The Appalachian Voice
Greenest Holiday Gifts You Can Buy
/images/AppalachianVoices/AV-08dec/recycling-trees.jpg It’s enough to turn anyone into a Scrooge! So many potential gifts ignore concerns about natural ingredients, fair labor, the carbon imprints of production and shipping, wasteful packaging, and so on… Enter Appalachian Voice’s Green Gift Guide! With nine suggestions for eco-conscious giving, your Christmas tree won’t be the only green thing spreading the…
Read MoreHiking the Highlands: Hanging Out in Hanging Rock State Park
/images/AppalachianVoices/AV_08dec/hangingrock.jpg Among the picturesque plains of the North Carolina Piedmont, the Sauratown Mountains rise north of Winston-Salem. Capped by cliffs, these peaks on the east side of the Blue Ridge are known locally as the “mountains away from the mountains,” and take their name from the Saura Indians, who lived in this area as early…
Read MoreBlasting Permit Granted on Coal River Mountain
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 and opponents of mountaintop…
Read MoreUSA & Colombia: Coal Is The Wound That Binds
First of a series: Coal around the World Mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia is even more destructive than in Colombia, said two union miners from that South American country on a tour of the coalfields this November. “It was a great surprise for us to see that here in the U.S. open pit mining was…
Read MoreAcross Appalachia: Environmental News in Brief
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…
Read MoreFull Appalachian Voice December issue in PDF
Download the full PDF (8.1 MB) https://appvoices.org/pdfs/voice_2008_06dec.pdf
Read MoreSolar homes tour leading by example
It’s been said that the best way to lead is by example. The American Solar Energy Society has embraced this mantra with the sponsorship of a national solar homes tour. Over the first weekends in October, people all over the nation traveled to homes and commercial building that have incorporated solar technology into their design.…
Read MoreClean Water Protection Act Gains Sponsors, Gives Hope
HR 2169, more simply known as the Clean Water Protection Act, was introduced May 3, 2007 by Representative Frank Pallone (D-NJ) with Christopher Shays (R-CT) and 61 other co-sponsors. The bill would amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify that fill material cannot be comprised of mining waste, thereby making illegal the practice…
Read MoreOnward and Upward, Mary Anne Hitt!
Appalachian Voices’ Executive Director Takes New Position With Sierra Club This November, Appalachian Voices’ executive director Mary Anne Hitt will begin a new job in Washington, DC, as the deputy director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign. Mary Anne has served as executive director of Appalachian Voices since early 2004. She oversaw the growth…
Read MoreThere’s No Place Like Home for the Eastern Box Turtle
By Bill Kovarik He was probably on his way to the creek. It had been a dry summer, and I heard him scratching down the hill, headed for water with speed and a sense of determination that seemed rare in a turtle. As I pulled out the camera and caught his indignant glare, I was…
Read More