Photo: Rainforest Action Network
Appalachia Rising will bring people from all over America together in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2010, to demand the abolition of mountaintop-removal (MTR) coal extraction in Appalachia.
We are not visiting D.C. to attack coal, as its supporters would have you believe. Coal speaks its own truth through catastrophes such as the April 5 disaster at Upper Big Branch Mine. Coal speaks its own truth through the way it levels Appalachian mountains, and fills valleys with waste, and destroys ancestral and historic lands, and obliterates whole communities. Mountaintop-removal mining operations use nearly 3.5 million pounds of explosives each day in West Virginia alone. Coal speaks for itself.
We, the people of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, get the poisoned water, the polluted land, the silica-laden air, the bad health, and the diminished hope of ever having a future. Our communities are flooded and our water is poisoned just to keep the lights on.
The previous administration’s Environmental Protection Agency rubber-stamped MTR mining permits in the name of “homeland... Read more
