainable artist and writer who lives
in a green home in the Hudson Valley of New York.
© Copley News
Service
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