Take Action to Protect Southwest Virginia from Mountaintop Removal
Jun 9th, 2010 by admin
We just received this important message from our friends in Southwestern Virginia – please take action today! At the bottom is a powerful video put together showing the citizens taking action to protect this land.
If ever there is a time we must stand together to stop mountaintop removal, it is now. On May 12, the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy approved the Ison Rock Ridge permit, a 1,300-acre surface coal mine, that would forever destroy five of our communities in Wise County, Virginia, and devastate the quality of life for some 1800 people living nearby.
Despite emphatic rulings from the Environmental Protection Agency that have been put in place to protect local waterways from coal mining pollution, the DMME has ignored the best scientific criteria preferred by the EPA and instead desires to push this permit though. Any mining on Ison Rock Ridge would be a clear violation of the Clean Water Act, and since the state agency has apparently ignored the law, it is up to us to make sure it is enforced.
We are calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to intervene and deem this permit unlawful, and to deem this mountain un-minable. Please help us by clicking HERE to send a letter to the EPA, thanking them for all they have done to protect our waterways thus far, and asking them to deny the NPDES permit for Ison Rock Ridge.
