Years of Mountaintop Removal. Plus after Years of State Failure to Protect Critical Waters. Citizens Step Up Actions to Require EPA to Enforce Clean Water Protections in Kentucky and West Virginia!
WASHINGTON, D.C. – National and local groups representing Appalachian citizens announced they pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in federal court to weigh in. I mean all in on the documented, systematic failure of Kentucky and West Virginia. All to regulate harmful water pollution from mountaintop removal coal mines.
In addition, separate legal actions come five years after groups first filed formal petitions. Filed with the EPA regarding Kentucky and West Virginia. As well as and nearly five years after the first petition regarding Kentucky. Those petitions implored the agency to revoke the authority of Kentucky and West Virginia to implement the Clean Water Act in their states, so that EPA could take over in their stead.
As written before:
North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, issued its latest analysis on the administration’s Clean Power Plan, examining the plan’s effects on the power grid and need for regulators to keep the lights on.
The watchdog was sanctioned by Congress in 2005 to be the nation’s technical adviser on electric reliability and author of enforceable standards for the industry.
In conclusion and bowing to pressure from the coal industry, the West Virginia and Kentucky clean water programs failed. They failed to prevent the widespread contamination of state waters by mountaintop removal for coal mines. Citizens in the region have also looked to the EPA to step in. To step in and therefore protect them from mountaintop removal mining pollution.
Mountain top removal is a huge problem. Every time I flip on a switch, I think about someone dealing with this issue in their vicinity. As much as I am for renewable energy, we must all realize that it still takes mining for resources to get the renewables installed. With that said, I think we need a much greater push for reducing our wants instead of just replacing.