West Virginia // Current

Save Coal River Mountain - America's MOST Endangered Mountain!

We have confirmed reports that Massey Energy has begun blasting on Coal River Mountain... more

Incredulous
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18 days ago
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6 comments

The OxyContin Express

In the season premiere of Vanguard, correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to South... more

MarianaVanZeller
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1 month ago
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158 comments

Mountaintop Mining, Up Close and Personal

Words alone can’t describe what mountaintop mining is doing to Appalachia, its... more

fordlyn
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1 month ago
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0 comments

The OxyContin Express - Trailer

The new season of Vanguard premieres Oct. 14 at 10/9c with "The OxyContin Express", a... more

MarianaVanZeller
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1 month ago
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59 comments

Buckwheat Fest- Preston County, WV

68th Buckwheat Festival -Sept. 24 - Sep 27, 2009 OMG, not much info provided, but I... more

amaness
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1 month ago
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0 comments

Mountaintop Coal

Mountaintop removal is a controversial type of coal mining in Appalachia. Here are... more

RebeccaCarroll
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2 months ago
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81 year-old Paratrouper and Activist Arrested in WV Protesting Mountain Top Removal

There's a growing movement to stop coal companies from flattening the Appalachian... more

petergrumbine
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2 months ago
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1 comment

Verizon Wireless Sponsors Mountaintop Removal

Verizon Wireless needs to reconsider its "Friends and Family" feature--or, even... more

elsonwvu
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2 months ago
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1 comment

Enviro groups tread lightly with Endangered Species Act in Appalachia

The last ice age turned the Appalachians into North America's Noah's Ark.

The mountain peaks provided a last green refuge above the glaciers, drawing species from across the eastern half of continent. Some 10,000 years later, many have stayed, and the mountains are home to one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity -- from flying squirrels to freshwater mussels -- in the country. Just last month, biologists stumbled across an entire new genus of salamanders in Southern Appalachia, the first new vertebrate genus discovered in the United States in 50 years.

Beneath that biodiversity sits 28.5 billion tons of anthracite coal, according to 1998 Department of Energy estimates. The mineral is so central to the region's identity and economy that West Virginia last month declared it the official state rock.

The lucrative coal is obtained through mountaintop removal -- dynamiting the tops off the mountains and dumping the leftovers into mountain valleys and stream beds. Environmental groups say the practice is horribly destructive to the region's water, land and wildlife -- but they have been reluctant to use a powerful weapon, the Endangered Species Act, in fighting it.

The few national groups that have tried have run up against a special species review process for coal mining, and most have avoided it entirely for fear of upsetting a fragile partnership with their regional blue-collar allies.

As a result, the Appalachians have become something of a "national sacrifice area" to meet coal needs, said Tierra Curry, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

A different standard

The Endangered Species Act normally requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to formally review any federal authorized, funded or administered action that could negatively affect endangered or threatened species. FWS biologists study projects for possible effects to the species and then can recommend alternatives, mitigation measures or even that the projects be abandoned entirely.

Environmental groups frequently sue the Fish and Wildlife Service over the agency's reviews if they think it approves a project that does not pass muster under the Endangered Species Act. They famously did so in the 1990s to halt logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest on the grounds that it would harm the spotted owl.

But the review standard is waived for coal mining. Instead, Interior relies on a document known as the "1996 biological opinion."

In 1995, the Office of Surface Mining requested clarification on the Endangered Species Act's implications for their permitting and policymaking. In the resulting 15-page document, Fish and Wildlife Service officials argue that by following the environmental provisions laid out under the Surface Mining Law, mine operators ensure protection for all current or future endangered species. Therefore, the officials argued, Interior does not require a formal review from the Fish and Wildlife Service before issuing permits for coal mines.

more at the linkThe last ice age turned the Appalachians into North America's Noah's Ark. The... more

JanforGore
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3 months ago
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1 comment

Mountaintop mining legacy: destroying Appalachia's streams

The spread of mountaintop removal through central Appalachia in the past 15 years has given scientists the opportunity to study environmental destruction on a previously unthinkable scale: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that by 2013 a forested area the size of Delaware will have been destroyed and that more than 1,200 miles of streams have already been severely damaged. As that footprint has grown, so has the evidence, outlined in peer-reviewed scientific papers and ongoing investigations, showing that the damage is far more extensive than previously understood.

The Obama administration’s approach puts pressure on coal companies to compromise with regulators to limit some of the more egregious impacts of mountaintop removal. That may have some effect, but it will be limited by the government’s balkanized regulatory scheme for coal mining, which dates to the 1970s and never contemplated the vast damage that results when mountains are demolished.

In the case of valley fills, for example, only the EPA has ecosystem-wide responsibility through the Clean Water Act which governs what may be dumped in streams and waterways. But the agency’s power is circumscribed; it shares authority with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which actually grants the dumping permits and has taken a much more sympathetic view of the practice. The Interior Department, meanwhile, oversees mountaintop projects via another law, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

Nevertheless, the White House is betting that mountaintop mining can be managed and the damage ultimately repaired. But the science indicates that such an incremental approach may never be effective. Mountaintop removal does damage on both vast and microscopic scales, from hydrological changes over hundreds of square miles to effects on the life cycles of the tiniest stream microbes. Overseeing the repair of such damage is beyond the capabilities of any government agency; the most serious impacts — to streams — may be all but impossible to fix.

Margaret Palmer, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, was part of a team of scientists that compiled a comprehensive database of 37,000 U.S. river and stream restoration projects. She found no record of any mining-related stream-building project that could be called ecologically successful.

much more at the link.
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This is an excellent article, though sad to read. The damage coal companies have been allowed to get away with here is a crime of grand scale.The spread of mountaintop removal through central Appalachia in the past 15 years has... more

JanforGore
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4 months ago
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0 comments

Mountaintop removal damage "irreversible," Senate hears

Mountaintop removal coal mining is causing "immense and irreversible" damage to... more

JanforGore
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5 months ago
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1 comment

McDowell Woman Arrested for Child Pornography

Stacy Wright-Farmer, 31-year-old McDowell County woman is arrested on child sex... more

b2r
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5 months ago
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0 comments

Fight against mountaintop coal removal

People are speaking out. Where is this government? Where are the windmills? Where are... more

JanforGore
added this
6 months ago
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11 comments

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

NEW from Dickhouse! The Creators of JACKASS -- A new documentary about a legendary... more

Pericles_Lewnes
added this
7 months ago
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11 comments

I Hate Your State. Part 3

I hate North Carolina through Wyoming.

TimBuktu
added this
7 months ago
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2 comments

Big coal defeat: rednecks and greens announce victory at Blair Mountain

After 500 mountains in Appalachia have been blown to bits by mountaintop removal, one peak was most likely saved today: Blair Mountain in West Virginia, the site of the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War, was officially approved by the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places to be placed on the National Register.

This is a huge victory, as the tide continues to turn in the movement to stop mountaintop removal in Appalachia.

Some consider it the Bunker Hill of the labor movement. But the great battle in 1921, when thousands of union coal miners and World War I veterans donned their uniforms and took up arms to liberate and unionize the last coal camps in southwestern West Virginia held hostage to ruthless outside coal companies, has emerged as one of the great symbols of Appalachia's fate today. Over the past several years, the Friends of Blair Mountain--an organization of community and labor activists, historians and environmentalists--have led an even more epic battle to save the sacred mountain site from a plan by coal companies to strip mine and destroy Blair Mountain through mountaintop removal operations.

The mountaintop removal war might soon be over. The Rednecks won. According to the National Registry Federal Program regulations:

"If a property contains surface coal resources and is listed in the National Register, certain provisions of the Surface Mining and Control Act of 1977 require consideration of a property's historic values in the determination on issuance of a surface coal mining permit."

"Redneck" was the name given to the progressive miners, as William Blizzard recalled in his wonderful memoir, When Miners March, as they wore red bandannas around their necks to distinguish themselves from others. As the battle raged, and even bombs dropped, President Warren Harding was forced to intervene with military troops.

President Barack Obama needs to intervene against mountaintop removal today. As three million pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil are detonated daily in an assault on Appalachia today, raining toxic dust on the inhabitants and devastating watersheds as part of the brutal mountaintop removal operations, it's time for the federal government to stop this egregious violation of human rights in the mountains.After 500 mountains in Appalachia have been blown to bits by mountaintop removal, one... more