Residents Bring Dirty Water from Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Communities To Washington

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WASHINGTON D.C.– Citizens from across the country have travelled to the nation’s capitol to urge an end to mountaintop removal coal mining, a radical form of strip mining in Appalachia that has destroyed over 500 mountains and buried or poisoned more than 2,000 miles of streams in Central Appalachia. Citizens met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill as well as the Obama administration agencies. This year they collected toxic water from their home communities, and brought containers of it to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Citizens of Appalachia are sitting on the EPA steps to demand that the EPA accept the water and acknowledge their demand for stronger water quality rules. There are over 100 gallons of brown, black and red water that have been collected from water sources in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.

“We want to show them exactly what the water situation is in the Appalachian region. This is what people deal with coming out of their faucets. We are being asked to use toxic water for drinking, washing and cooking,” said Laura Miller, who travelled from Southwestern Virginia.

Citizens hope that bringing the dirty water to the EPA will alert agency officials to the urgency of toxic water in their communities. More than 20 peer-reviewed studies have shown devastating health impacts; citizens near mountaintop removal are 50% more likely to die of cancer and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects compared with other people in Appalachia.

“There is no longer the luxury of time – we need the EPA to act now because people are sick and dying now,” said Dustin White, community organizer with Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) who traveled from West Virginia.
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http://appalachiarising.org/residents-bring-dirty-water-from-mountaintop-removal-coal-mining-communities-to-washington/