Targeting coal: protest mounts

[depakid]

Anyone concerned about the burning of fossil fuels and resultant climate change is scared beyond words because of the prospect of coal usage growing or continuing. But there is an additional side of coal, an even darker one - to many who have seen coal industry practices in Appalachia - than the distinction of being the worst polluting of the main fossil fuels.

Mountaintop removal is a form of strip mining of coal that even the most cynical of educated citizens would not guess exists. But it does indeed, to the tune of 800 square miles already. One consequence is that there have been 6,000 "valley fills” of debris from mountain tops in West Virginia and Kentucky. Since 1980, according to the National Mining Association, only 5% of the destroyed land has been returned to some kind of “economic development” such as bogus wildlife habitat.

The nightmare does not stop there. “Sludge impoundment” occurs behind dams in former valleys that become a source of toxic leaks, and dam failure is an historic fact. And when sludge is put into old underground coal mines, this contaminates ground water for drinking. Other issues involving coal is processing - very poisonous - and transport that poses outrageous risks.

With global climate change becoming quickly the out-of-control threat that scientists thought would not be occurring for decades, “positive feedback loops” are kicking in. So the very idea of tearing apart much of Appalachia for more coal, when a vast portion of the whole eastern part of the U.S. depends on rivers springing forth from the Appalachian Mountains, is more than appalling and insane.

Coal equals murder.

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More- including some discussion of Earth First!

http://www.energybulletin.net/18246.html

[Massacure]

1. About restoration,

Is it technologically possible to restore strip mines back into decent shape or are companies just too lazy to do it?

[jwirr]

2. Too cheap to do it.

[NNadir]

3. It is impossible to do this.

Maybe they can dump coal ash and other wastes (municipal waste) in these holes, but think of the energy that will be required to haul that stuff back. From whence might that energy come?

[megatherium]

5. My recollection is that they are required to restore the land to

be green. They plant some weed that can grow on valley fills with essentially no intact soil. So things look nice and green but the plant and the land are of no ecological or economic value (i.e., farming is impossible). Worse, the lack of healthy forests means that the natural system of water absorption is gone, with the result that destructive floods occur. Poor people live along the streams where these floods occur. Everyone there knows what's going on but the mining companies control the system and avoid liability.

I learned this attending a Sierra Club meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. I had no idea that this was going on.

[cmd]

6. They are required to put the land back in decent shape

However, it is impossible to replace trees that have been growing for tens of years or provide a habitat for the wildflowers and grasses that are uprooted. You end up with a bland hillside with a nice grade - nothing like the artisitic job mother nature did with the original hillsides.

[cmd]

4. Coal owners must respect the environment

I grew up in coal country. My dad is a retired underground miner. One brother worked underground until his death. Another brother works above ground in a coal washing facility. I lived with un-reclaimed strip mines all around me. A "gob" pile burned for years about a mile from my home spewing its sulfuric fumes over the countryside. Coal put food on our table, clothes on our backs and paid the doctor when we were sick.

I know first hand what coal can do to the environment and believe that coal and the environment can coexist. Coal operators will have to put more money into clean coal mining. The government will have to monitor mines for safety and pollution control. Ohio sits on top of vast quantities of bituminous coal fields. Those fields can supply energy for our communities for years to come if we learn how to use the coal efficiently. I will not sit quietly and allow operators to lay waste to my environment again. I will support operators who are attempting to practice clean mining.