News
Help Save Coal River Mountain This Monday
Friday, December 4th, 2009
This Monday, Dec. 7 at 2pm, iLoveMountains.org supporters and fellow mountain activists will join Coal River Mountain Watch at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection headquarters in Charleston, WV for a rally and protest to save Coal River Mountain.
Massey Energy is actively blasting and mining on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia. The blasting is taking place only a few hundred feet away from the Brushy Fork impoundment dam, which holds over 9 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge above the Coal River Valley.
This blasting is happening despite studies that show Coal River Mountains has the highest and most productive potential for wind power generation in the Appalachian Mountains. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection needs to see that West Virginia resident support a clean energy future — not the dirty energy and destructive practice of mountaintop removal.
Please join us:
Where: West Virginia Dept. of Environmental Protection Headquarters, Charleston. Click here for directions.
When: Monday, December 7th, 2 pm.
Find out more information on the rally and protest here, and find more information on Coal River Mountain here.
December 6th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Although we cannot make the trip form Georgia, my sons and I are with you marching for the future of our land and citizens in spirit. We will voice our protest by e-mailing the WV DEP, sending postcards, and passing the word to our friends. Thank you all for your perseverance, passion, and moral backbone.
December 23rd, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Mining has so many afterwards consequences. Why decision-makers can’t see that it isn’t worth the sacrifice of people and the environment to benefit just a few?
We still don’t know how to restore a mountain or even less how to create one. The price of restoring the land is high and takes a lot of time. Most of the times, it is not possible to bring back all the species and character and function to the environment.
Water remains polluted and the soil bare or depleted many years after the big company has left with its profits.
We need more investment in science and technology to learn how to harvest resources in a safe way. But meanwhile, we can evaluate pros and cons-taking into account the future will not be living. If we think in those terms, and if we think of all the peoples and creatures having the right to the same clean water, air, and aesthetics we seek for us, then we would certainly take better decisions.
-Ecologist, soil scientist, and environmental thinker here.