This bill (the Clean Water Protection Act), aims to stop the heinous practice known as "mountaintop removal" (MTR) coal mining. The bill already has 116 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives. These are the co-sponsors from Virginia so far: Gerry Connolly (D-11), Jim Moran (D-8), and Frank Wolf (R-10). I'm hoping and expecting that Glenn Nye and Tom Perriello will also sign on soon as cosponsors. Sadly, I don't expect Rick Boucher (D-9) to sign on, even though MTR harms the environment and people of his district.Why is this bill important? See this excellent Daily Kos diary for more information. In short, here's what is at stake:
With MTR, there's no "return to contour," no question that the mountain will be rebuilt, or that hardwood forest and glens ringed with blackberries will be restored. No attempt to unclog the streams or empty the valleys. Instead, it all becomes a moonscape of rubble and ruin. MTR is the destruction, for all time, of mountains that were hundreds of millions of years in the making, the ruin of some of the nation's most pristine forests, and the elimination of towns and villages that preserve America's unique mountain culture.It's high time to interpret and enforce the Clean Water Act the way it was intended to be interpreted and enforced. Pass the Clean Water Protection Act now!
Though mountaintop removal only accounts for 5% of the coal mined, the area that is destroyed in the process is vast. Over 400 peaks in the Appalachians have been leveled. By next year, the EPA predicts that we will have carried out this destruction on over 1.4 million acres – an area larger than the state of Delaware. Thousands of miles of rivers have been ruined, and even those far downstream have to live with the pollution that bubbles through the exposed waste.
The good news is that it doesn't have to continue. Not only does MTR account for a small percentage of the nation's coal mining, almost all the coal mined in this manner can be extracted by other, less destructive means. If you're worried that stopping MTR will leave us short of coal, it won't. If you're thinking that Appalachia is an area known for its poverty and chronic high unemployment, and that stopping MTR will cost jobs, stop worrying. The reason companies have been so quick to use MTR isn't because it's necessary, it's because it's cheap. It's cheap because it uses fewer workers, and doesn't require that they hire the many jobs associated with reclamation in other types of mining.
