EPA Halts MTR Permits for Review

The ‘Breaking News’ headline at the anti-mountaintop removal website I Love Mountains brings tears to the grateful eyes of we lovers of these ancient, beautiful and abundant mountains…

Hope renewed across the Appalachian coalfields – Obama Administration suspends mountaintop removal permits for further review…

Obama’s new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced this past Tuesday that the agency would be delaying somewhere between 150 and 250 permits issued by the US Army Corps of Engineers to coal companies to flatten mountains and destroy watersheds in their desperate quest to extract the last of the sequestered coal with as few paid miners as possible.

What the EPA will be reviewing are blatant violations of clean water regulations former President G.W. Bush waived in his 2002 “fill rule” and a last days repeal of the stream buffer zone rule that would allow coal companies to ignore any and all impacts of the water supplies of rural residents, towns and cities dependent upon these mountain streams for drinking water supplies.

The map above (h/t Appalachian Voices) shows graphically how open strip mines and MTR directly affects the very poorest regions of Appalachia. One might suspect that these areas are happy to have the good jobs these operations offer, but the reality is that this kind of mining is equipment-reliant, done with machines and not men. For instance, King Coal once provided 120,000 decent paying jobs in West Virginia, but now fewer than 20,000 citizens call themselves coal miners. The people whose environment is being raped are getting nothing of value out of the deal. And may indeed be harmed significantly as their water supplies are systematically polluted, sickening their crops, livestock and families.

As reported on this blog in several posts linked below, some of the people in these poor counties have better ideas about what to do with their mountains, things that will improve everyone’s life, make them leaders in clean, renewable energy supplies, and create green jobs for local residents. Especially check out projects like Coal River Wind, which proposes to harvest the wind instead of the mountain itself.

Another great article with good links and pictures is Hope is Alive in Appalachia!!! by Kossack ‘faithfull’. So get off your duff – call some legislators, sign some petitions, and spread some love of mountains in your circle today!

Links:

Old King Coal vs. Reality
Hope is Alive in Appalachia!!!
Old King Coal, a Filthy Old Soul
Coal River Wind
I Love Mountains

Filed under Energy, Environment, Pollution | Comment (1)

’09 Season’s Homestead Project: Solar Dryer

Post 1 of an Upcoming Series

Acknowledging that we homesteaders have been ahead of the curve for quite awhile on how to become ever more self-sufficient, the current worldwide economic crisis – which threatens to last for years – no doubt has us expanding our means of producing and preserving food crops this year. On my homestead a good deal of work is going into expanding the amount of acreage we’ve planted in truck crops, begun experimenting with staples like hard red winter wheat and grain amaranth, and doubling the actual plantings of favorites like potatoes and corn that have traditionally been so cheap to buy that we didn’t depend upon our own.

On the preservation front, I’ve embraced a project for this season that should pay for itself many times over during the years it will be in use. It’s a solar food dryer, with which I’m hoping to cut seriously into the energy usage (and expense) of regular canning and freezing as the crops come in. This will not only help keep our not air conditioned cabin cooler during the hot August tomato harvest/canning frenzy, it should also cut way down on waste of perfectly good food from the land that comes in piecemeal, is less-than-perfect, and cannot be immediately consumed. This means I can preserve much more of the apple and pear crops, can preserve the persimmon crop that just started producing last fall, can dry sweet corn, squash and even dark green leafies for long-term storage while preserving much more of their nutritional goodness as well as flavor.

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Filed under Food Production, Food Storage, Garden, Harvest, Solar | Comment (1)