The Coalfield Uprising

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared on Sep 11 that all pending mountaintop removal mining permits in four Appalachian states stood in violation of the Clean Water Act and required further review. Mountaintop removal does more than likely cause water quality impacts, as the EPA has determined. More than 3.5 million pounds of explosives rip daily across the ridges and historic mountain communities in West Virginia; a similar amount of explosives are employed in eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Mountaintop removal operations have destroyed more than 500 mountains and 1.2 million acres of forest in the nation's oldest and most diverse range, and jammed more than 1,200 miles of streams with mining waste. It also caused considerable human suffering and one of the largest displacements of US citizens since the nineteenth century, a fact the government has not adequately addressed. Here, Biggers talks about coalfield residents activism and lobbying campaign to abolish mountaintop removal.