Mountain Top, West Virginia

There is a disgusting technique used by greedy corporations to rip coal from the Appalachian mountains. It's called mountain top removal or MTR. Here's how it works: First they clear cut the oak and other hardwood trees from the mountain top and bulldoze them into huge piles, then burn them like trash. Next, using massive shovels, they scrape off the topsoil down to bedrock, destroying all remaining plant and animal life. After drilling holes into the exposed bedrock they pack them with explosives and, well, remove the mountain top with a blast about ten times that of the Oklahoma City bombing. Next, excavating machines the size of 20 story buildings rumble in, scoop up the rubble and remove it to reveal the coal. But that isn't the end of the insult. All the tons of boulders, topsoil, vegetation, chard timber and other debris are shoved down into the valleys, burying streams, animals, habitat and anything in the way. What we have here is nothing short of ecocide -- the total annihilation of a unique ecosystem older than the Himalayas.

Want to see pictures of this environmental rape? Here are a couple web sites:

http://www.appvoices.org/mtr/gallery.asp

www.crmw.net (click on photo gallery)

Some progress toward stopping MTR was being made during the Clinton administration. When BushCo came to power the progress stopped. It's time to make some noise about this outrage. These sites above tell you what you can do to help.

This information is taken from Jim Hightower's newsletter, "The Lowdown."