Where's the Outrage? Obama's EPA Betrays Coalfields (Again) With New Mountaintop Removal Permit

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/30-2

Published on Wednesday, June 30, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Where's the Outrage? EPA Betrays Coalfields (Again) With New Mountaintop Removal Permit
by Jeff Biggers

I'm not sure if the EPA is addled, or downright shameless, but on the heels of meeting with besieged Appalachian coalfield residents and less than three months since its ballyhooed new guidance rules to halt reckless mountaintop removal operations, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency has once again gone back on its word and green-lighted a dangerous mountaintop removal permit in a hair-brained pander to Big Coal that will knowingly destroy miles of critical headwater streams.

The piss poor week of coal news this week makes the BP disaster look like a cake walk. If only I could be glib and declare: The more things change, the more things stay the same. Peabody Energy announced they're opening a massive strip mine in Mongolia that will dwarf Wyoming's Powder River Basin to "solve world poverty"; Australia's strip mines continue to disappear historic communities; and the NY Times pointed out that Big Coal receives over $100 billion annually in welfare from Europe.

In the case of the Appalachian coalfields, where millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosives are detonated daily in historic mountain communities and American citizens live in contaminated watersheds, the EPA's giddy support for the St. Louis-based Arch Coal's Pine Creek strip mine in Logan County, West Virginia is not only a travesty, but a costly one.

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And the misguided decision, alas, comes at such a sad moment--the same week of the death of legendary West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who announced only one month ago:

If the process of mining destroys nearby wells and foundations, if blasting and digging and relocating streams unearths harmful elements and releases them into the environment causing illness and death, that process should be halted and the resulting hazards to the community abated.

more...

with these assholes and their enablers.

Appalachia is treated like a third world country by it's own govt. Despicable!

:grr:

we need a swat team that works to bring down the Barons

His friends will be along shortly to expand further upon that pronouncement.

Another day, another outrage. It seems there is no end in sight. :-(

Now swallow.

nt

the people who are supposed to protect us and the world we live in keep saying yes to big business when they should be saying no.

So hey, what's another mountaintop and holler?