New Court Decision Spells the Disaster for Appalachia and the Region's Drinking Water

By Bruce Nilles, Sierra Club. Posted February 17, 2009.

Lorelei Scarbro of CRMW said the hearing lasted all day, with both sides of the debate calling witnesses. No one is sure when the board will rule on the permit, but we are unfortunately not very optimistic.

"The surface mind board is very coal friendly," said Scarbro. "But we're still making a concerned effort on this. We're drawing attention to it and raising awareness, yet we have a pretty good sense that they traditionally do not rule in our favor."

Rory McIlmoil of the Coal River Wind Project says the economic analysis conducted by Downstream Strategies shows "that for the local communities and on the county level, a 328 MW wind farm -- and to a greater degree the development of a wind industry in Raleigh County -- provides the public greater economic benefits in terms of jobs, tax revenue and output than the proposed (mountaintop removal mining) would."

Added McIlmoil, "The report also calculates the social and environmental externalities of both options, and shows that the proposed (mountaintop removal) mining actually results in a net economic loss over a 34 year period of over $600 million, and that is a conservative estimate."

You can read the report on the Coal River Wind website.

Scarbro said West Virginia officials have certainly been hearing from the public about the Coal River Wind project, saying she heard that Gov. Joe Manchin's office has been inundated with calls and emails for the past two weeks (Manchin has said he supports Massey in this case).

"Apparently they were answering the phones at one point just saying, 'Yea or nay,'" laughed Scarbro. "I understand he's getting pretty upset about the amount of attention on this."

The public can still take action on this by continuing to contact public officials. "We need the pressure up, we need to talk to our legislators, we need to write letters to the editor on the local level nationwide."

Our local chapter is on board with Scarbro and McIlmoil and the coalition. We are all trying to save this mountain. Scarbro had an excellent point when I spoke with her today.

"Environmentalists have been painted with a broad brush, people say we have no alternatives and we want to take jobs away," she explained. "But this is not true. We want to bring renewable energy to West Virginia, bring in green jobs. We are doing good things."

See more stories tagged with: water, coal, wind, coal mining, mtr, water pollution, coal river

Bruce Nilles is the director of the Sierra Club's Move Beyond Coal campaign.

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