Jay Dee's Post

Appalachia is Rising (Again) Summer time, and the livin’ is easy in the coalfields–except from dust to dawn, when untold millions of pounds of explosives are detonated across 24 states in the nation, raining down silica and coal dust, contaminating wells and watersheds, sending boulders the size of bowling balls into the homes of American [...]

By Jeff Biggers What a big week in the Big Coal Gone Wild chronicles UPDATE May 18th : After a long national campaign to end banking practices for mountaintop removal mining operations, Rainforest Action Network announced that JP Morgan Chase has made its first public announcement on halting lending to reckless mining operations in Appalachia. [...]

By Jeff Biggers Earlier this morning, I wrote a piece for April Fool’s Day, Obama Ends 150-Year War of Strip-Mining in 24 States: Mountaintop Removal Loses Its Groove. Well, turns out the second part wasn’t an April Fool’s joke after all. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson invoked the rule of science and law today–and for the [...]

Ken Ward Jr. When Coal Tattoo last left our friend Steve Roberts, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce president’s political strategy was that state representatives in Washington should bottle up health-care reform unless President Obama ordered EPA to start approving new mountaintop removal mining permits. Now that health-care reform has passed — a move that [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. If you follow the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement’s Web site, you may have noticed a half-dozen or more new entries under the “News and Stories” section. OSMRE staff have been busy posted photos and captions from agency Director Joe Pizarchik’s late January tour of the West Virginia [...]

Perched on 60-foot-high platforms in tulip poplar and oak trees, three nonviolent tree-sitting protestors associated with Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice carried out the duty of the EPA and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection this morning–they reportedly shut down the reckless mountaintop removal blasting at the controversial Bee Tree Strip Mine on [...]

Goodbye purple mountain’s majesty–here comes Patriot Coal! Last night on the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert hosted scientist Margaret Palmer in a brilliant takedown of the Obama administration’s recent decision to green light more mountaintop removal permits, in light of a blockbuster new scientific study that concluded that “mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance [...]

by Ken Ward Jr. “Mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for the losses.” Photo by Paul Corbit Brown That quote above is the conclusion of a blockbuster study being published tomorrow by a group of the nation’s top scientists, [...]

For more than 100 years, coal has been the backbone of the Appalachian economy. Even today, the economies of more than 20 states depend to some degree on the mining of coal. About half of all the electricity generated in America and about one quarter of all the energy consumed globally is generated by coal. [...]

The Battle at Coal River Mountain has officially begun. At the same time President Barack Obama invoked the “legacy of daring men and women” in our nation’s quest for renewable energy initiatives, and as millions of concerned citizens rallied in support of 350.org climate change events around the world this past weekend, Big Coal bulldozers [...]