Hello friends,

I’m writing to ask you to take a step today that can help break King Coal’s economic stranglehold on coalfield communities in Southwest Virginia. By a few simple, digital steps, and three votes, you can help jump start grass roots efforts at sustainable economic development in the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Heard enough? Great. [...]

[Read more →]

Dominion stokes the coal industry, but says it’s a friend to the environment
BY ERIKA HOWSARE of the Cville Weekly

It’s a dim, drizzly afternoon, and I’m riding around Wise County with Kathy and Gary Selvage. I can see what they’re pointing out—evidence of surface mining—but I can’t see it the way they do.
The Selvages have [...]

[Read more →]

Obama Administration Asked to Halt All New Mountaintop Removal Permits
- - - - - - - - - - -
CONTACTS:
Sandra Diaz, Director of Development and Communications, Appalachian Voices….828-262-1500
Dr. Matthew Wasson, Director of Programs, Appalachian Voices….828-262-1500
- - - - - - - - - - -
Just days after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the expansion [...]

[Read more →]

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
John Adams has been mining coal in southwest Virginia for almost 40 years. I met him in the hallway outside the auditorium where the Big Stone Gap hearing was being held. He wore an ‘I Love Mountains’ pin proudly fastened next to the ‘Friends of Coal’ logo on the black t-shirt he [...]

[Read more →]

As Congress was returning from the August recess, there wasn’t much news about the climate bill.  The only energy-related news breaking through the coverage of the rancorous health care debates and town-hall tea parties was a study on “energy sprawl” published by five staff members of the Nature Conservancy.
“Renewable Energy Needs Land, Lots Of Land” [...]

[Read more →]

The fine assessed to coal company for blasting a boulder into your home : $10,000
Bail assessed to tree-sitters who prevent blasting at a mountaintop removal site: $50,000
Ending mountaintop removal coal mining: PRICELESS
One of the dangers that face coalfield residents every day is what the industry calls flyrock, a term that does not provide an accurate [...]

[Read more →]

pstrongThis LTE was published in the a href=”http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/opinion/letters/article/ED-GLICK17_20090916-190802/293287/”Richmond Times Dispatch/a/strong/ppstrongThis is crossposted from the a href=”http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/blog”CCAN/a blogbr //strong/ppstrongWise County Plant Isn’t Necessary/strong/ppbr /Editor, Times-Dispatch: Although the news article, “New Permit for Coal-Fired Power Plant Pleases Both Sides,” quotes Dominion Virginia Power as claiming that the Wise County coal plant is vital to meeting Virginia’s future [...]

[Read more →]

Cross posted from the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog
The struggles of folks in West Virginia is not only getting national air time, it is finally front and center - the lead story of last Sunday’s New York Times, to be exact. The article details the Massey family from Prenter, W.Va., and their life with toxic [...]

[Read more →]

Cross posted from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network Blog
Today the Virginia Air Board had its quarterly meeting and looking at the agenda one thing is crystal clear: Coal is impacting air quality all over the Commonwealth.
As I write this from the meeting room, and the Air Board is hearing reports on problems associated with coal-fired [...]

[Read more →]

Cross posted by JW from the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog

Having had their astroturfing forgery exposed, this week coal industry front group ACCCE is taking an uber-REAL super-grassrootsy approach to showing us their grassrootability, via Twitter. And this time, rather than making stuff up about random minority groups, womens’ organizations, or seniors, they’re saying that [...]

[Read more →]

Cross posted from Appalachian Voices’ Front Porch Blog
Polluting Industries Caught Forging Support
When you are a small non-profit working to reform billion dollar industries, you can take some solace when the other side is damaging their own case far more seriously than regular citizens ever could. The last few days have been a highlight reel of [...]

[Read more →]

cross-posted from the CCAN blog
Yesterday, the EPA performed a turn-around on its protection of the locations of 44 “high risk” coal ash impoundment sites, signaling a desire to make the regulatory body more transparent. Formerly protected under the auspices of national security, the ash impoundments, located in Ohio, Arizona, and throughout the southeast, have [...]

[Read more →]

Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia, a close ally to President Obama and current head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), came out with this statement in favor of the Administration’s proposal regarding mountaintop removal removal yesterday.
“I applaud the new guidelines announced by the administration which will impose tighter restrictions on mountaintop mining.
“In Virginia, we’ve always [...]

[Read more →]

Mountaintop removal is hard to ignore when it’s in your backyard. Bo Webb, whose home on Cherry Pond Mountain lies near an active mountaintop removal mine. In his recent letter to President Obama, asking him to take executive action against the destructive mining practice, Webb painted a picture of how living near a mine site [...]

[Read more →]

February 23, 2009
As always, there’s plenty going on in the mountains this week. We’re very excited about the introduction of the Appalachian Mountains Preservation Act in Georgia (the number one consumer of MTR coal in the nation!) and Maryland in the last two weeks, to be followed with the introduction of the bill in North [...]

[Read more →]