Mountaintop Removal and Dirty Coal

My goodness! WP reports EPA to Scrutinize Permits for Mountaintop-Removal Mining and suddenly the Dirty Coal Companies are outraged!

For 8 years, environmentalists and grassroots activists and those who have opposed the destruction of their communities by Dirty Coal have been considered 'vested interests' to be easily dismissed.

Dirty Coal has blown up 450 mountains, contaminated streams and drinking water, created ash sludge ponds around the nation that threaten each of us. Dirty Coal fills the air, carries with it mercury to sterilize lakes, ponds, soil.

Dirty Coal is cheap because environmental costs are ignored.

Dirty Coal has been a generous campaign contributor who purchased congressmen and paid for lobbyists.

Dirty Coal looks none too pleased with this Adminsitration!

The Environmental Protection Agency put hundreds of mountaintop mining operations on notice that they would be the focus of closer scrutiny yesterday, saying it needs to review their impact on local streams and wetlands before they can move forward.

The announcement, which outraged mining interests and cheered environmentalists, challenged a Bush administration policy and blocked the effect of a federal court decision that had made it easier for mine operators to dispose of the rubble and sludge created when companies blow off the tops of mountains to get to the coal buried underneath.


"It's absolutely puzzling to me why you would want to dismantle a state's economy," Raney [president of the West Virginia Coal Association] said. "Does this mean in the steep terrain of eastern America, we're not going to have roads, we're not going to have economic development, we're not going to have Wal-Marts?"

So Mountaintop Removal is equivalent to building a Wal-Mart?

I like mountains. And you?