One of the largest proposed mountaintop removal mining projects ever, Arch Coal’s Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, W. Virginia, has been blocked by the EPA, which has just fully revoked the permit for the project. Mountaintop removal is one of the most environmentally destructive mining techniques because the resulting debris... and there's a lot of it... all goes somewhere, often destroying streams and hollows.
Sierra Club provides more detail. The short version: "EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stopped a mountaintop mine that would have destroyed more than seven miles of vital streams and more than 2,000 mountain acres in an important part of Appalachia."
Listen! That sound you hear is the shredding of the social contract. - Bill Moyers
Hurray for Ms. Jackson!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteKay, have you seen the results of mountaintop removal? I've seen it only once, and frankly I wonder about the kind of mind that thought up the technique in the first place. The problem, of course, is that Republican presidents tend to appoint EPA administrators from the ranks of the extractive industries, who in turn tend to approve any damned thing those industries want to do. In other words, we almost certainly haven't seen the last of mountaintop removal, even if Obama & Co. don't give away the store.
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