March 5th, 2009 – The following email was sent to the 34,000+ supporters of iLoveMountains.org. To sign up to receive free email alerts, click here.

Dear Friend of the Mountains,

A major step in our effort to end mountaintop removal coal mining has been taken in Congress.

Yesterday on the House floor, the Clean Water Protection Act (CWPA) was introduced by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ-06), Dave Reichert (R-WA-08), and John Yarmouth (D-KY-03).

The CWPA was introduced with 117 bi-partisan co-sponsors — more than double the number of original co-sponsors from the 110th Congress!

Click here to find out if your representative is one of those co-sponsors:

http://www.iLoveMountains.org/action/write_your_rep/

The introduction of the CWPA is a major milestone for the new Congress — and further evidence of your effectiveness in pushing mountaintop removal coal mining to the top of the nation’s environmental agenda.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr said in regards to the CWPA introduction, “The Clean Water Protection Act is the first broad Congressional initiative aimed at reversing the Bush Administration’s eight-year effort to savage our national waterways and the popular laws that protect them.”

Grist explains further the urgent importance of the CWPA:

The [CWPA] was introduced originally to challenge the outrageous executive rule change by the Bush administration to redefine “fill material” in the Clean Water Act, which has allowed coal companies to blast hundreds of mountains to bits, dump millions of tons of “excess spoil” into nearby valleys, and bury hundreds of miles of streams. An estimated 1,200 miles of waterways have been destroyed by this extreme mining process.

The end result: Toxic black waters and poisoned aquifers that have denied American citizens in the coalfields the basic right of a glass of clean water.

The timing of the bill couldn’t be more urgent: On the heels of a 4th U.S. Circuit Court decision that overturned greater environmental review of mountaintop-removal actions by coal companies, scores of mining permits are flooding through the gates of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this month

Grist praises the “quickly growing and extraordinary nationwide support” for the CWPA. That growth and support is the direct result of your action.

So please, help keep up the pressure by taking a moment to contact your representative today.

If they are already a co-sponsor, thank them for their support and urge them to do all they can to help bring the CWPA to a vote.

If they aren’t yet a co-sponsor, ask them to stand with the growing movement of Americans who want to protect clean water and end mountaintop removal coal mining:

http://www.iLoveMountains.org/action/write_your_rep/

Thank you for everything you do.

Matt Wasson
iLoveMountains.org

PS If you have a blog, please join more than 1000 other bloggers who are helping to spread the word about the devastating effects of mountaintop removal coal mining by joining our blogger’s challenge: http://www.ilovemountains.org/bloggers-challenge