Government Sanctioned Bombing of Appalachia

[nosmokes]

Over fifty years ago we knew exactly how damaging to the environment and human health mountain top removal mining was. It just blows my mind that this unconscionable practice is still allowed.
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original-alternet

The Government Sanctioned Bombing of Appalachia

By Antrim Caskey, AlterNet. Posted October 9, 2007.

Thanks to Bush, Big Coal uses 3 million pounds of explosives each day in West Virginia to fuel our addiction to dirty energy.

On a calm, clear morning in the forested mountains of southern West Virginia, 12-year-old Chrystal Gunnoe played outdoors in the green mountain valley where her family has lived for hundreds of years. It was Veteran's Day and a school holiday. Chrystal's mother, Maria Gunnoe, 38, was inside when she heard her daughter yell for help.

Gunnoe rushed outside to find Chrystal coming towards her. Chrystal was coughing and struggling to breath, running from a strange-looking cloud that was moving down the valley and headed towards their house. Gunnoe would later learn the strange cloud came from something known as a "slow burning blast" -- an explosion set at the coal mine above her home that failed to ignite and instead burned slowly, releasing a wet toxic cloud of nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide.

Gunnoe lives in Bob White, W.Va., where coal companies have become increasingly unfriendly neighbors. Her home is surrounded by thousands of acres where a radically destructive type of coal mining is practiced -- mountaintop removal/valley fill (MTR) coal mining -- and it's turning Maria Gunnoe's life upside down.

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complete article here

[Trillo]

1. I've got an idea.

Why not remove all the mountains, and put the debris in the lowest valleys! Brilliant!

BTW, the lowest valleys are in the ocean.

[Thothmes]

2. Misleading Headline

No one "bombed Appalachia". They have been using explosives in those coal mines for over a century. "Big Coal" has been mining Appalachia for centuries.

[nosmokes]

3. The headline is too tame if it's anything. WTH do you think bombs are

but explosives? These are just used in the corporate war on the poor, not the corporate war on terrah.

[Thothmes]

5. tame

How does using a 60 lbs of explosive to blow out a portion of a coal seam, equate to a corporate war on the poor.

[nosmokes]

6. whose water do you think is befouled by what is blown out?

Whose lungs are filled toxins that the operators know are present but conveniently forget to mention to the miners so they and their families can get lung disease? Here comes the clue bus -It ain't the mine owners.

[Wiley50]

4. God! I Hope Gore Decides to Run!

I tried to rec but couldn't. Wish I had seen this yesterday