RockingChair

Front Porch Blog

Updates from Appalachia

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Two men stand outside a small plane

Remembering Harvard Ayers, founder of Appalachian Voices

Harvard Ayers, founder of Appalachian Voices, passed away on March 9, 2023. Ayers was a true visionary and leaves behind a powerful legacy for the people and environment of Appalachia.

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Mountain Valley Pipeline: Risky, ruinous and roadblocked

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.

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six people stand on a street in Richmond

Wins and losses in the 2023 Virginia General Assembly session

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.

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Guest post: New SkyTruth research reveals legacy of mountaintop mining — and the policy implications

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.

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Bad actor coal company seeks to expand surface mine in endangered candy darter habitat

Surface mining of this scale is bad news for the environment even if it is conducted within the confines of the law, but South Fork Coal Company’s history of regulatory infractions is almost as egregious as Greenbrier County is beautiful.

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