UPDATE: 7:00am, Friday March 19–After 24 hours activists are still locked down in front of the EPA headquarters in Washington, DC demanding justice for the people of Appalachia and protection for our historic mountains and precious water resources.

MTR Activists Lock Down At EPA

Photos by Chris Eichler

Group Erects Purple Mountain Majesty At EPA: “If Administrator Lisa Jackson Won’t Visit the Appalachian Mountains, They’ll Bring the Mountains to Her”

At 7:00 am this morning, a dozen brave activists released a 25-foot banner on the lawn of the EPA headquarters in Washington, DC. The message on the banner calls on the EPA to pledge to end mountaintop removal coal mining in 2010. But there’s a catch—the banner and two of its holders are suspended from two freestanding tripods 20-feet above the air, and after seven hours they are still hanging there with no sign of coming down.

Today’s protest is an attempt to further pressure EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to enforce the Clean Water Act and halt mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). Called the worst of the worst strip mining, the practice blows the tops off of whole mountains and contaminates drinking water all for a tiny amount of coal. Activists in today’s protest say they won’t leave unless Administrator Jackson commits to a flyover visit of the Appalachian Mountains and MTR sites, which, shockingly, she has never done before.

After seven hours, Administrator Jackson has made no such commitment. However, a few hours ago she tweeted her response to the protest gathering attention outside her window. As Administrator Jackson said in her tweet: “People are here today expressing views on MTM, a critical issue to our country. They’re concerned abt human health & water quality & so am I.”
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This week I’m at Mountain Justice Spring Break with folks from all over Appalachia and the east coast. Ex-coal miners, college students, people from Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, West Virginia and lots more are here. Here’s the scoop from Marley Green…

85 Supporters of Mountain Justice gather at Natural Tunnel State Park for Spring Break

Duffield, VA – About 85 young participants from coal communities in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, as well as students from colleges and universities across the country, are convening this week at Natural Tunnel State Park in Duffield, Scott County, Virginia, to participate in Mountain Justice Spring Break (MJSB), a program of Mountain Justice. The week-long program features workshops on supporting local campaigns to stop mountaintop removal coal extraction. The event began Friday, March 12 and will end Saturday, March 20, and will include working closely with coalfield residents.

“We’re here, and we’re all working together with the community to stop mountaintop removal coal mining and support sustainable economies,” said Jessie Dodson of Richmond, Virgina, an organizer of MJSB. “Coal companies like A&G are destroying our communities by polluting our water and air and making people sick.”

Supporters are making trips to see mountaintop removal coal sites in the region, as well as lending a hand with area service projects such as weatherization. Participants hope that the weatherization will reduce the impacts of rising energy costs. Mountain Justice supports these efforts as part of the move toward a more sustainable community and economy. More »

Philly EPA Considering 16 New Mining Permits

This morning activists in Philadelphia descended upon their Regional EPA branch to put an end to Mountaintop Removal mining (MTR). Decisions made here in Philly have devastating consequences for Appalachian communities and our country as a whole.

Activists prepared to enter the building and risk arrest by sitting-in until they were granted a meeting with officials inside, and after a successful engagement and demands met, the rally of 40 people exited.

In recent months, the EPA has wavered in their position on mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR); in particular with the recent approval of the high profile Hobet 45 Mine permit. Philadelphia’s EPA has oversight of MTR permits for Virginia and West Virginia, which includes the Hobet 45 Mine. Philadelphia’s Region 3 EPA is considering 16 upcoming MTR permits and is responsible for the enforcement of the Clean Water Protection Act at existing MTR sites, which makes it a critical agent in ending the mining practice.

This has become a national issue. Appalachians can’t wait any longer, and Philadelphia activists met this urgency with action.

Meanwhile, there is a simultaneous rally at EPA’s region 4 in Atlanta GA, also responsible for MTR permitting.

Every day, across Appalachia, the coal industry literally blows the tops off of historic mountains, impoverishing communities, poisoning drinking water, clear-cutting entire forests, wiping out the natural habitats of countless animals, and sacrificing the heritage and the health of families across the region. The EPA estimates that more than a million acres of American mountains across Appalachia have already been lost to MTR, and yet they allow it to continue.

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Reposted from It’s Getting Hot In Here
By Matt Wilkerson

If you live in the Southeast and want to do something for the struggle against mountaintop removal coal mining come on over to Atlanta March 1st to tell the EPA to ban MTR.

End Mountain Top Removal!
* Rally for the Mountains in Atlanta *
1:00 pm Monday, March 1st
EPA Region 4 Headquarters
Meet outside the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
61 Forsyth Street, SW Atlanta, GA 30303

To date, the practice of mountain top removal coal mining has leveled more than 800 square miles of mountains across Appalachia, destroyed over 2,000 miles of freshwater streams, and poisoned and displaced countless communities that call the mountains home. Each working day, 3,000,000 pounds of explosives are used against the mountains of West Virginia alone.

It is time to end this tragedy. On March 1st, join Asheville Rising Tide, Rainforest Action Network and other allies as we demand that the EPA do their job to protect the land, water, and livelihoods of Appalachian coalfields residents. EPA’s Region 4 office in Atlanta has the power to stop granting new mountain top removal mining permits, and the EPA nationally has the power to ban this devastating practice forever. They need to hear from us! More »

Last Thursday, Rainforest Action Network along with several online allies including 350.org, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the Waterkeeper Alliance, the Ruckus Society and others re-branded JP Morgan Chase in social media networks as being the largest U.S. funder of mountaintop removal [which is also the truth, BTW].

In the days before, the re-branding of Chase went viral. Armed with a thumbmail picture and a few status messages, people all over the internet let their friends and family know the truth about Chase and mountaintop removal.

Through the course of the day, we hit Chase in the following ways:

-RAN and allies Tweeted to over 330,000 people
-RAN and allies touched 180,000 people on Facebook
-had over 30 unique blogs posted, including posts on Huffington Post, Treehugger and Grist
-had 3,000 people “defriend” the Chase Community Giving Facebook fan page
-reports of dozens of people cancelling their Chase credit cards and bank accounts.
-one Appalachian activist started a “Boycott Chase” Facebook group.

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JP Morgan Chase is the biggest U.S. financier of mountaintop removal.

They have financial relationships with the poster child of mountaintop removal, Massey Energy. That means their money is funds sludge impoundments like Brushy Fork which is currently holding 7 billion gallons of coal waste above the Coal River Valley. Their money funds the dragline that 14 of my friends shut down in Twilight last June that scrapes away house size chunks of earth after the mountain has been blasted. Their money funds the security guards and noise machines that harassed and abused 3 tree-sitters last month defending Coal River Mountain with non-violent direct action. Their money funds Don Blankenship’s helicopters, mansion and corrupt junkets to Spain with WV Supreme Court Justices .

Chase has hired PR firms to re-brand themselves on the internet as “charitable” and “benevolent” through their “Chase Community Giving sites and Facebook Fan Pages (even though they disallowed “political” groups from participating in any fundraising). Chase touts themselves as a green environmentally friendly bank. Their greenwashing, social media branding and high powered PR firms can’t hide the truth about what Chase really does. They are complicit in destroying Appalachia’s mountains, poisoning it’s communities with dirty water and ruining it’s economy by creating conditions that lead to the worst poverty in the country.
Today, we’re exposing that truth using tools on the internet that will concentrate tens of thousands of people on Chase brand they’ve spent so much money perfecting.

It’s time we amp up the pressure on Chase and take their money out of the coal industry. More »

I recently went on a trip with two awesome people from Rainforest Action Network, Branden Barber and Debra Erenberg, to visit Appalachia country in West Virginia.  The purpose of the trip was to see first hand what’s happening with mountaintop removal (MTR) due to the affects of coal strip mining.  Its one thing to read about and see pictures of MTR, but it’s absolutely another thing to actually see it and to hear the stories from the people who live there.  What I saw and learned left me feeling sad, angry, overwhelmed and deeply affected.

We had the great fortune of meeting with four equally impressive people in the area.  Each works with a different non-profit group that is fighting to stop this insane large scale devastation.  Mike Roselle from Climate Ground Zero talked about the campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience work that this new and emerging organization is doing where local and non-local volunteers are putting themselves at great risk for trying to stop MTR.  Mike is great.  He is truly a leader in the national and international environmental movement.  I know I want him on my side to stand up for a worthy cause.  It’s tough work, but thanks to Mike and the people at Climate Ground Zero, they’re bringing national attention to this horrid practice of MTR. More »

Finding your way to Climate Ground Zero is easy if you know where you’re going.  Well, even then I’ve learned that Google will lead me astray from time to time. But in terms of what CGZ is, well, I thought I knew.

I didn’t have a clue.

Well, maybe that’s unfair.

I knew what was going on in the mountains of Appalachia, I knew that people were fighting a powerful company that is extracting coal and destroying mountains and communities, and I knew that Climate Ground Zero refers to where the main battle for our global climate is going on – here in the heart of Coal Country, in the US where we produce the lion’s share, per capita, of the world’s greenhouse gases and half of that comes from coal. I knew that this battle is seriously heating up. But I didn’t know how serious.

From Google Earth

Of course it’s serious that a company is mining coal with machines bigger than office buildings and tremendous amounts of explosives, carried daily in tankers that rip along these narrow two lane highways.

And of course it’s serious when people’s families are endangered, their homes destroyed by floods caused by the mining, and the mountains that sustain so much life, so much diversity, are being wiped out for corporate profit. In this area that is stunningly beautiful, terrible things are indeed happening.

Since 1991 Massey Energy has led the pack in the race to take all the coal available from the once-hallowed mountains of Appalachia. They have systematically led the charge and taken the lion’s share of profit in the most efficient form of coal mining available, Mountaintop Removal.

The EPA continues to grant the permits that allow this company to employ far fewer workers than ever before in the history of coal mining. An underground mine used to employ as many as 500 workers. Now these operations can employ as few as 19. More »

After a series of challenges yesterday (the pilot tapping futilely on the little “check battery” light and the cancelled flight to Google’s outdated belief that there is no mine where that road used to be) we finally found ourselves in Rock Creek, West Virginia, Ground Zero for Mountain Top Removal coal mining. This is a place like no other I’ve been. In fact, this whole area has been one surprise after another, and we haven’t even visited any actual MTR sites as yet.

For starters, West Virginia is GREEN in the lushest, brightest, shadiest kind of way. There are myriad wildflowers and over 150 different kinds of trees. The hills surround you everywhere you are – except, of course where the hills have been removed, where the mountain tops have been stripped of their coal and then dumped into the adjacent valleys, the hollows; where a river’s headwaters begin and where numerous plants and animals and insects make a remarkable, complex, beautiful environment. Frogs and lightning bugs, lizards and squirrels, bears and deer and rabbits and racoons and you name it – this place is the real deal and has even been identified as the oldest deciduous forest in North America. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lucy_Braun)

Here there is beauty as well as strife. The number of houses that are uninhabitable or in need of repair is surprising and disconcerting. More businesses seem to have closed than to be open in the many small towns you pass through; towns like Masseyville, Whiteville (just after Whitesville), Marsh Fork, Arnett, Pettry Bottom and here, Rock Creek.

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So I made it to Appalachia, but as you probably saw, the tree-sit was already over. We spent the evening hanging out with a bunch of activists and community members, hearing stories about their exploits over the past few days. It was a truly impressive operation!

While two tree-sitters sat in jail waiting for bail to be set (ultimately reported at $25,000 each (!) for misdemeanor charges). We heard about how Massey workers set up a 24-hour vigil to harass, threaten and even torture the two. Workers reportedly set off various types of extremely loud noises at irregular intervals to make it impossible for the tree sitters to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. We were told that they cut down nearby trees and took a chainsaw to the trees that the sitters were in (stopping short of cutting them down while the sitters were still there).

The more I saw and heard, the more I experienced déjà vu. This trip to Appalachia has so many similarities to my fact finding trip last year to visit to Indigenous communities impacted by palm oil plantations in Malaysia. How so?
• Both are (or were) beautiful forested areas with flowing rivers and thriving local cultures.
• Both are being exploited for the benefit of corporations that promise a good living to community members, but don’t deliver.
• Rivers are being polluted and community members are left with toxic fish to eat.
• Bottled water is the only safe choice.
• Both are company towns (or states), where local government bends over backwards to contort the law to favor the industry over the people, where local police offer no protection, and where local media won’t say a word against the company.
• Both are home to determined people standing up against all odds to save their communities and their heritage.
• People in both areas face trumped up charges, excessive bail and other systematic controls designed to scare off others from speaking out.
• Above all, both of them need our help!

If you can make it to Appalachia to support the struggle, go! If you can’t, help expose what’s going on by writing about, telling your friends, doing a classroom presentation, etc. And tell the EPA that it’s time to stop this horrible practice once and for all!

It’s comforting to think that what’s happening in Malaysia couldn’t happen in a “mature democracy” like the USA. Think again.