Losing Appalachia: Greed Fuels Mountain Top Removal Mining

Note: Today is the Rainforest Action Network’s Social Media Day of Action to end mountain top removal mining, and hold accountable the corporations that are supporting it. Please visit DirtyMoney.org for easy ways to use your Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs to hold JP Morgan Chase accountable for financing this despicable practice.

Whether they are majestic and rocky, or green and smoky, mountains affect the wildlife, weather patterns, and air quality of almost every person in the United States. For centuries, the mountains in the South Eastern part of this country have provided more than just a nice place to hike, and they have been gored, cleared and gutted to obtain a substance that’s considered much more precious by many industrial professionals; coal.

Despite recent attention from the Obama Administration, a deplorable practice known as mountain top removal mining has been allowed to continue unabated in this country, especially in South Eastern states like West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. A testament to the flippant attitude of the coal mining industry towards the delicate ecosystems that inhabit these mountains, the Environmental Protection Agency defines mountaintop removal or valley fill as “a mining practice where the tops of mountains are removed, exposing the seams of coal. Mountaintop removal can involve removing 500 feet or more of the summit to get at buried seams of coal. The earth from the mountaintop is then dumped in the neighboring valleys.”

The Facts

• MTR has destroyed nearly 1.2 million acres of Appalachian forest and mountains
• MTR has buried over 2000 miles of rivers and streams with debris and pollution
• Tap water in many Appalachian communities is not safe to drink due to coal contamination
• MTR techniques resulted in a 29% loss of jobs from 1987-1997, even as coal production rose 32%
• JP Morgan Chase is the biggest funder in the U.S. of mountaintop removal coal mining

Thanks to coal companies and the corporations that secretly support them, the people who have lived in these “neighboring valleys” for generations are being asked to watch helplessly as these peaks are disintegrated with toxic explosives and then bulldozed down the slopes where the fill chokes rivers, displaces wildlife and leaves a severe potential for flooding and landslides.

This appalling practice has already destroyed over 500 mountains in Central Appalachia, most of which are thought to be well over 300 million years old, not to mention the countless homes and lives that have already been crushed under the constant blasting and degradation of the landscape. But if the environmental devastation caused by blowing the tops off of mountains with ammonium nitrate oil fuel to expose seams of coal, doesn’t really seem all that important to you, then maybe thinking of the children will tug at your heart strings.

Today, as you send your children off to school, think about the children of Appalachia that couldn’t get any sleep last night because the mining companies are allowed to operate within up to 300 feet of residential homes, and continue blasting 24 hours a day.

Think about what it is like to sit in a classroom breathing in toxic coal dust, or to eat lunch in a school cafeteria where you can’t drink from the water fountains because the water supply in your rural town has been contaminated by rain that carries poisonous chemicals down with it from the mining sites.

And consider what it might be like to have your entire home washed away in a flash flood that is a direct result of clear cutting trees and the disruption of other vegetation whose root systems used to hold the hillsides together.

Then, take action to END MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL TODAY!

Join dozens of organizations and thousands of online activists in convincing Chase to stop destroying American mountains. Take a simple action on your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog or email to end mountaintop removal in 2010. Go to www.DirtyMoney.org for instructions.

(Portions of this article were originally published in BellaSpark Magazine)

Tags: activism, Mountain Top Removal, social networking