This morning, advocates for miners with black lung and their families released a new report detailing how black lung benefit payments have fallen far behind the cost of living, putting ailing miners and their dependents among the most at risk as inflation continues to rise.
Nine years after the Mountain Valley Pipeline project was announced, it remains unnecessary and dangerous to the communities, water resources, lands and habitats through which it is routed.
Today, President Joe Biden released his Fiscal Year 2024 budget to fund government programs through September 2024. The budget proposal includes crucial investments in programs to boost economic growth in the coalfields, ensure coal mine reclamation and protect miners from black lung disease.
A study by the Government Accountability Office looking at the adequacy of current black lung benefits for miners and their families requested by U.S. senators should bolster ongoing efforts to improve those benefits.
Even with the short session, Appalachian Voices’ capitol team had a lot to keep track of, with a number of bills we were hoping to convince legislators to support — and quite a few we were hoping to convince them to vote down.
Today, for the third time, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement for the Mountain Valley Pipeline, one of several authorizations necessary under federal law to allow construction of the project.
On Monday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared a new study that sounds a clear alarm bell to leaders across the country about the dire need for a renewed focus on safeguarding the health of coal miners across the country.
In response to the U.S. Forest Service’s intention to break 11 of its own rules for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, over 30,000 individuals and organizations submitted their opposition to the agency’s plan ahead of a February 21 deadline.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently classified northern long-eared bats as endangered, which could help save the species most impacted by the deadly fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome.
Explosives and heavy equipment: the perfect combination for mine owners to extract coal from a pristine Appalachian landscape. Too bad this process, known as mountaintop removal mining, is terrible if you live near the mined mountain, or in a watershed downstream, or on a planet faced with the imminent threat of ever-increasing temperatures brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions.
