Oh hell yes 8
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Posted 3:26 PM on 2 Mar 2008
by David Roberts -
Posted in
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David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.
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Pompey Road Posted 10:58 am
02 Mar 2008
The side hollow they did the valley fill had over 200 years of family history and a fresh water stream burried.
Teaming with game and aquatic life.
So much has already been destroyed and a rush of mining permits are being filed in this last year of the Bush administation.
I know of no other part of the Appalachian chain of mountains where you could get by with this. Try it in the New England states.
The isolation and how the rest of the country feels about the culture down here makes the coal corporations feel that they can do anything they want. That fact plus a 100 year history of screwing over East Kentucky and West Virginia.
They will cry and whine over a rain forest in South America and let thousands of acres of deciduous forest be destroyed right here in the United States. Not only the forest but the whole god damn mountain and valleys and streams that can never recover from the eco damage.
While the rest of the country makes up their mind about what's going on down here we are being blasted off the friggin planet.
If something is not done soon it will be to late for most of us, then again I understand the sentiment. Not in my back yard but its ok in someone else's.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:03 pm
02 Mar 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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GreenMom Posted 2:40 pm
02 Mar 2008
It needs a sponsor, though. Anyone with $$ listening, out there?
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LGT Posted 3:09 pm
02 Mar 2008
Jo Coors (before his death in 2003)?
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caniscandida Posted 3:21 pm
02 Mar 2008
It is however very good, to highlight the activism and protests of some of the very people in WV and KY from whose families the coal miners have traditionally come.
"Tradition" is such an evil word, sometimes, isn't it. It is evil when it justifies Japanese cetacean slaughter. And it is evil when it is used to assure the people of WV and eastern KY that coal-mining is their historic treasure, for which they should fight against outsiders lest it be wrested from them.
And on that note, I wonder, asking just for information: Has the term "environmental justice" acquired a connotation at this point, that relates it mostly, or exclusively, to the interests of urban non-white minorities? Or is it still large enough to include the interests of these very white folks in Appalachia, usually of old British ancestry?
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 10:35 pm
02 Mar 2008
The review in Variety: Burning the Future: Coal in America
Impassioned docu "Burning the Future: Coal in America" reps a strong indictment of mountaintop removal mining and its disastrous effects on the environment -- a case made all the more convincing by the coal industry's propaganda to the contrary. Focusing on a group of West Virginia folk resolved to fight the despoiling of their woodlands and the poisoning of their water, pic deeply entrenches itself in the landscape, conveying both the beauty and the ravagement of the Appalachians.
Interview with the director: "Burning the Future" is My Movie Pick Today
Ped Shed Blog
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Pompey Road Posted 11:12 pm
02 Mar 2008
Large land tracts, called land grants, many were rich according to the times before the civil war. Watching the movie "Cold Mountain" will give you a pretty good idea of what happened to the large land owners after the war and restitution was hard on all that were one generation removed from old Virginia and of course flew the stars and bars. No! few if any slaves were here, just went with Virginia because that was more of a country to them because family still lived there.
They cut virgin timber and grew bumble bee cotton until the late 1800's and early 1900's when the northeast interest come in and stole the mineral. John Mayo's broad form deed stole the land and the dye was cast.
The drift shaft mining they did could be overcome, it scared little but the slag piles and the cleaning process are an eco disaster to them selves. You could almost reclaim around a drift mouth area of a mine if it were not for the sludge ponds from the cleaning process.
What we did to the rivers and water table was bad enough now, this is unbelievable even to people who are pro coal and were raised by coal miners.
Most would hold their nose and drift, slope or deep shaft mine because of the thousands of mine related jobs it provided. There is totally no trade off now for it takes very few people to strip mine coal.
It is an ideal time to end this, most people down here now have been seperated from the mining process. It would be easy to show them the environmental disaster from strip mining is not worth the money coming back into the community. Not so for the one's that still deep mine for it is their tradition and in their blood. Thing is stopping MTR and coal stripping would drive the coal industry back underground where they will have to employ about 4 times more personnel. It would be a plus for the economy but can't be sustained because of western coal competition.
Not a complete victory because you would still have to do something major with the coal cleaning process. It would be a victory nevertheless.
I would rather it not be mined in any form but you take what small steps you can until you get rid of all of it.
Getting the word out on a national level may do just that. I am hoping for such a backlash because the nation would be so repulsed by MTR they would stop it all.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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Pompey Road Posted 12:00 am
03 Mar 2008
Seriously it gives me a chance to hit an area that don't get much attention. Most people don,t know about the chemicals used here in the coal cleaning process. Those are something we export that most of you don't think about.
Everytime we lose a coal slurry or sludge pond we export our chemical and heavy metal coctail down the Ohio river. Look up the coal slurry pond failure in Martin Co. Ky. and you will find it was larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It was 30 times larger.
These break quite often and are turned loose at night often. The river will be running clear of course by the time the morning work traffic goes by the river after daylight. I have seen this so many times.
Console a coal corportion on the Virginia Kentucky border has developed they say a process to extract the chemicals from the coal cleaning water and they are going to start dumping it into the river that runs into Fishtrap Lake, Pike County Kentucky. It is one of the trust me deals, they admit the water will have chemicals in it for a distance below the discharge line of about 1000 feet. They say the chemicals will be diluted by then.
If someone ever took a chemical analysis from a coal slurry sludge pond and posted it online I feel MTR might take a back seat to the people who live downstream from us. You would of course have to take it from one that uses chemicals in the coal cleaning process. Most western coal preparation plants don't have to.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
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