Alliance Members Brief Congressional Staffers
Sep 22nd, 2009 by admin
Last week, The Alliance for Appalachia helped bring 30 people to Washington DC to take bring the message of the destruction of mountaintop removal. We met with dozens of Congressional offices, with federal agencies and had the honor of attending the Washington DC premiere of the new documentary “Coal Country”
www.kftc.org has offered this excellent write up of the Congressional briefing:
McCoy told staffers what it was like to live with mountaintop removal in Martin County, where nearly 25% of the land surface has been mined. Mickey told the audience,
Mountaintop removal is an assault on the Appalachian Mountains, its people, their environment, and generations to come.
Mickey went on to shared with them the day-to-day and long term impacts of mining, from the clear-cutting and blasting to the contaminated waters and dust to the persistent poverty and poor health that can be found wherever coal is carved from the Earth, clearly pointing out that his experiences were shared by thousands of others throughout the coal fields of Appalachia.
One must wonder if the water quality affected by mountain top removal contributes to the Center for Disease Control’s claim that Central Appalachia leads the nation in deaths from breast, prostate, colon, lung, and cervical cancers.Mickey McCoy
Dr. Matt Wasson provided those attending with an overview of Appalachian surface mining, pointing how widespread the destruction has become and emphasizing that our nation’s energy needs can easily be met without sacrificing the land and people of Appalachia. Wasson assured the Congressional staff members, representing both parties, that there has never been a time when ending mountaintop removal was more critical or more within our reach.
Toward the end of the briefing McCoy told the audience,
It is not right for our government to allow the dismantlement of and entire culture for the sake of the greed of the coal corporations.”
H.R. 1310 current has 156 co-sponsors from every region of the country, including Rep. John Yarmuth and Ben Chandler of Kentucky. An initial hearing on the bill may be held in Transportation and Infrastructure’s Water Resources Subcommittee as early as this fall.
