Appeal filed over Blair Mountain strip mining in W.Va.

A coalition of historic preservation, labor history and environmental protection groups filed a legal appeal Thursday morning, continuing their fight to restore the Blair Mountain Battlefield to the National Register of Historic Places.

The groups include: the Sierra Club, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Friends of Blair Mountain, West Virginia Labor History Association and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Arch Coal wants to strip mine the spot, never mind the historical legacy, wild nature and more. Read this to get the whole picture, then get mad.

The EPA and stopping the Spruce (rape-the-Earth) mine

Good editorial here on the EPA’s recent decision to rescind the permit for a mountaintop removal coal mine in West Virginia that would have continued the criminal-like burying of natural streams with the mining rubble.

EPA appeals W.Va. coal mine ruling

The EPA finally got around to saying no to a mountaintop removal coal mine and then a judge twists it all around. Meanwhile, the damage continues and continues and certain politicians can  only carp about jobs. Pretty damn sad. You can read about the EPA’s latest decision right here.

Citizens demand Marcellus drilling ban in W.Va.

Good luck to the scrappy corps of people discussed in this article. Too bad a similar grassroots campaign never really got off the ground, to my knowledge, in Pennsylvania, the state from which I just moved.

Feds hit deer breeder with $1.5 million fine

Federal officials are taking a seriously no-nonsense attitude toward the illegal transportation of wildlife. In Texas, a 77-year-old deer breeder has been fined $1.5 million for it.

Read about it all here.

Study finds more health problems among residents near mountaintop removal mines

This study’s findings are hardly surprising, given the many other ramifications of blowing up mountains to get at the coal beneath the summits. In brief, the study adds even more weight to the growing chorus of calls to HALT mountaintop removal coal mining and do so right now.

Swenator Rockefeller on coal: ‘In some ways, it defines us’

Well, well, the West Virginia senator is certainly right in that statement. It does indeed. It defines us as a nation of “consumers,” not people; consumers interested only in today, not the landscape and planet of tomorrow. Read about Jay Rockefeller’s ties to coal.

Visiting the other West Virginia, where mountains no longer stand tall

Oops. They’re being lost to greed, dynamiting, and the trucking away of bituminous coal — all in the name of jobs and energy. Read about the raping of Appalachia. You’ll find it all right here.

Taking Big Coal to task not an easy adventure

What a tangled web, as this West Virginia newspaper feature article explains.

Battle in mining country pits coal against wind

I get mad whenever I see photos like the one at the top of this article. But why don’t other Amuricans, en masse? Just how blind are real people to what is happending to the American landscape in places like West Virginia?