July 3: A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia
WASHINGTON, D. C. -- "If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it. Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia'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, poisoned 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. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Washington Post.
July 3: Coal Country Premiere: Big Coal Lobby Does Not Want You to See This Powerful New Film
CHARLESTON, WV-- "Why is Big Coal so afeared of this documentary film by native Appalachian daughters Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller, producer and director of three-part award-winning landmark PBS series, 'The Appalachians'? If anything, Coal Country goes out of its way to include the views and voices of the Big Coal lobby and its executives, engineers and miners. This, in fact, might be why Coal Country is so compelling; far from any hackneyed agenda, Coal Country simply allows the coal industry and those affected by its mountaintop removal operations and coal-fired plants to tell their personal stories. The end result is devastating. In a methodical and deliberate fashion, Coal Country brilliantly takes viewers on a rare journey through our nation's coal-fired electricity, from the extraction, processing, transport, and burning of coal," Jeff Biggers, Huffington Post.
July 2: Why I Was Arrested in Coal River, West Virginia
The actress Darryl Hannah was arrested on June 23 for blocking State Route 3 near a Massey Energy coal processing plant in Raleigh County, West Virginia.
COAL RIVER VALLEY, WV-- "Why would I fly across the country on my own dime knowing I would most likely end up in jail in one of the poorest parts of America? Well, have you ever heard of MTR?.... Mountain Top Removal leaves behind a virtual hideous moonscape of devastated earth, billions of gallons of poisonous toxic sludge, and boarded up towns with dramatically high rates of cancer," Daryl Hannah, Huffington Post.
On June 23, hundreds of people gathered in West Virginia to protest Massey Energy's mountaintop removal mining site and coal slurry pond located several hundred yards from Marsh Fork Elementary School. According to Massey's own evacuation plans, if the slurry pond were to break, the school children and the surrounding community would have three minutes to evacuate. Along with Daryl Hannah, NASA scientist James Hansen and 94-year-old former U.S. Representative Ken Hechler were among those arrested.
July 2: U.N. to Study Potential Threats to Canada-U.S. World Heritage Site
Conservation photographers set for expedition to British Columbia's Flathead Valley near Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park
A view of mountaintop removal coal mining in Elk Valley in southeastern British Columbia, northwest of Flathead Valley. Environmentalists are concerned a similar project in the Flathead will contaminate the headwaters of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Copyright Garth Lenz, iLCP Flathead RAVE)
FLATHEAD VALLEY, BRITISH COLUMBIA-- "Decades-long concerns over energy and mining development proposals near a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the Canada-U.S. border have prompted the agency to launch a fact-finding mission to investigate potential threats to the region... The mountaintop removal coal mining being proposed 'would remove the large mountaintop and dump what’s not coal into the valley,' said Chloe O’Loughlin, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s B.C. chapter. The open pit mine would send great amounts of heavy metals and runoff into the Flathead River and downstream into the neighbouring peace park... The world’s first 'international peace park,' Waterton-Glacier is a protected area formed in 1932 from a merger of Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta and Glacier National Park in Montana. It serves as a symbol of peace and friendship between the two countries,” Cindy Chan, Epoch Times.
Last summer, candidate Barack Obama took a stand opposing the Cline mountaintop removal mine, 25 miles north of the Canadian border. Since taking office as president, Obama has approved many mountaintop removal mine permits in Central Appalachia, 400 miles south of the Canadian border.
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