Watch Woody Harrelson speak out against mountaintop removal & take action

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 02:21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZxVNnFXNpE   Posted on YouTube: March 09, 2007 By YouTube Member: AppalachianVoices Views on YouTube: 16394   Posted on DU: March 13, 2007 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 965

 

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/679588629?ltl=1173801947

Millions of tons of debris from mountaintop removal (a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountaintops are literally blown up) are being dumped into nearby streams.

Since 1977, The Clean Water Act allowed industries to dump small amounts of "fill material" into waterways as long as they were not using them as a place to dispose of industry waste. But in 2002, the Bush Administration redefined "fill material" to include mining waste, which means that mining companies can dump the mountains they are destroying directly in to our streams and rivers!

Across the Appalachian coalfields, more than 1,200 miles of streams are now buried and destroyed by mountaintop removal. In West Virginia, more than 400,000 acres have been leveled. And mountaintop removal mining has destroyed roughly one million acres of Appalachia's mountains!

The Clean Water Protection Act, a bill that will soon be introduced by Representatives Frank Pallone and Christopher Shays, reestablishes the original intent of the Clean Water Act. This Act will:

* Protect our rivers and streams, not bury them in mountaintop debris.
* Protect clean drinking water for many of our nation's cities.
* Protect the quality of life for Appalachian coalfield residents who face frequent catastrophic flooding, pollution and loss of drinking water because of mountaintop removal.

Send this letter to your Representatives and tell them to help keep millions of tons of mountaintop debris out of our waterways!

[Lorien]

1. DUers should be up in arms about this

Mountaintop removal is an assault on nature and the people who live anywhere near the devastated areas. These are the REAL "Eco-Terrorists"!

[underpants]

2. Yes they should be

Enviromental hazard as well as costing coal miners jobs (hey it isn't nice work but while it is needed it does pay well)

I sent the petition to Warner Webb and Cantor

[Bonobo]

3. Mountains don't EVER grow back either.

[Shallah Kali]

4. And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county down by the Green River where Paradise lay

"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

Then the coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
Well, they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken
Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man.

Paradise by John Prine

[Duppers]

5. done.

This breaks my heart; I love our mountains.

[rman]

6. related must-see: "Is God Green" (PBS, Moyers)

There are environmentalist evangelicals.
It's hard not to become an environmentalist when your tap water is black from saturation by heavy metals.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlvGlZ1rGcg

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/index.html