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Texas Court First to Restrict Regulation of Waterbodies in Light of Recent Supreme Court Ruling According to court documents, the Environmental Protection Agency argued that discharges of oil into intermittent streams are not “exempt” from the Clean Water Act even if the streams were not flowing at the time of the spill. Chevron countered that…

Imagine that entire mountaintops surrounding your community were being literally blown off all around you. Imagine that the resulting millions of tons of waste rock, dirt, and vegetation were then just dumped into the neighboring valleys and streams, burying waterways under piles of rubble hundreds of feet deep. In Appalachia, this scenario is all too…

Although I am not a native of WV, I love this place and its people.  West Virginians are hard working, modest people who unfortunately sell themselves and their state’s resources short.   What follows is a saga of selling out a football game to the Coal Companies, without a competitive bidding process.  This is the…

A new report finds that FSC-certified plantations are in breach of their own standards. One of the longest established and best respected initiatives on business and sustainable development is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). The growth over the last decade of FSC certified timber has been one of the positive signs about how collaborative standards…

Following its series on MTR (linked below), an editorial in the Roanoke, Va. Times this morning opposes mountaintop removal, saying: Gut instincts aren’t always right. But when it comes to mountaintop removal mining, those who recoil from the carnage directed at Mother Nature are right, both on an emotional level and a more pragmatic one.…

The Times says that mountaintop removal mining ” is reshaping the geographic profile of Appalachia.” Although it is “an efficient way to mine coal, it stirs environmental and cultural concerns.” Here’s a link to the Ronaoke Times MTR story One section of the Times report is sure to stir some controversy among people who live…

According to the ARC press release, a review of all renewable energy sources and an assessment of the resource potential across the Region for each renewable energy source, as well as identification of any significant concentrations of business activity in each business segment will be prepared by the Center for Business and Economic Research at…

The annual Marshall-WVU game will now be-called the “Friends of Coal Bowl.” An age old tradition in a state where football runs deeper than coal-seams is now a “commercial for mountaintop removal.” “Friends of coal has just received a no-bid contact to put logos on the helmets, billboards, and jerseys of the players. Mr. Martion,…

[Minnesota] The Blandin Foundation has joined with the Nature Conservancy and other groups to slow the rapid transformation of northern Minnesota forest into developed home and cabin lots. The effort, to be announced today, will build a $17 million fund to buy conservation easements on up to 75,000 acres of privately-owned forest in and around…