Massey Energy has begun blasting on Coal River Mountain in southern West Virginia. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has stated that the mining operation on the mountain is “actively moving coal.” Workers have been seen moving heavy equipment up to the mining zones, and blasting and plumes of smoke were seen and heard near the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment.
The Brushy Fork impoundment is an enormous retention pond holding 8.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry waste. If the impoundment were to fail due to the blasting, hundreds of lives will be lost and thousands more will be in jeopardy from an enormous slurry flood.
A 2006 study confirmed that Coal River Mountain—the highest peaks ever slated for mining in the state—is an ideal location for developing utility-scale wind power. Local residents have rallied around this proposal as a symbol of hope, a promise of a new and cleaner energy future, but that hope may be destroyed unless quick and decisive action is taken right now.
There is a reason that certain states have never been in my research for a retirement home…And mountaintop removal coal mining is it.
It’s sad, because West Virginia is a beautiful state. Beautiful mountains, great people, nice towns but always the shadow of the coal companies hanging over everything.
It is time in America for a new direction. It’s time to stop the cost shifting of the coal mines. It is only by being able to delay the costs of cleanup of the environment that coal is a viable energy source in this day and age.
There is an unlikely bluegrass group called The Greencards that I really like. I discovered them a few years back when they were based out of Austin…This week they were one of the acts featured on the Mountain Stage…Have a listen…
Even the “Foodie Blogs” are writing about West Virginia’s “unique” road food…
The many Americans who learned everything they know about West Virginia from John Denver probably don’t realize the state is renowned for its chili dogs and pepperoni rolls, two foodstuffs featured prominently in the brand-new brochure “101 Unique Places to Dine in West Virginia.”
The brochure, issued last week by the West Virginia Division of Tourism and the Collaborative for the 21st Century Appalachia, highlights the Mountain State’s momentous culinary achievements that apparently didn’t rhyme with “Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River,” including horseradish pickles, buckwheat pancakes and beer served in fishbowls (the signature item at Mario’s in Morgantown.)
I had noticed this just this week on the Division of Tourism’ web site…It looks like I wasn’t the only one.
John McQuaid has a good article on Environment 360, an environmental site at Yale.
Laurel Branch Hollow was once a small West Virginia mountain valley, with steep, forested hillsides and a stream that, depending on the season and the rains, flowed or trickled down into the Mud River about 200 yards below. The stream teamed with microbes and insect life, and each spring it became a sumptuous buffet for the birds, fish, and amphibians in the valley.
But over the past decade, the Hobet 21 mountaintop removal coal mining operation has obliterated 25 square miles of surrounding highlands. From the air, the mine is a 10-mile-long, mottled gray blotch among the green, crisscrossed by trucks and earth movers, appended by black lakes of coal sludge.
The Caudill family has owned a house at the mouth of the hollow since the early 1900s. Many of their neighbors left, but the Caudills fought and blocked an attempt by Hobet to force them to sell their property. Unfazed, the mining operation simply steered around their land, and dumped a mountain’s worth of rocky debris into the Laurel Branch up to their property line.
This is not the type of article you want to read when you are looking for a place to relocate to. Honestly, it’s not the type of article you want to read if you are already living in the area.
I am voting with my pocketbook down here in Texas. I buy my electricity from a company that guarantees that all of the power I use comes from windpower. It costs me a few pennies per kwh more, but to try and do my part to cut the blasting of the mountain tops I decided I could not afford to pay less.
If you are still undecided about the realities of living in coal country, be sure and read up on mountaintop removal.
If this is the first you’ve heard about environment360, go spend some time at the site. You may want to do what I do and subscribe to their rss feed.
While doing some research the other day I was lucky enough to stumble upon the on-line presence of this magazine. It was one of those moments in life that you wish would happen more often…BUt if they did you wouldn’t get very much done…If you know what I mean…
JULY 2009 – Two-Lane Livin’ Magazines are Like Eggs & Summer Squash
It seems as though just a few rainy days ago, we were planting the garden. Freshly plowed and tilled, plants just set out and small, any harvest, or weeding, seemed far away. How quickly time flies on a farm. The weeding (and potato bugs) have taken their lead, and unless picked soon, sweet leaf lettuce will turn bitter and sour.
My new hobby of the season is chickens. Knowing absolutely nothing about birds or laying hens, I purchased four hens from a neighbor. I think chickens are strange creatures. Just a few weeks ago, daily egg-gathering ventures were like trips to the Christmas tree. Now I’m pawning off eggs on everyone I know. It’s like summer squash – they get passed on to anyone who will take them.
In many ways, Two-Lane Livin’ magazine is similar. Fifteen thousand copies overwhelm the front room until we get them all delivered. It seems like they’re everywhere you turn. We pass them all over Central and West Central West Virginia to anyone who will have them until all the copies are gone. Then, in just a short month’s time, we have 15,000 copies again.
Follow the link and enjoy a little bit of Two-Lane Living…I know I’ll be wandering down the old blacktop again and again…
