US Government Continues to Enable Reckless Environmental Destruction

Continuing its practice of favoring industry over environment, the Environmental "Protection" Agency, without publicly announcing the action, has approved a major new mountaintop-removal coal mining permit in Logan County, West Virginia. The permit approves the destruction of nearly three miles of currently clean stream and 760 acres of forest, in a county where at least 13 percent of the land has already been permitted for surface coal mining. This is the first permit decision the EPA has issued under its new mountaintop removal guidelines, which promised “unprecedented steps” to reduce the negative impacts of surface coal mining on water quality, aquatic life and human health in Appalachia.

“After very publicly stating in April that ‘no or very few’ new valley fills would be permitted, the EPA quietly permitted three new valley fills,” said Tierra Curry, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “By approving this permit EPA is willfully ignoring the science showing that mountaintop removal causes irreversible damage to both people and wildlife in Appalachia.”

The only way to defeat the destructive fossil fuels industries are to move to clean energy now! Drilling and mining fossil fuels domestically perpetuates an unsustainable environmentally and economically destructive dependency. Call on your senators to make clean energy happen here.

[Center for Biological Diversity]