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Stream Buffer Zone Rule Repeal Deserves President Obama’s Attention
To the outrage of environmentalists across the Appalachian region, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved a severe weakening of a rule protecting streams from coal mining pollution in early December. The Stream Buffer Zone rule had been in effect since 1983 to protect the nation’s headwater streams from being buried by valley fills from mountaintop…
Read MoreUSA & Columbia: Coal Is The Wound That Binds
Environmental Effects of Mountaintop Removal Mining Worse Than South American Mining Operations First of a series: Coal around the World By Bill Kovarik Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia is even more destructive than in Columbia, said two union miners from that South American country on a tour of the coalfields this November. “It was a great…
Read MoreBlasting Permit Granted on Coal River Mountain
Story by Sarah Vig Bulldozers are set to begin moving dirt on Coal River Mountain, and Massey Energy, with the permit granted to them by West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection, can begin blasting at any time. The permit’s approval, which was announced in late November, was met with anger and disappointment from community members…
Read MoreBiker Merges Law With Advocacy
By Sarah Vig Sam Evans’ environmental consciousness has always been linked to his bike. As a teenager growing up in Walker county, Alabama, Evans started riding in high school for transportation. “I didn’t have a car,” he explained sheepishly. Beyond simple transportation, biking led Evans to what he describes as his personal “environmental epiphany.” While…
Read MoreAppalachian Bookshelf
These four picks for Appalachian literature and history represent an astonishing depth and variety. For more, see www.appvoices.org/books. • Field Guide to Medicinal Wild Plants, by Bradford Angier, Stackpole Books (2008). This revised edition brings back a 30-year-old classic field guide with the help of biologist David K. Foster. In the book, for instance, you will…
Read MoreBOMBSHELL: RFK Jr. Testimony on Bush’s Mountaintop Removal Antics
The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held an important hearing yesterday on Bush’s 11th hour rule-making shenanigans. As most of our readers will know, one of those last minute rule changes is a repeal of the 25 year old Stream Buffer Zone rule – an important guard against the dumping of…
Read MoreAppalachia Needs Appropriate Technology
By Al Fritsch and Paul Gallimore Excerpt from “Healing Appalachia,” University of Kentucky Press, 2007 Appropriate technology is a necessity for our planet as well as our country and the Appalachian region. We hope to offer a regional model of what the rest of the country and world could do and be. This is a…
Read MoreAppalachia Cannot Become a Sacrifice Zone
By Wendell Berry Wendell Berry is a world-renowned author of 25 books of poems, 16 volumes of essays, and 11 novels and short story collections. He is widely known as the conscience of Appalachia. These remarks were made at the Society of Environmental Journalists in Roanoke, Va. on Oct. 19, 2008 There is a phrase…
Read MoreFuture Depends on Vision
By Bill Kovarik Fifty years ago, America discovered Appalachia and the “sense of despair which lingers over the valleys and ridges,” as one Washington Post writer put it. Stark images of poverty aroused the conscience of the nation, and a few years later, President Lyndon Johnson traveled to Inez, Kentucky to announce his “War on…
Read MoreHow We Talk Can Be As Important As the Problems We Talk About
By Kathy Mattea Kathy Mattea is a Grammy-Award winning country singer and songwriter whose most recent album, “Coal” was inspired by the Sago Mine Disaster of 2006. See www.mattea.com. I have come to believe that the future of Appalachia’s environment is directly related to the level of discourse we are able to have about the…
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