Washington Post,July/19/09.Mountaintop removal coal mining is...

Washington Post,July/19/09.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environ-
mental tragedy in American history.Mining syndicates
are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day..the
equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly..to blow up App-
alachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams.
They have demolished "500 mountains"..encompassing about
a million acres.. buried hundreds of valley streams
under tons of rubble,poisioned and uprooted countless
communities and caused widespread contamination to the
region's air and water.On this continent only Appalachia's
rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that
turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra.

Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to
flatten in months, mountains older than the Himalayas
while employing fewer workers for far less time than
other types of mining.America adores its Adirondacks
and reveres the Rockies,while the Appalachian Mountains
with their impoverished and alienated population,are
dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics
and have little to prevent them from blasting the
physical landscape to smithereens.The White House should
fix the "fill" rule the Bush Administration adopted in
2002 to allow coal companies to use streams as waste
dumps.

Under this perverse interpretation of the Clean Water
Act,2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been interred
under mining waste.Appalachia, with our nations richest
natural resources,was home to America's poorest people,
its worst education system,and its highest illiteracy
and unemployment rates.These stastics are even more
grimmer today as mining saps state wealth.They extract
more coal annually,but virtually all profits leave the
state for Wall Street.Obama just needs to make the coal
barons obey the law. [end]

No doubt many of you would remember the John Denver song
about the Blue Ridge Mountains..Shenandoah river.What a
tragedy for it could have been averted, by using the 2
Trillion ton of deep coal the U.S.has ear marked for
future UCG extraction..only they need to use it now to
avoid further destruction to a diminishing wilderness


However Obama is now stating that he has to focus on
extending health care and put the energy/climate bill,
now in the senate..on the back burner.[NY Times Jul4/09]

As predicted by many, Rudd/Wongs ETS programme has been
defeated by a hostile senate.And as time goes by one
wonders how much longer it will be before it dawns on
our elected leaders that UCG, by its natural function,
dramatically increases coals efficiency and at the same
time reduces coal's "above ground" contamination.

HM.